MILLYPENNY

Had a very busy time at this year's Festival of Quilts. It all went by in flash, which was funny seeing as I was there for 5 days! There was lots of exhibitions and quilts to see, more than last year I though. And the standard of the entered quilts was extremely high this year. I finally get my act together to post some of my favourites from the show. I still have lots more photographs to upload, but thought I'd make a start on getting back to regular blogging. The Modern Quilt Category was interesting this year, with some really intriguing quilts. Like last year, there were a large number of quilts wrongly entered in this category, but I did enjoy these entrants much more than last year. Mini to Maxi Churn Dash by Abigail Sheridan De Graff Curled by Charlie Mankin

I have just submitted my online entry to the Dislocation Challenge. Dislocation is the theme for this year's Contemporary Quilt Group Challenge. Here's a detail shot of the quilt, will holding off showing the whole quilt for a while. I called my piece "In the Street Where I was Lost". When I was researching items on the theme of "Dislocation" I came across an article by Samuel Beckett in which he mentioned cultural dislocation, and being lost in the street of places that he used to know. So I was inspired by that idea when coming up with my quilt idea. Still have to add a sleeve and label, but that won't take too long. Now I have to go and make the sample of the quilt to send off as part of the jurying process.

I spent the weekend at the Festival of Quilts show. I'd never entered anything in the show before (despite saying every year to myself that I'd enter something the next year!), but this year I had one as part of a group quilt entry. Burren Rocks - my panel is the 3rd from the left. My favourite two exhibitions at the show was Pauline Burbridge's and the European Art Quilt one - no photo's were allowed though. I also had an entry selected for the EQA "Crossroads" Exhibit. I didn't know my piece was selected until I saw the exhibit, so that was a nice surprise. Here's the Irish exhibit of the "Crossroads" quilts.  EQA Crossroads Irish exhibit Scrap-Basket Crossing I now have loads of ideas about new quilts to make (and lots of new fabric too), but I really have to finish at least one UFO before I let myself start a new one! The UFO pile is growing bigger week by week.... Some of my favourite quilts at FoQ this year we...

My landmarks challenge for the  International Quilt Challenge is based on the stone walls in the Burren. I've recently finished making a quilt which is part of a group entry for this year's Festival of Quilts. After cutting my FoQ quilt to size I had a good few pieces of quilted fabric left-over, so I decided to incorporate them into my landmarks challenge (waste not, want not!) The left-over strips were satin-stitched together and I added a very thin binding to finish off the quilt.

Here a few photo's of quilts which caught my eye this year at Festival of Quilts. 4 Seasons by Ineke Berlyn (Contemporary Quilts Section). This was a really bright and cheery quilt. High Maintenance by Cherry Vernon-Harcout. This quilt was really clever in using the lines of an electricity pylon to create a quilt. I have loads of photographs of electricity pylons and transformers so this quilt really caught my attention. The Miniatures section this year was really interesting - a nice mixture of traditional and contemporary styles. I loved this one called "Untitled" by Linda Brassington - it was really simple and elegant. This quilt was amazing, log cabin style, but it was all knitted! "Double Delight" by Pauline Law, Kloof, South Africa. The piece in the catalogue says that it was hand-knitted and hand-quilted with thick thread and wool.

I did a two day masterclass with Jette Clover at the Festival of Quilts last week. Can't remember the exact name of the workshop now, but I think it was "layering with collage". Was really looking forward to this workshop as I love Jette's quilt and collages but I didn't find the workshop that useful. Jette was a lovely person but there was an awful lot of wasted time in the workshop. And I hate workshop lists that make you bring stuff you don't use! This photo shows 2 ATC-sized collages we had to make. At the start of class we had to pick a piece of paper from a bag. You then had to use the word written on the paper for the 2 days. I got "Heritage", which I wasn't too mad about working with. One of the mini-collages had to be about your word, while the 2nd one had to be the negative of it. This photo shows the 2 collage pieces I made, bit of a rush job as we only had about 2 hours to get these pieces done and sewn at the end of the 2nd da...

The EQA exhibition this year at the Festival of Quilts had nine different colour 12 inch squares from the EU countries. Ireland got the colour blue. The photo shows the Irish entry - my square is on the middle row on the left.

I took a 3-day "Paper Lamination" Masterclass at the Festival of Quilts with Sarah Welsby. We were in the Virtual Studio for the 1st two days which was interesting as the show was being put up around us - plenty of hammering and drilling noises taking place. I was a bit like a zombie for the 1st day which was caused by lack of sleep (hadnt slept for about 24hrs by the time I got there). Really enjoyed the workshop - I already had the Committed to Cloth Paper Lamination book but think that you had to see the process to really understand how it worked. In the workshop we made of paper lamination samples and Sarah also showed us how the paper laminations could be used as a screen which I think will prove to be very useful.

Finally got around to making the quilt top for the EQA "Colour Connections" Exhibition that will be shown at the Festival of Quilts. This year the member countries have to make a 15.7 x 15.7" (40x40cm) square piece. Each country got 1 colour and you were only allowed use up to 10% of another colour. Ireland and Austria got the colour blue, while the UK is Yellow. Only 9 quilts are chosen from each country, so I doubt if mine will get chosen as it was a last minute job (i.e. last night and this evening) but I just wanted to enter it. Just after sending off the entry form & photo to the Irish EQA rep. The piece is made up of hand-dyed blue fabric (left over from my City & Guilds final assessment quilt), ribbon yarn, a blue sweet wrapper, blue felt balls, organza, blue net bags (from fruit & veg). Luckily I have an embellisher machine which really speeds up adding the layers. Still have to attach a binding to the piece, but that won't take long. Might add a ...