Last Saturday, I heard an excellent talk by quilter Kerry Keeble organised by Oast Quilters in Canterbury (details below). Kerry is an accomplished professional long-armer (details below) and a very keen quilt-maker. Her talk was lively, humorous and hard-hitting. It was also very enjoyable. Kerry has been quilting for 12 years and she shared stories and insights from her quilting journey.
The first quilt she showed us was the one below. Kerry believes strongly in making her own fabric choices from any mixture of collections she likes. (This, she explained, is in defiance of ‘advice’ she was once given to only use fabrics from a single collection in any given quilt!) Her mastery of colour is evidenced in the blocks of this quilt which are enhanced by the calm neutrals between the blocks. Kerry even shares how to make a string block like the ones in her quilt, in one of the tutorials on her website (link below).
We also had the chance to see the dramatic ‘Unicorn’ quilt which Kerry pieced and machine quilted. It is very striking.
You can see from the close-up of the mane how intensely quilted it is – and also how a wide range of fabrics have been used most effectively together.
The same is true of the quilting and piecing on the creature’s face which make it appear to be almost three-dimensional.
Another quilt on display was this one, using blocks in a mini-series ‘Sew the Rainbow’ designed by Giucy Guice using Alison Glass fabrics and both pieced and quilted by Kerry. These blocks, floating in their sea of white, are formed from truly tiny pieces of fabric!
The coloured strips in the block below are no more than a quarter-inch finished. Astonishing!
This joyous use of saturated colour was evident in other quilts on show, such as the one below, which has cool greys between the frames of rainbow brights. (Kerry did also share the fact that she never uses the colour brown in her quilts!)
We also saw examples of hand-stitched English-Paper-Pieced blocks in which fussy-cutting greatly adds to the impact of the whole.
A particularly strong message which came through the talk was the encouragement to do what pleases you as a quilt-maker and not to be overly influenced by other people’s opinions. She gave more than one example of choosing to ignore non-so helpful advice and achieving her own excellent result!
Kerry’s Instagram is: https://www.instagram.com/thatssewkerry/
Kerry’s website is: https://www.thatssewkerry.com/
Oast Quilters’ website is: https://www.oastquilters.co.uk/
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