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
Yet again another super evening meeting at Flowerpatch Quilters. We're very lucky to have such talented quilters here in the west of England who most generously share their work and experience with us. This month we welcomed Susan Denton from West Cornwall, who treated us to a screening of some photos of her travels and the quilts that they inspired, a number of which she brought along to show us.
Susan said that she started quilting 40 years ago, wanting to interpret the many wonderful sights that she was seeing on her travels both here and abroad; and also to satisfy her creative love of colour ....... and stitch.
Most of her works are machine pieced with hand applique and a mixture of machine and hand quilting. I feel that I must be disappointing you with my photos of such small sections of Susan's quilts, but it is her use of stitch that made the most impression on me - the way that she doesn't just quilt in lines on the quilt, but also does cross stitches, adding both extra colour and form.
Another of her ideas (of which there are many) was in designing a block for a quilt which she repeats, but with added or subtracted elements as the mood takes her. Being patchworkers we all love repetition and this seemed like an ideal starting point to stimulate, and not stifle, creativity.
Being an avid vegetable grower I was delighted to see her three quilts showing watering cans, scarecrows, and rhubarb forcers. I love Susan's bold use of colour and pattern.
A favourite quilt which I saw many years ago is the washing on a line in the Highlands of Scotland. After seeing this I had a whole year of making mini quilts with washing in a garden, hanging on the line and blowing in the wind!!
Thank you, Susan, for a lovely and engrossing evening.
Do Google, bing or pinterest Susan Denton to see some pics of complete quilts.
After seeing all that lovely bold stitching I feel another page idea forming for my "Love to Stitch" book!
The next Flowerpatch meeting is on 11th April when the speaker will be Penny Armitage - another talented local quilter.
Happy stitching - Anita x
I have two baskets of small fabric scraps in my sewing room. One contains all the blues, purples, pinks and reds; while the other holds everything else. I decided to pull out some of the fabrics from the "everything else" basket many of which were old favourites that I couldn't bear to part with despite their diminutive size. My challenge was to make something from just these fabrics with no additions allowed. What joy that in the basket I found a strip of green fabric printed with little houses.
This is the result:
I had been reading a quilt book by Colleen Wise called "Casting Shadows" and tried to create the effect, but with limited success because of my "no additions" rule. You may be able to see what I mean in the following pics.
This is after piecing - can you see the dark line is supposed to be the shadow of the green square?
I think it shows a bit better now that I've quilted around the green square, both inside and outside, and around the little house square, which also has a shadow.
And in this pic I've stipple quilted all over the background including the shadows.
Colleen chooses her shadow fabric very carefully to be a darker shade of the background fabric - mine's a bit of a hotch potch!!
I definitely needed the practise with free motion machine stippling, and just occasionally I felt relaxed enough to enjoy the process.
This is a link to the method that I used to make up the cushion ........ Making a Basic Cushion
The back of the cushion is a piece of curtaining that I had left over. I sewed a strip of the lovely little house fabric along an edge of one half of the backing.
One final look as it didn't turn out too badly ....
Happy Sewing
Anita x
As anticipated the February meeting of Flowerpatch Quilters was a delightful trip around the south west coast of England in the company of Brenda Thomas and her wonderful wall quilts.
I had seen Brenda's quilts at many of the major exhibitions, often sporting a rosette or complimentary judge's comment, and it was so lovely to see them all and hear from her own lips the inspiration behind them and techniques that she uses in their making.
This is "Layers of Polperro" which is the first quilt that Brenda entered into an exhibition.
Brenda said that she started creating her very first quilt using free fabric (mostly furnishing) in case it all went wrong! She needn't have worried as it was lovely! Nevertheless she has continued to use all manner of different fabrics in her hangings and not just the more usual cottons. She tried out many methods to sew around and on her applique pieces, including using stitches on her sewing machine that we all think we'll never have a need for.
Brenda started by sewing a binding to her pictures to finish the edges, but now simply "bags" them (right sides together and sew all the way around, then turn the right way through a slit cut in the backing which is hidden by the sleeve), or she adds a facing. I really like the way that the houses, etc extend right to the edge.
This is a link to Victoria's tutorial on facing a quilt.
This mini below is only A4 size but all the detail is super - it's looking out of a window towards the harbour.
Brenda is renowned for her coastal scenes as above, but she also does other more abstract work and I love this sunset over the sea.
Brenda is doing a two day workshop at Cowslip on 28th and 29th March 2019 and there may be places available should you be interested.
Thank you Brenda for sharing all your work. We had a great evening and I'm sure there's many a scene being designed by Flowerpatch members even as I write - so very inspiring.
You can see more of Brenda's quilts in my previous posts:
Spring Quilt Festival
West Country Quilt Show
and Quilt Festival in Exeter
Our next meeting is on 14th March 2019 when we will be joined by Susan Denton.
Happy Stitching - Anita x
The start of a new year sees Flowerpatch Quilters beavering away at their sewing to get the blocks of the next charity quilt finished and ready to sew together. Our quilt this year will be raising money for the Cornwall Air Ambulance - so vital in this rural area.
This year's double quilt is called Colour Treat as many of the designs used in the blocks come from the book "Dutch Treat" by Judy Garden. Her applique squares are inspired by Delft tile designs.
We used many bright colours in the making of our blocks rather than the usual blue.
The apple and pear are our own creations.
If you'd like to use the designs yourself this is a link to a printer friendly copy - Apple and Pear
We also sewed the simple heart in a circle which we used when practising the applique technique at our September meeting.
Our applique blocks will alternate with ninepatch blocks in the finished quilt. These have been made up with 2½" squares of calico and neutrals.
Finally I must mention the amazing quilt by Annelize Littlefair which was the real inspiration to make this charity quilt in so many lovely colours. It's called "Journey". There is a picture on my previous blog post, but it in no way does the quilt justice.
I look forward to showing you the completed quilt in a few weeks time.
Our next Flowerpatch meeting is on 14th February 2019 when Brenda Thomas will be talking about her quilts of our coastal villages .... and much more. This will be such a joy.
Happy Stitching - Anita x
Christmas, a special birthday and New Year rather got in the way of me doing the latest Curated Quilts challenge. In actual fact I didn't even get started until the beginning of 2019 and entries had to be linked by the 2nd of January. Nevertheless I do like a challenge and the colours specified were well outside my comfort zone. Part of the challenge for me is to try and use them all. Also the challenge was curved piecing - something I'd like to do more of, so I couldn't resist having a go.
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| 12" x 12" |
I have been dithering for some time as to whether or not to write this post as I'm not happy with the result of my efforts, but it's interesting to try and figure out the reason. I think that it's simply the colour combination doesn't appeal to me. Maybe that's always the case when we look at quilts and really the one's we like are just made in our favourite colours, the actual design plays second fiddle.
This is a link to the Curated Quilts website where you can view all the mini quilts that were entered. Do go along and try to pick out your favourite. Much harder - try to decide why you like it!
Happy Sewing - Anita x
