On my travels

I'm in England for a few days and managed to fit in a short visit to The Bramble Patch near Northampton.  Hilary Beattie and Jennie Rolfe have an exhibition there until April 11th, and the other half of the workshop space is hosting an exhibition by the Contemporary Quilt Group called 'Dislocations'.

This was my favourite piece by Jenny.

We have a similar 'jug' panel (above) by Hilary to the one she showed below - a piece she donated to the 'Unfinisheds' fundraiser at Festival of Quilts last year.

There is a catalogue of Hilary and Jenny's work, which comes with a selection of postcards, including one of Hilary's panel below (another favourite of mine) - it is one of a group of three.

 

 

More work by Jenny.

 

Some of the Contemporary Quilt Group exhibition - 

These were accompanied by artists' statements and samples in folders.

 

 

 

 

 

After the exhibition, I continued for last night's talk at Cromwell Quilters at Brampton, followed by my 'Sashiko for Summer' workshop today.

Irene, who blogs as 'Quilterosity', included some photos of my talk on her blog - click here and scroll down to see her post.

Tomorrow, I'm starting a two day sashiko course at Tudor Rose Patchwork near Bedford, so I'll post some of the student's work there in a day or two.

UPDATE - I had a lovely time at Tudor Rose, but everyone got so absorbed in their patchwork, I didn't get a chance to take any photos!  Maybe some of my students there will send me photos of their finished projects?

New Lanark quilts and tapestry - Part 1

Yesterday we went to New Lanark for the first time.  Debbie was up from Wales visiting her family in Glasgow and it was the ideal spot to meet up. The eighteenth century former cotton mills have been converted to various uses, including exhibition spaces, and at the moment there are two exhibitions - quilts from Riverside Quilters, which continues until November 1st,  and The Great Tapestry of Scotland, showing until November 23rd (more about that in my next post)

 

 

Riverside Quilters are a group who have met through doing quilt retreats at New Lanark and were asked if they would like to show their work.  There was a variety of different styles and designs on show.   This panel uses designs from my 'Japanese Quilt Blocks to Mix and Match' kamon crests.

I spotted this Euro Japan Links design by Misako Kamogawa - rather familiar because I wrote the pattern for it!

This is the lovely colourwash quilt that appeared in the first photo.

My favourites were some of the smaller pieces - sadly neither the church nor the plaid houses were for sale.

This piece was started in a workshop with Pat Archibald.

Around the exhibition.

There was also an interesting antique coverlet and quilt on show.  The coverlet has some lovely turkey red prints in it.  The triangle square arrangements for the 'twist' border are unusual.

It was obviously never intended to be backed or quilted, as each raw edge was carefully whip stitched.

The quilt had diagonal lines of crossed squares, similar to some Cumbrian quilts I've seen, and was quilted in 'waves' or zigzags.

A simple but effective design.

The brown and black prints hadn't survived well - most likely there was iron in the dye mordants.

It had a traditional 'knife edge' i.e. no binding and the edges turned in.

A laundry mark on the back?

The quilting shows up better on the plain back.

Beside the River Clyde, source of the mills' power. 

A yarn installation running through metal eyes on the way to the mills' gift shop.

The mill shops included a wool shop, where they sell wool spun at one of the mills.  Glyn spotted some large hanks in a basket, rather reasonably priced for 90% wool, 10% silk blends, so I've got another jumper to knit - this one will feature cables for the main design.

After lunch, we saw the Great Tapestry of Scotland - but that deserves a whole post of its own!