The Festival of Quilts 2013

Another successful Festival of Quilts at Birmingham's N.E.C. with so much to see (and buy!).
My favourite displays this year were the Contemporary Quilt Group Challenge quilts and the travelling exhibition - Beneath the Southern Sky.
The Contemporary Quilt group Challenge was entitled "Horizons". Here are a few of my favourites.

 

The travelling exhibition "Beneath the Southern Sky"  featured the landscape and traditions of Australia and New Zealand. There is a web site for the exhibition if you want to see all the quilts, which is well  worth a look - www.beneathsouthernsky.com  

 

These are some of my favourites -

 

 

Cross Land and Sea by Jan Rowe

 

These remind me of the little penguins on Philip Island

 

 

 A Wilful Lavish land by June Buxton

 

 Together, Sharing this Great Land by Sandy Corry

 

 

 

 

Threads of Kata Tjuta by Christine Dowell

 

 

Isolation by Anne Jolly

 

Staircase to the Moon by Stephanie Knudsen

 

There were lots of other wonderful pieces - just too many to mention!

 

There were plenty of demonstrations to watch and the two which caught my eye were Transfer painting with Mary Gamester and Hilary Beattie's "preparing your palette"

I have tried transfer painting before but have never been happy with the results. However, the colours in Mary's work were much less garish than I have achieved before so I was temped and bought some of her transfer paints and her book - Transfer Painting.  I also bought the new book by Hilary Beattie - Book 1: Preparing Your Palette with lots of ideas for colouring, printing and mark making onto fabric. So lots to 'play' with when I get time. 

 

Gelli printing

I did treat myself to a Gelli printing plate at the West Midlands  Regional Day in June - so thought I had better have a go with it and see if it is really as good as the reviews say it is!

It certainly is easy to use and clean so does encourage you to get it out and have a go .
I used a selection of home made stamps, drawing directly onto the inked plate, commercial stamps, plastic doilies and lace to make the prints . I used acrylic paints with a bit of fabric medium for all the prints.

this print used home made stamps made from funky foam, wooden bird shapes from card making supplies, hand stitched flower stamp and a bit of drawing into the paint.

mainly mono printing - drawing into the paint with a plastic glue brush and a wooden flower stamp

A double print - end of a cork pressed into the paint on the first print. marks with a plastic glue spreader on the second print

The centre of the print is from a home made funky foam printing block. the flowers are from some wooden card making supplies.

 

 A print from a commercial rubbing block

Two prints using home made flower printing blocks - daisies cut from a mouse mat

print from a plastic doily - these proved really successful ( a charity shop buy that's definitely worth looking out for)

More plastic doily prints

 

A print from lace

 

The gelli plate is certainly easy to use. It makes a good print with some well defined detail and it cleans up really well. The only drawback is that it is only A4 size and with textiles, a larger print is often needed. I would definitely look out for the plastic doilies -they are great for printing.

Art In Action - Waterperry House

On Friday 19th July members of Solihull Embroiderers' Guild had a day out to Art in Action at Waterperry House. The weather was extremely kind to us - the sun shone all day. There was lots to see with just about every form of art and craft and performance art on display including music in the open air theatre, dance, painting, sculpture, ceramics, glass blowing, calligraphy, printing, metalwork and jewellery, textiles, woodwork ...... not to mention the beautiful gardens of Waterperry House, ( I didn't have time to visit those this year but will have to make time next year.

The painting marquee - lots of different styles to suit all tastes.

Weaving in the textiles marquee with Fiona Rutherford

Fabulous printed fabrics - note the many sunhats being used on this hot day!

Kate Wells artworks on paper with embroidery. Her use of black and white was very effective.

 

There were lots of demonstrations to catch your attention. These two were in the metal work marquee

In the Wood Working Marquee

Some of the wood carvings were amazing

Making musical instruments

 Print making - This was a print by Vladimir Vorobiev showing very fine detailing

 

My favourite printmaker was Laura Boswell who was demonstrating Japanese woodblock printing. I was so busy watching that I didn't take any photos, but I did buy some of her cards

 

 

I also bought these cards from Wendy Dolan, another of my favourite textile artists

 

 

 

and this black and white card from Kate Wells.

 

This was a lovely landscape by Carol Griffin - vitreous enamel on copper.

 

Memories by Julie Heston incorporated silk painting and heavy machine embroidery to produce this colourful 3D piece

 

Harriet Riddell was a 'performance machine embroiderer' in the Newcomers Marquee. Her work was very lively and slightly quirky. She would stich your portrait in about 15 minutes. Certainly a name to watch out for. if you want to see more of her work go to INSTITCHYOU.CO.UK

I loved these metal work brooches by Becky Crow. Each one told its own story .

 

It was a great day out. congratulations to Waterperry for putting on such a fantastic display and looking after everyone so well on such a hot day (the jugs of free water available everywhere were much appreciated)