It was lovely to welcome Penny Armitage to the April meeting of Flowerpatch Quilters. This was a return visit for Penny and she had lots of new work to show us. Penny is much inspired by the beautiful countryside around her home in North Devon and by her love of flowers.
This is a picture of 3 dimensional flowers in a vase which Penny sewed many years ago.
Beautiful 3 dimensional flowers appear in many of her quilts.
Penny loves to take part in various challenges many of which involve the making of small wall quilts. These two are for "Your place or mine?"
And these mini quilts show three different seasons.
This is one of Penny's latest pieces of work and the one she is most pleased with,and excited about, at present.
It is eco-dyed using hedgerow leaves and has more printed leaves, flowers and berries applied, along with recipes and names. It is delightful - a labour of love.
It was great to see such a diversity of quilts spanning many sewing years.
During her talk Penny quoted this saying by Joseph Chilton Pearce "To live a creative life we must lose our fear of being wrong". How very true ..... and yet very hard to do!
Thank you Penny for another lovely evening.
You can see quilts from Penny's previous visit here - my very first blog post.
The next Flowerpatch meeting is on 9th May when we will be joined by Parkhouse Quilters of Bude, who will be doing a "show and tell" to entertain us. Such a talented group of ladies - it will be brilliant ....... and I do believe there's cake!!
Happy Sewing
Anita x
I love visiting the Spring Quilt Festival in Exeter. I'm not much of a shopper, but the range of goodies on the numerous stalls is fantastic. I go mostly to see the quilts and this year there were some gems.
Firstly two quilts that I love for their colour.
This is "Upstairs Downstairs" by Marlene Chaffey
and a detail to show the twin needle cross hatch quilting in the border - a great idea.
This is by Christine Badger - a simple looking quilt made extra special by the choice of fabric and its placement.
I was much amused by another wall quilt by Christine called "Happiness is ... we all like to chat".
This was entered in the South West Quilters challenge "Happiness is ..." and another appealing entry was by Annie Yeo - "Happiness is ... a Snuggle". We all need plenty of these!
Lynette Anderson designs are always charming and this one is "My Country Cottage" made by Jeanette Cox. What a super combination of applique and pieced blocks.
Radiance Quilters - a group who quilt with longarm machines, created beautiful work using ice dyed fabric (I am yet to look this up to see what it entails!). All these 4 are about 24" square and are by Annelize Littlefair, Heidi Simkin, Roz Rossiter and Lynda Jackson.
Kate Andre was running a workshop on printing on fabric and I love these two unfinished pieces that she had as samples. They are very reminiscent of the copperplate printing of Rebecca Vincent - a favourite artist of mine.
Joan Dawson used lots of different techniques, including Inktense pencils, to create "Pebbles on the Beach". This was inspired by the beach at Lyme Regis.
This detail shows the painting of the sky, sea and pebbles combined with lots of quilting to make the surface texture.
Jean Stetson had some beautiful applique quilts in the exhibition and here are a few examples of the blocks in her quilts:
All the above are hand appliqued and hand quilted.
This beautiful work by Karen Lane is called "Summer in the Garden" and is a lovely combination of applique and embroidery.
And finally this is a triptych (each one is A4 size) by Penny Armitage for the Exe Valley Contemporary Quilt Group Challenge - "Tree Time" depicting the same tree in three seasons.
All in all a thoroughly enjoyable day out.
Happy stitching - Anita x
