Festival of Quilts 2024 – part 2

Last week, I wrote about quilts on the various stands at this year’s Festival (that post is here). Today, I’ll be sharing images of quilts in the competition, including my own.

I’ll begin with ‘Dear Humans’ by Sue Sherman which was entered in the ‘Pictorial’ category and won ‘Best in Show’. The maker painted the creatures (with paint and stitch) from her own photographs. It was a remarkable piece which focussed on the loss of animal habitat across the globe.

The winners of the various categories will be published soon in ‘The Quilter’, the magazine of The Quilters’ Guild, so I won’t include any more first prize winners here, but instead give you a selection of quilts that caught my eye…

This is ‘December Sunset, South Pier Blackpool’ by Anne Taylor, who used dye, paint and stitch to create her dramatic landscape, using her own photograph as a reference.

The garment below, named ‘Penny Candy Coat’, by Nicola Daniels, really caught my eye. I was delighted to see that the maker had used fabrics by a fellow Spoonflower* artist Amy Peppler. Such a joy to behold!

The colourful quilt below ‘Auspicious Track’ by Yuanshan Jin comprised slender strips of colourful fabric pieced (by hand!) in a modern, improvisational way. It was very effective.

An astonishing feature of the quilt was the meticulous and beautiful hand quilting, seen below.

I do love a textile piece that re-purposes vintage embroidered cloths**, thereby giving them a new life. This is ‘Hatchman-Turner Heirloom Quilt’ by Penelope Ringham.

This subtle quilt was made from wool tweed and suiting. It is called ‘The Tailors’ Zen Gardens’ and is by Mary Tully. I enjoyed its calm, restful appearance.

The photo below will give you a better idea of the surface texture of the piece.

I was struck by the use of fabrics in the quilt below, ‘The Blackberry Thief’ by Lynne Hargreaves. The blackberries are made from a white-spot-on-black fabric which is really effective. The cheeky blackbirds look very characterful.

The surface stitching was lovely too, as seen below.

This is ‘In the Botanical Garden’, my entry for the ‘Modern’ Category. It’s a semi-abstract interpretation of a visit to the Van Dusen Botanical Garden in Vancouver earlier this year. It is machine-pieced and machine-quilted.

And finally, this is a little quilt called ‘Keys to the Past’ which I entered in the ‘Miniature’ category. It is about memories: “The past always leaves some imprint, whether positive or negative”. It was created using rust-dyeing and is hand-quilted and hand-embroidered.

*I have been a Spoonflower artist since 2014. Spoonflower is a print on demand company based in the US. Spoonflower prints onto a number of different substrates including a cotton fabric that is very suitable for quilts. There are over a hundred fabric designs in my online studio. You can see them all, arranged into collections, on the website here

This is ‘White Dahlia:

** I have a quilt pattern for making a quilt from vintage tablecloths. It’s called ‘Forget-me-Not’ and you can find it here

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