Back from the UK Festival of Quilts

The Festival attracted record numbers of visitors and quilts from a record number of countries which is gratifying in these times.  Some absolutely fabulous quilts entered, wonderful exhibitions by international and local quilt artists and groups, plenty of excuses to spend money and I attended 10 lectures - all good.

My class with Elizabeth Barton was very good and although two days was very short it did preclude having to schlep a lot of materials and equipment along to work on something that was forced and would probably never be finished.  It was all about composition and in the two days we worked in paper and pencil on line, shape, value and finally colour.  We had to bring along a lot of images of fine art and quilts that we liked and also images that we would like to work with.  We traced, copied, chopped up and rearranged looking at possibilities and getting some understanding of the exercises.  On the last day when talking about colour we were asked to name the dominant colour that we would be working with.  I said that my photograph of a typical Dorset countryside scene of fence, golden wheat and blue sky had trapped me into being only able to see the colours in the picture - they were so powerful and typical/traditional - blue, yellow, green.  She immediately asked me what I had felt when I took the photo - why had I taken it? why had I brought it along and what did I feel looking at that photo now?  It was all about the emotional response and trying to get that across.  I have read before about things having to come from the heart and then they 'sing'.  Well, that put a completely different view on my interpretation of the piece - watch this space!

Other than that here is a picture of Rayna adding her mark to the cloth we had out for visitors to the CQ Coffee Morning to get involved with (even the NEC staff serving refreshments were drawn in to play!).  I actually met Rayna by accident on the first evening while I was running around trying to find Susan Shie.  We kept bumping into each other from then on and she always had a smile on her face.  I hope you had a good time, Rayna.  Her classroom wasn't ideal and she was a real trooper to soldier on.

 

Here's the finished cloth.  It was one of several activities and demos arranged at the Coffee Morning.
 

This is a picture of our Contemporary Quilt booth which we shared with another of the specialist groups of the Quilters' Guild - the Quilt Study group.  We had a small retrospective display of the four years our journal quilt project has been running showing how the format has changed each year and that the little quilts cover every technique, style, material, theme possible - and are very achievable.
 

And here is the wall of our Breakthrough quilts - sorry this is not the best picture but there are 42 quilts spread along a very long wall with a pillar in the way.  This faces onto the cafe area so can be appreciated by everyone while they sat and had their refreshment.  The quilts are from the last major challenge that CQ organised and which are featured in our first book/catalogue.  The next challenge is a new suitcase collection (Childhood Memories), then a fun challenge for the next year's CQ stand at Festival (still to be announced) followed by our major 10th Birthday Challenge for 2012.
 

Since coming home I have had to finish another quilt for Makower to take to a Quilt Market in Germany - and this is a long weekend here in the UK so my plan to post it in time on Monday was suddenly shot to pieces and had to catch the post yesterday lunch time.  Now I have to get quilts and files ready for Hever - a much loved quilt show in the grounds of Hever Castle, home of Anne Boleyn.  I'm off to hand over the things at Denbies Vineyard on Tuesday - does that bring back memories Rosie and Dianne?  There's an exhibition of journal quilts in Exeter at the end of the month and I have that second quilt and the pattern to write for Makower to finish - and there's that small matter of a quilt on Reflections to start...

Hilary