Monday 12 April 2010

Quilts At The Races....

In no particular order, I post a few photos from the show, with a bit of information... some secretly gained as a QUILT ANGEL, my favourite job, so far!
This quilt won first prize in the Bed Quilt category. It's hand quilted.. click on the picture for a closer look, the stitching is beautiful. I asked one lady if she would like me to show her the back, she declined and said she had seen it before... she'd actually made the quilt!! he he he
There was so much to look at closely in this quilt. Every block and every flower fascinated me, lots of detailed stuff, I don't even know the proper names of them, but basically, carefully gathered tiny pieces of fabrics... you with me?
This quilt is called 'Wax Lyrical' and won the visitors choice category. It's silk fabric coloured with wax crayon and hand quilted, very clever, looked like applique until you got very close, very delicate hand quilting ...

This quilt won the innovative category, quite different eh... the catalogue says that it is' freezer paper foundation machine piecing of cottons and silk'.. what it doesn't tell us... and I know because I was AN ANGEL (did I mention that yet?) is that the lady who made it, quilted it whilst standing upright... she has back troubles so she can't do it sitting down, so... it is all done with one hand to guide the stitching because she operates the foot pedal in the other hand.... it's unbelievable, I know... but I got it from a friend of the maker and she looked pretty honest to me!
This design is super easy to make... but step up closer... maybe it isn't .... The borders are no ordinary borders, they are wavy... the machine quilting is very very beautiful, go on in... look closer! you really must.
This fun quilt is pieced and quilted by hand!!! All those tiny squares... the bee and the eyes are three dimensional, it made a lot of people smile... I saw kids voting for this one.

This quilt was one of my favourites, if only for it's colours, the quilting is done by machine and spells out flower names, it looks like it wasn't pieced as such but little squares, an inch I think, placed onto a foundation and stitched with zig-zag stitch, but I am not an expert so I could be wrong.
This is one I thought Javhlan might like to see, she loves oriental fabrics and arty things. She is teaching the ladies in Portugal how to do Sashiko stitching by hand or by machine and they are enjoying it.
This quilt has a hidden secret. It's one that I hung on Wednesday at the set up. The secret?.... The hanging sleeve is also paper pieced with the same design, I never before saw a pieced hanging sleeve... I tried to show it to the people admiring it but it was really difficult to see.
Almost everyone spent a lot of time with this Hardanger quilt... most in awe of the hours that it must have taken to do it. The hardanger part is a whole cloth and has tiny detail, it's hand embroidered and hand quilted, lots of people said that they would vote for it in the Visitors choice category. I only know this because I was AN ANGEL in this isle for ages!

So, the show is over and I handed back my Angel badge and white gloves, it was such lot of fun. I met a lovely lady who has been following my blog and she has seen my sign outside the Bank House Hotel in Uttoxeter... she was pleased to meet me ... I felt quite famous for a moment!!! ha ha ha

1 comment:

lillywizzo said...

I love the luuurrrrrvely flowers one mummy :) xx