Let the fun begin!

Day one of Festival is always a very early start because all the show workshop tutors get together and network ( ahem, eat croissant and drink coffee and chat....) then the countdown to the 10am opening starts, stand by your stalls..and we're off! Four whole days of quilts, quilts, shopping, chatting, more shopping, meeting old friends and making new ones.  Exhausting, but SO much fun!

Terry and I are on the stand for much of the time, but we had half an hour before the show opened to make a start on looking at the 1000 or so quilts on offer. Our first section:

The Guild Challenge

Open to all members of The Quilters' Guild and European Quilters' Guild, this year the theme was 'On the beach'. Over 40 quilts were entered and here a few which caught our eye:

First prize was awarded to 52 32'N 04 03W by Laura Kemshall.  It was huge and beautifully displayed on a specially built curved wall, which accentuated the panoramic view,

You could almost smell the sea, have your hair ruffled by the breeze and feel the sand between your toes.

Over 200 hours of quilting and embroidery went into its making before she printed a digital copy of her photograph over the entire surface.  A very modern whole cloth and so beautifully executed.

 

Walking on the beach is the title of Terry's quilt.  Inspired by a brisk beach walk on a clear day and the collection of interesting finds picked up along the way:

Rust from Lyme lands lips and Eastbourne's fishermen's beach, holed oyster shells and tatty feathers.

On the beach with Alice was my offering, using the silk and linen fabrics created on a recent workshop with Alice Fox inEastbourne.

 

Jane Appelbee's quilt Starry, starry night featured hand and sibori fabrics to great effect to portray a calm, bright, full-moonlit walk along the beach in north west Scotland.

Whilst Bob Dylan's 'Mr Tambourine Man' was the inspiration for Sandra Newton's Out to the windy beach. The text was beautifully done in fused appliqué, so neat, so effective.

Julia Gahagan's I love beach huts made us smile.  We love them, and if you do too then keep a look out for Julia's workshop for us next year.

Ebb and flow by Robbie Le Poidevin is a personal favourite.  I'd like to take it home!

Ann Beare was inspired by fond childhood memories of summer holidays playing amongst the grass covered sand dunes in Lancashire for her Memories of past times.

Kathy Unwin's On the beach used a different colour palette from most of the other enteries, as it explored the survival in a damaged environment.

Beached 1 was designed and sewn by Kate Dowty

Whilst Washed up was made by Shena Norquay.  Both explore the debris, natural or ma made, washed up on the shoreline.

Sarah White celebrated all things seaside with her On the beach quilt.

Elements, slices of the beach as a place of sanctuary and healing, allow Hilary Beattie to 'be there' when she can't actually visit.

The attention to detail is a joy.

We'll be off to explore more galleries and competition quilts again tomorrow as time permits, so don't forget to check back with us tomorrow.  Or even better, come and take a look for yourself, and drop by QIA14 to say hello to us!

 

Festival of Quilts 2016

Here we are once again at The Festival of Quilts, the largest show of its kind in Europe.  How could we not be here??  Wednesday was set up day so we left Hampshire bright and early to be up at the NEC, Birmingham before midday.  As you can see....

....we seemed to have packed everything, including the kitchen sink!  

Setting up for the show is quite daunting, everything gets piled up, moved about and eventually

finds its rightful place!  The new shelves (a rather clever Ikea hack!) are a useful addition to the stand and give us extra floor space, which given the size of the booth can only be a plus.

We've lots for sale: threads, fabric, kits and handmade books and this year they are joined by our own greetings cards ( blank, so suitable for any occassion 😉) and notebooks, both of which feature photographs of various quilts from both of us.

So, if you are planning a trip to the show this year, do be sure to stop by our stand, QIA14, and say hello!

Summer Colours no.4

Artichokes left to flower on the allotment. 

Summer colours no. 3

Homegrown beets for summer !

Summer colour 2

Freshly picked basil and a bowl of homegrown tomatoes = the taste of summer!

Seeing sound?

It's summer (honestly, it is!) so not only does that mean it's time for cotton dresses, sandles and Pims, but it's Festival season!  Having reach the grand ages of ** years I decided last year it was time to see what all the fuss was about and took myself off to Latitude 

- brilliant time, sunshine, pink sheep 

and plenty of music, all in a big field in Suffolk, dressed like a pixie...

So good I'm off again this year, but I just can't persuade Terry to join me: we have different musical tastes. And this got us thinking; what difference does the sounds we hear when we're sewing make to the stitch mark we make?  When we're teaching students to either hand quilt or free motion quilt we often suggest that listening to music will help the rhythm of the stitching but we've never really questioned how it could affect the mark made.

One textile artist who actively considers the effect of sounds on mark making is Debbie Lyddon, so we we were excited when she agreed to come and work with InStitches recently. Debbie, who is based in Surrey and Norfolk, says of her work 

'I am not only inspired by things that are seen but also by those that are heard and can be touched and I record objects, happenings, sounds and textures that I have noticed in the environment around me. I make mixed media cloths, sculptures, installations and drawings which originate from thoughts and memories that are a consequence of experiencing place and paying attention'

Although we wondered what on earth we had let ourselves in for when the she asked us to hold onto two ends of a piece of thread on which a wire coat hanger was suspended...and then stick our fingers in our ears - as you can see Terry's face sums it all up!

But do it for yourself....the results are quite surprising.  Before long we'd all moved out of the classroom and onto the veranda tapping and banging as we went.  The sounds were amazing!

Then Debbie herded us all back inside and we all took out a huge piece of paper and got busy recording the marks summoned up by the sounds we could hear.

Debbie played snatches of sounds she had recorded and asked us to mark make both while we listened and then from memory.  

We'd all been asked to bring in a found object to make a sound, so in turn our sounds were made and recorded visually...

Look at the photographs, can you guess the sounds which have been annotated?

Variation in pitch, beat, harmony....all can be visually recorded.

After lunch Debbie moved us from paper to stitch after discussing some of her own work with us.

Some broad marks made with ink or pastel were made onto firm artist canvas and heavy weight calico,  this was stable enough to hand stitch without a frame.

Aren't the stitch marks wonderful?  By keeping to neutral colours it allows the eye to focus on the stitch mark - can you hear the sound?

They may not resonate with you but to the maker the sight of the mark will recall the sound.

A small dash of red adds to the sound/ visual scape.

A long, drawn out note perhaps?

And here there is lightness and darkness?

Surely this one is mixed vibrations?!

By the end of the afternoon we had marked both paper and fabric, listened and stitched with intent and  when all our work was laid out, end to end, it was a symphony!

So the next time you turn on the radio, plug in your iPod, place a needle on a disc (I wonder- does anyone listen to 'vinyl' these days??)

maybe you'll be more mindful about your aural selection,

music or the spoken word? Take your pick and perhaps photograph your marks and email them to us!

It you would like to see more of Debbie Lyddon's work then visit her web site www.debbielyddon.co.uk 

Total decay!

Day 2 in the messy house proved to be even more fun than day one! Yesterday had been all about preparing surfaces and applying colour ( or not, seeing as we are working in shades of blue and black) but day two was all about layers and texture.

Christine showed us more simple, but amazingly effective, techniques and encouraged us to play, play play!

So we did!

Lunch?....do we have to stop? Really? Well okay, but then I'm back to work, layering, adding tissue, gel medium, India ink, spent procion dye, a quick rub with an oil pastel, a swish over with a baby wipe (don't know how effective they are on babies but they're marvellous in the art room!)

The atmosphere was electric, we were all just buzzing with creative energy, with Christine at the centre encouraging, prompting and demonstrating.  Terry had quite a job getting us all to stop long enough to drink tea and eat cake! 

Many of the processes and techniques can be directly transferred to fabric, but having the chance to work first on small cards meant you could try out many ideas and experiment with techniques, layers and processes without the worry or expense of involving fabric.  Indeed, Christine had encouraged us to stitch on the cards too.  In the image above the central blue card has been stitched with a perle before being layered with tissue paper, gel medium and washed with inks and dyes; just beautiful.

By the end of the afternoon we had all produced a collection of nearly 100 surface on 6x4 cards. When they were laid out on the (now tidy) tables they looked amazing - it quite took your breath away! 

The Poetry of Decay with Christine Chester was one of the most creative, electric and enjoyable courses I have ever been on.  Christine shook me up, turned me upside down, inside out and light my creative flame again - what more can you ask from a tutor? Thank you so much Christine, we look forward to welcoming you back to InStitches, when we shall be in our new studio!

If you would like to find out more about Christine and her textiles, visit her web site www.christinechester.com