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.