Great Northern Quilt Show, Harrogate

 

Although I couldn't attend the Great Northern Quilt Show to teach and demo this year, as the house move spilled over into my show prep time, we managed to get down to Harrogate for the day on Saturday.  I think this might be the first time I have been to the show as a visitor.  Certainly I've been demoing and teaching there at every show since 2001.  It was very enjoyable seeing the show from the other side of the table and having more time to look at the quilts.  Unfortunately I forgot to take my camera, so the photos I'm showing here have been taken by friends (don't know how I managed that!)


There were many wonderful quilts both in the competitions and the invited exhibitions, with Ferret's quilts in particular seeming like old friends after Quiltfest 2012, but the one that was the Overall Winner aka Best in Show was my friend Di Abram's latest sampler quilt.  The photo at the top shows her with the quilt - thanks very much to her husband Mike for sending the photos.  She scooped seven awards in all - Machine Quilting, Machine Applique, Sampler, Large Wallhanging, the Sue Belton Award (for Region 13 Guild members) and a Judge's Choice from Jane Rollason, as well as Overall Winner.  Wow!  Di's work is always exquisitely done, with perfectly selected fabrics for the project, very clean machine applique and loads of metallic threads (which always seem to have been on their best behaviour on her machine). Quilt as you go is one of her favourite techniques for her sampler quilts, but I like the way that Di always properly integrates the narrow sashing into the overall quilt design - there is another good example in my 'Compendium of Quilting Techniques' (aka '200 Quilting Tips Techniques and Trade Secrets), as her Celtic sampler is illustrated in the section about quilt as you go.  She really is a perfectionist in her work and it has paid off.

 

Here's a few details, from Fiona Garth's photo review on her blog -

 

Di contributed a three panel wall hanging to my 'Japanese Quilt Blocks to Mix and Match' book. Sorry I couldn't find a better photo of it, but this one shows it on the far left of the 'Kamon' section at Quiltfest last February.  You can see a much better image of it in the book of course - it is in the 'Inspiration Gallery' section at the start.

Glyn entered 'Welcome to Scotland' and 'Mission Impossible', winning a Judge's Merit for the latter.

 

I'll do a second post when I get some more photos, as there were two quilts made from patterns in my books, one using some of the kamon crests from the Japanese block books and the other incorporating the 'Irori' design from 'Japanese Quilt Inspirations'.  Next time I'll remember my camera!

To sash or not to sash - that is today's question!

There are a lot of blocks I made for "Japanese Taupe Quilt Blocks" that haven't been assembled into quilt tops yet. I plan to make sampler quilts from them, as I did with the blocks from "Japanese Quilt Blocks". The brown blocks (below) were made with the idea of a simple checkerboard sampler quilt, alternating patchwork and applique blocks in a checkerboard without sashing, as I did with the sashiko and patchwork blocks in the "Kasuri Sampler" quilt from the previous book. I am going to add a striped border too, using my favourite tsumugi striped cotton. The blocks are shown together in the diagram below.


The dark blue fabric in the kasuri quilt is the same dark blue tsumugi cotton in the sashiko blocks and the patchwork blocks, woven with a black warp and blue weft. Although the new quilt is closely coordinated, there are many more fabrics used. It might look better if I add sashing strips between the blocks, like this (mockup) -


The woven sashing effect is one of my favourites. I used it in the "Kamon Sampler" below and have used it again in the Kimono quilt on the cover of the forthcoming "Japanese Quilt Inspirations".


If I use a wide stripe instead of the ombre shaded fabric above, it should be possible to achieve a slightly 3-dimensional effect to the weave, like with the more convetionally pieced sashing on this sashiko sampler.


The tsumugi stripe I would use for the sashing is the same one used in the border on the "Hakone Yosegi Sampler" below.


What do you think? I could get the quilt basted and work on it during my trip to Australia too, handquilting of course.

New fabrics from Oakshott

No kimono photos today, as the exhibition is closed for the weekend and I have been quilting my "Land of the Rising Sun" entry. A big bag of fabrics and sample cards arrived in the post, from Oakshott, the people who make the lovely Indian shot cotton fabrics. I am working on a special project for them which will be available as a pattern (from Oakshott) to use with their fabrics. It will be part of a series of patchwork designs using their fabrics by popular quilt designers and will be a bag.


Oakshott's fabrics are the most gorgeous, glowing colours, thanks partly to their fantastic colour combinations, with different colours for the warp and weft, with a subtle sheen. They are a nice fine quality too, so they are easy to use with other patchwork fabrics. Their "Colourshott" range is perfect for use in place of plains, they add a wonderful depth of colour to any patchwork design. I used them for a number of blocks in "Japanese Quilt Blocks to Mix and Match", mostly for the mid blues in the kasuri style blocks and for the meisen silk designs, as well as some of the kimono block backgrounds. It would have been very difficult to achieve the look I wanted for the kasuri blocks without these fabrics, as I needed some comaratively vibrant blues to contrast with the dark blue tsumugi cotton from Euro Japan Links Limited.

Subtle transitions from one colour to another are easy to achieve with Oakshott's fabrics.

Great for contrast for this kimono block.

To make it even easier to colourscheme your project, they have produced fat eighth packs with around a dozen fabrics in each (some slightly more, some less), themed around the seasons. I think I'll use the "winter" colourscheme for the bag - icy blues, lilacs and pinks that have a hint of vintage kimono fabrics.

They are hand woven too!

Great Northern Quilt Show, Harrogate

I got home late last night after three days at the Great Northern Quilt Show at Harrogate. The show seems to have taken on a new lease of life this year, returning to the usual hall and with lots of really great entries. I wasn't judging, so I had a bit more time to set up my demo and sales stand, just as well with all the stuff I had taken! With a 4.5 metre frontage, I needed some help to cover it all, so my mum & friend Debbie from Gresford Craft Group gave me a hand every day.

I entered my Kasuri Sampler quilt (right) in the Large Wallhanging section, where it won a rosette - second or third, I'll have to check! My other quilts in the competition were "Dancing Colours" and "Oriental Log Cabin Sampler"(top),which won the Scrap Quilt award (these photos were taken before the quilt show).

The blocks for the Kasuri Sampler are all from my latest book, "Japanese Quilt Blocks to Mix and Match", here http://www.susanbriscoe.co.uk/japanquilts.htm Other quilts from the book are going on tour with Grosvenor Exhibitions next year, from September, so look out for them around the UK.

Tomorrow I'm doing the cutout photography for next year's sashiko book, "Japanese Sashiko Inspirations", with our photographer Karl Adamson, so there's lots to sort out for that, mostly vintage items from my collection that have been the design sources for the new project. Plus there's the car to unpack... lots to do!