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