Visitors' Choice at Icknield Quilters' Exhibition

'Giant Dahlia Quilt', Rose Corbett

I was delighted to sponsor the Visitors' Choice award at my quilt group's exhibition recently. Icknield Quilters have been meeting for thirty years now and this was celebrated this year with their pearl exhibition that was held at the Free Church in Letchworth Garden City on 21 May. The winner was announced at the July group meeting which was also the group's summer party meeting. There had been several recounts of the voting slips as it was such a close contest!

Winning the Visitors' Choice award is always a prestigious award to win and the quilt that gained the most votes was made by Rose Corbett and her 'Giant Dahlia Quilt'. Rose had raided her precious collection of oriental prints she'd been curating for over 20 years to make the quilt after being inspired by another version of this quilt she'd seen at a recent Mimram Quilters' Exhibition.

Rose had pieced and appliqued the bias strips using one of her vintage sewing machines, a Singer 201K. Although not the rarest of machines; Rose's machine, which was 'born' on 12 May 1936, was one of 20,000 registered that day, Rose describes it as an almost industrial machine, but built for the home and has used it on many different weight fabrics, not just for her patchwork.

Rose's Singer 201K machine

Rose quilted her dahlia quilt on her Janome Horizon 15000 with its bigger throat space. Each round of petals was quilted with a different quilting pattern.

Rose's prize was a bundle of ombre fabrics from Moda and she says a reverse applique Delft-style quilt design is calling to her to use them for. I can't wait to see it!

Joanna

Quercus Quilters Exhibition

It was nice to be able to visit a local quilt group's exhibition last weekend. Quercus Quilters are based in Sevenoaks in Kent and their biennial exhibition was held at Walthamstow Hall School in Sevenoaks on Saturday 26 March.

It was a beautiful spring day and the car park was pretty much full when we arrived mid morning; always a good sign.

There were over seventy quilts on display showcasing a mixture of styles together with some challenge quilts. Five traders were also there with their wares.

Here are a few of my favourites.

My personal favourites and the quilt voted as the Visitors' Choice was this stunning quilt by Helen Horobin. 

Called 'Meeting Point', it was her own simple design using striped fabrics in quarter square triangles. She had quilted the quilt in the ditch before adding decorative stitches from her Bernina along each stripe, with each stripe being individually quilted!

The group's 2019 challenge had been to create a 3D quilted piece and first place in the challenge went to Nicola Adamson with her gloriously textured lion and 'Roar. I loved him!

A few more quilts which caught my eye were 'Sunset' by Janine Pound. This quilt was made following a zoom workshop with Lisa Walton and featured blocks where all the pieces were fused with bondaweb before being freemotion quilted once all the blocks were joined together.

I also liked Barbara Taylor's 'Japanese Bowls' mini quilt, also made as a result of a zoom workshop with Lisa Walton.

'Feathered Stars' by Lyn Howell was a delicate traditional quilt.

And a final favourite was 'Singing the Blues' by Susan Fenn. This lovely quilt was mainly hand appliqued and quilted during lockdown. It featured many of her favourites things such as Willow pattern china and musical symbols of two sentimental songs.

 

So all in all a lovely visit to a small exhibition. Do visit these smaller group exhibitions as there are always a few gems to discover, and cake. There are always excellent cakes on offer!

Joanna