Place Your Bids by Email!

The annual 12 x 12 Exhibition is now on show at Midsomer Quilting, raising money for the local hospice, Dorothy House.  Entrance is free, and many of the quilts are for sale by auction.  Just to feast your eyes, here are two that aren't - Three Hares by Stephanie Brown...

... and The Mystery of Christmas by Justine North.

If you can't visit the exhibition but would like to make a bid, all the quilts that are up for auction can be viewed on Flickr, where you will find the email address.  Bids from abroad are welcome - just remember to bid in £ sterling!

Here is the Flickr link, which has been playing up a bit, so I am typing it out in full to try and avoid glitches.  Just copy and paste it into your internet search box if nothing works from here.

flickr.com/photos/112636268@N06/sets/72157673661160554

12 x 12 Exhibition At Midsomer Quilting

 

Realism in thread... the eyes are astonishing!  And slightly terrifying. 

 

This tiger is by Sue Harris, and is one of the 12 x 12 inch quilts on show at the exhibition at Midsomer Quilting.  The theme was poetry, verse or rhyme, and Sue chose The Tyger by William Blake.  "Tyger, tyger, burning bright..." is all I could remember.  I know a lot of first lines, and school was a long time ago.  However, having just read the poem, I had to take my hat off to Sue when I read "What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?"  Well, he is symmetrical, and Sue has framed him within 12 inches.

 

 

Equally enthralling is De Pickford's quilt illustrating Mending Wall by Robert Frost.  The delicate colours of the silver birches against the blue-grey background, the contrast with the stones of the wall, and the gently falling snowflakes all combine to create a still, calm and timeless scene.

 

The exhibition is on until 21st December, and Angela Knapp's amazing quilts are also still on show.  If you have the chance to visit, you still have a few days left.  I am hoping to make another trip there this week so I can place a bid on one of the quilts that are in the auction.  The trouble is, I still can't decide which one.



Flights of Fancy - Exhibition at Midsomer Quilting

Last week I visited Flights of Fancy, the exhibition of Angela Knapp's work at Midsomer Quilting, and was totally bowled over by her work.  She has combined her fascination with birds, her artistry, and her skills with needle and thread to produce a beautiful collection of pictures.  As depictions of birds they are incredibly accurate - I identified this peregrine falcon straight away.

This one foxed me, though, because I was thinking of British birds and I was thrown by the scale.  It is a humming bird, with subtle shades of blue, turquoise and rusty reds and browns.

Next to the visitors' book Angela had left her scrap book open, so as well as enjoying all the pictures, visitors could read facts about the birds and see how she had prepared each piece.  Also, Angela was on hand, working on her exhibit for the forthcoming 12 x 12 exhibition, so she showed me how she achieves such amazingly realistic effects. 

It was an absolute delight meeting Angela and seeing her work.  If you want to find out more about the exhibition, and read about her techniques, visit her blog at The Cary Made.  Or, better still, if you are able, visit the exhibition!

Free Motion Landscape - In the Fen Country

Finished within a week!  My first 12 x 12 quilt, which I have delivered today to Midsomer Quilting for their forthcoming exhibition.  

When I was at the shop some time ago and heard that the theme for the exhibition was music, I quailed; then it was suggested that I could start with the title of a piece of music and work from there.

A couple of weeks ago I did some serious thinking about choosing the music.  I knew I wanted to do a free motion landscape, and it would have to be an English landscape for the simple reason that I am totally familiar with the colours and the skies.  Therefore it had to be a piece by an English composer, and Vaughan Williams was top of my list.  Then I had to decide on which of his works to illustrate, and make sure the landscape was of the right part of the country.

In the end, I headed approximately 200 miles North East.  First of all I was thinking of the Norfolk Rhapsody.  This would mean a flat landscape (totally alien to me, I'm used to hills), which would need plenty of emphasis on the sky.  After bouncing around Youtube for ideas, I settled upon In the Fen Country.

This video was an absolute Godsend.  Not only did it give me the music, but a whole series of landscapes too - all very flat and wet.

The starting point was the horizon, with the church nestling in the trees.  If you watch the music video you should spot the picture that it is based on.

For the water in the foreground I changed the thread every now and again to give the shaded effect. All the threads are Gutermann Sulky Cotton 30 in variegated colours, and I used five or six different shades.

For the water in the reed bed I incorporated some green and brown tones.

To add interest in the sky there are hand stitched birds.  The three birds soaring high up look like buzzards - we often see them here, but I am not sure how common they are in East Anglia.  The flying geese just had to figure somewhere, and they fitted nicely into the space beneath the lower cloud.

For a day and a half it hung on the wall in the space usually occupied by the Flooded Fields landscape, above the 1949 Singer 15K hand machine that I used for putting on the binding.

I shall not see it again until the exhibition at Midsomer Quilting....

At the end of the exhibition it will go to a new owner after the auction in aid of Dorothy House.

Linking up with Nina Marie's blog Creations - Quilts, Art... Whatever for Off The Wall Friday
and Janet's blog Simply Pieced for TGIFF
and Amanda Jean's blog Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish It Up Friday
and Connie's blog Freemotion by the River for Linky Tuesday

A Finish, A Test Video, And A Show Coming Soon

Well in time for my daughter's birthday, the free motion quilted bedspread is finished at last! Here you can see approximately half of it.  I had to fling the quilt over two rickety wooden clothes racks which are standing on top of three dining chairs squeezed between the kitchen dresser and the fridge.  It measures 76 x 96 inches.  Taking pictures of a large quilt in a small house in poor light is a bit of a lark, so a picture of the whole quilt will have to wait until another day.

In the meantime, how about an artfully arranged shot of the folded quilt?  

Getting the binding on took most of the day, off and on, on Wednesday.

The binding is such a wonderful shade of pink, and the flowers and dots so pretty.

It was interesting seeing how the flowers on the binding would turn out at the corners - each corner has ended up looking slightly different.

Using so many different prints for the joining strips was fun too.  If I wasn't particularly keen on a print, or if I hadn't got enough to make a quilted panel, I used it for the joining strips.

All told, this has been an interesting quilt to make.  It is the first quilt I have made entirely with Singer 15Ks - the quilting all done on the 1945 treadle, and the joining and binding all done on the 1949 hand machine.  I have found out how much enjoyment can be had with lots of pretty girly prints, and what a lovely feel dress weight cotton poplins have once they are free motion quilted.  I have also found out that brushed cotton is an absolute pig to use for a backing - too much friction and not enough glide when quilting.

Another bit of fun was making a test video, to see if I can make some half decent quilting videos in the near future.  Here is the last bit of quilting I needed to do for this quilt, intentionally draining the camera batteries, which were about to go, and with my lovely patient husband squeezed in the corner of the sewing room to start the camera while I treadled.  Not a brilliant video, I know.  If you want to see a well made video, watch this one of Amy's, and give her a big cheer.  Ideally I want to balance the camera on my left shoulder, or strap it next to my ear.  It looks as though Amy has already perfected that rare skill, and can do the quilting at the same time.

Finally, great news about a show!

Midsomer Quilting are putting together an exhibition to be held at Radstock Museum, to run from Saturday 1st February to Saturday 31st May.  I visited their last exhibition in 2012, it was fabulous - so many gorgeous quilts!  This year I am really thrilled that my Queen's Diamond Jubilee Quilt will be given an airing there too.  

Yesterday I took a drive across a stretch of very wet Somerset to deliver the quilt for the show.  My friend Kate came with me, and we turned it into a proper trip, stopping off at a wonderful second hand book warehouse while we were out.  We took a route that I was fairly confident shouldn't be too wet, and on the way the roads were not too bad.  What a difference on the way home!  A localised downpour on already sodden ground can be pretty drastic.  Flood water was streaming off the fields across one section of road we had to drive down, and other roads were cut off... so all the pretty pictures I thought I would take on yesterday's jaunt just didn't happen.  I'm just grateful we made it home without too much drama.

Welcome to Sinead Mercier, the latest follower - thank you for joining! 

Linking up again to Sarah's blog Confessions of a Fabric Addict for Whoop Whoop Friday
and Julie's blog That's Sew Julie for TGIFF
and Nina Marie's blog Creations... Quilts, Art... Whatever for Off The Wall Friday
and Leah Day's blog for FMQ Friday

Update 3rd April 
Linking up today with Katy's blog The Littlest Thistle for Finish Along 2014.  This is the only finish I have managed this quarter out of the three I planned.  I'm pacing myself.

Quilt Pieced on the Frister and Rossmann Transverse Shuttle

I made this quilt for my daughter.  She likes pink and green.  It is a single sized quilt laid out on a double bed to show the border.  It was pieced on my Frister and Rossman Transverse shuttle - easy with the seam guide in place.  The method for this pattern is shown by Bonnie Hunter on her website Quiltville under the heading Sister's Choice.

For the border I did my own thing, separate blocks of strips.  Bonnie's instructions for borders involves laying the whole top out on the floor - completely impossible in a small house.

At the corners the strips cross over each other.  Feast your eyes on the mismatched seam.  
Every quilt should have its imperfections - it's all part of the charm.

It was long arm quilted by Midsomer Quilting, and because I was feeling particularly lazy they did the binding too.  They did a perfect job.

A Quilt in Memory of a Great-Grandmother - and Pieced on a Treadle

First and foremost, a big thank you to Bonnie Hunter at Quiltville who posted my video      "How to Treadle" on her blog yesterday.
I have been a big fan of Bonnie's for some time now and have her to thank for inspiring me to get quilting again after a gap of about 25 years.

Also, a big welcome to all the new followers who arrived yesterday - Rhonda D, JudyBL, Not Lucy, Marianne, Leeanne, bmoubray, sharon bull and Shena Boes. 

Now that so many of you have seen the video of the Serata treadle, here are photos of the quilt that I made as my first project using that machine.  I bought the machine in May last year, and once I had cleaned and oiled it I was ready to set to work.

The quilt top was made using material left by my sister-in-law's mother, who died nearly two years ago.  Pat was 89, a great-grandmother, and originally from Wisconsin.  She left the States in the late 1940's.  She married an Englishman and lived at various times in the Middle East and Africa because he worked for an oil company.  Eventually they settled in England, but she would visit her relatives in the States fairly regularly.  She was a tiny little lady, and never lost her big Wisconsin accent.

When Pat died my sister-in-law and I sorted through bags full of material that she had squirrelled away.  Some of the fabrics had come from the States - in fact I have recognised some of them on the slide shows on Bonnie's blog being used in her classes.  Pat loved green, so I had the challenge of making a quilt in her colours.  Fortunately she had yards of the neutral print that I used for the background, and I added a few matching colours from my own stash where needed.

All the piecing was done in strips, an ideal method with a treadle, and a great way to give the machine a good workout after years of lying idle.  To add length to the blocks, so I could get nine houses to fit the top of the bed with an even border all round, I hit on the idea of adding hedges.

The quilting was done on a long-arm machine at the quilt shop, Midsomer Quilting  They did a fabulous job, I was really pleased.  Then all I needed to do was the binding, which again I did on the treadle.

This was my fastest project ever - two months from start to finish - because I wanted to make sure it was ready for the next time I visited my brother and sister-in-law.  It looked perfect on their bed, and my sister-in-law was slightly emotional.  My brother liked it too, but he had to be told that it was a houses design.  He couldn't see them.  He thought it was just random patchwork.  Blokes.