I spent two days at the Festival of Quilts this year. In this blog post I’ll be telling you about four specific quilts (three of them mine) and in next week’s post I will share a bit more about other quilts that caught my eye at the show.
First of all, I’d like to show you a quilt on the EQA (European Quilt Association) stand, where the theme was ‘Flower Power’.
It was made by Stefanie Wedel. Here is her quilt:
Stef* is the leader of our charity quilt group Refuge Circle which has 10 members who live, variously, in Germany, Switzerland, Wales and England. There are other mentions of the group here. Three of the group were at the Festival and two of us managed to meet by Stef’s quilt and spend some time in conversation. As it is a virtual group, we mostly correspond with messages over the internet, so meeting in real time was fun.
This is the quilt I entered in The Quilters’ Guild Challenge category which this year had the title ‘Express Yourself’. The quilt is titled: ‘In the pink – or are you blue?’
The artist’s statement says ‘Social media may encourage us to express ourselves in a polished version of our lives where everything is portrayed as sunny and happy. This may prevent us from being authentic and vulnerable in real life.’
My second quilt was entered in the brand new category ‘Sustainable Quilts’. I am delighted that The Guild has introduced this area of the competition and it was encouraging to see so many entries, eighty-eight in all! The title is ‘Four Shirts’.
The artist’s statement reads: The choice of quilt blocks was dictated by the materials. The design plays with ‘fours’ and was achieved through very careful calculations, pattern matching and lots of ‘fussy-cutting’. Normally I only use natural fibres for wadding but this challenge gave some recycled polyester a new life.
Here’s the information about the sustainability: This quilt is 100% sustainable. No new items were used. The top and binding are made solely from four upcycled men’s shirts. The backing is a sturdy vintage cotton sheet donated by a friend. The threads area mixture of gifted and thrifted. The wadding is an upcycled charity-shop polyester throw.
The third quilt went into the ‘Miniatures’ category where all the quilts must measure a maximum of 30cm on the longest side. It is called ‘A small clearing in the woods’.
The artist’s statement says: The cotton batiks evoke the colours of leaves and undergrowth in the beech woods near my childhood home. Between groups of trees are clearings with glimpses of the sky. Variegated thread echoes the play on sunlight on the foliage.
*You can find Stef on Instagram here: @stef_andthefabricpieces
Thank you for reading my blog. Quilt Patterns are here, Fabrics are here, Classes are here
Amanda Jane Textiles has quilt labels available to order from Spoonflower. Get this set (printed on a fat quarter of fabric) here
And this set here
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