FOQ again

The week is tearing by and the FOQ is already fading rapidly into the past and I still have loads to show you! The Show was a great experience as ever and I spent more time than usual this year chatting to friends both from real life and from the great world of blogging.

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You have already seen this photo above but if you check out the lady on the far left you will see Mai-Britt Axelsen who blogs as Linen and Silk and who won first prize for her Miniature Quilt and Judges' Choice for her entry "Another Thin Blue Line" in the Art Quilt category. Mai-Britt's quilts are exquisite with a beautiful stitched surface. I first met Mai-Britt by chance last year when I was admiring her entry in that exhibition and it was lovely to see her again on the Little Gems Tombola. Mai-Britt was justifiably floating on air everytime I saw her during the Show and it was lovely to see her again, and so happy!

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As well as bumping into several friends from home I also met up with Gina and my teacher from home who blogs as Fenland Textile Studio and who gave me a very welcome cup of tea while on her lunch at the Children's Workshops. I went along to see Marlis at the SAQA stand to find her really busy. It is well worth looking at her blog for her FOQ report as she has highlighted some beautiful work. Unfortunately I didn't manage to hook up with Maggi, but her quilt justifiably won Judges' Choice. Maggi's blog has a good selection of quilts at the FOQ too.

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As you might expect there were all manner of quilts on display. Many attracted close scrutiny :

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These ladies were fully engrossed in examining this unique quilt by Victoria McHugh. The buttons were mostly sewn onto backing strips and were beautiful Mother of Pearl.

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The quilt above was a wonderful mixed media work by Maria Mauel entitled 'Labels'. It was a "mixed media assembly of found objects and ephemera influenced by traditional English and crazy patchwork techniques'. The surface of the quilt was full of interest as you can see below.

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Other quilts were startling and surprising!
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This quilt above had several people, including me, looking startled when the cord was pulled and it turned round! The quilt was warm colours on one side and cool on the other with a beautifully stitched surface to each panel. For my sins the name of the artist has disappeared from my brain, although it is somebody well known. (Silly me! It is of course C June Barnes! Oops!)

FOQ 4

Other quilts that caught my eye were:

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Grietje van der Veen's very textural "Diving For Pearls".
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It's detailed surface includes applique, hand embroidery, knotted fabric balls and machine quilting. [n.b. added 27 August 10.20am My catalogue note was Fantastic! Texture! and I love all the detail but I was too tired to write any more when I put this post up last night :-) and I've since found a link to Grietje]

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This triptych below is by Jane Attwood and was inspired by the Jurassic Coast in Dorset, especially the colours and textures of the beach and fossil cliffs'.

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The piece below is by Jacqui Cotterill and is titled 'Green Bay'. It is 'a colour study of sea and sky in the Scilly Isles with ripples and textures from water and island'.

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Click on all images for a closer look.

FOQ 5

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This is Patricia McCurdy's Growing which 'interprets images and marks of self on the sand and represents a journey that is both historical and progresssive'. And the centre figure is very tall!

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Here is a detail:
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Below is Gillian Travis's Baltic Mittens which resulted from travels to Lithuania, LAtvia, Estonia and Finland. They were made using a variety of techniques including fabric painting, screen printing, quilting, hand and machine embroidery. (Hopefully I have linked to the correct Gillian Travis!)

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And a detail

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Help needed

Anna who blogs as Serendipity is asking for help to track down a paper pattern. Please click on this link to see if you can help her. Many thanks :-)

Festival of Quilts

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Put the flags out! The girls are coming!! (not forgetting a few guys too!)
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They certainly did. This is the queue 10 to 10 on Saturday morning.
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And this is the rest of it steadily getting longer behind me!! Actually, once they opened the doors at 10 we were all inside in a matter of minutes. Thank goodness I had bought my ticket in advance!

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Recession? What recession? There may be a recession on but the atmosphere at the FOQ was definitely upbeat and temptation and weak-will were everywhere (including yours truly!).

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This year I decided to try and spread the load and stayed overnight from Friday to Saturday. I stayed at the Premier Inn on the Birmingham NEC site which I can recommend (no affiliation). It cost a bit more than I expected to pay but boy, was the bed comfy! ! After a long day it was a very welcome oasis of calm (well in my room anyway, I didn't venture into the public rooms).
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I travelled across to the NEC by train on Friday and the worst part of that was the
l o n g walk to the NEC via the Skywalk which used up my precious energy but apart from that it went well. Bag in the cloakroom and I was ready for action! Phew! So much colour and so many people! I had to stop tho as soon as I walked into the Hall as I bumped straight into 2 friends from home! How likely is that? A bit of a chat and I was off!

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FOQ 2

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Quite early on in the afternoon I went to the tombola run by the Contemporary quilt Group and was lucky enough to win a quilt.

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This little quilt was first machine pieced as a quilt top and then hand sewn. Unfortunately the maker preferred to remain anonymous but I am pleased to have won it. (The colour's a little out in my photo, sorry).

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On Saturday I went back for another crack and won this festive quilt which is entitled "Looking forward to family celebrations" by Stitch by Stitch from Port Talbot. Are you out there, Stitch by Stitch? It's a lovely quilt and will be a great addition to our Christmas decorations. (Oops! sorry for the "C" word in August!)

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I spent a while looking at the Art Quilts (more of which later) before going to find Sandra who I have met while blogging and IRL. Sandra was busy on the Little Gems tombola and before I knew it I had volunteered myself to help fold tickets for the next day. Sandra and I spent a lovely evening in the company of some of her friends having a meal at their hotel. Mind you, we nearly didn't find it! Some fool ;-) had put a load of scaffolding round it and taken all the signs down so we couldn't tell it was a hotel. We nearly ended up in the middle of Birmingham with no dinner! Fortunately by the time we turned round and came back for a second look we spotted a small sign. It kept us laughing anyway! :-) I have to thank Sandra and her friends for making me so welcome :-)
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By the time we had had a leisurely meal and re-found our own hotel, (as Sandra tried to drive, with me frantically looking out for signposts and shouting,"straight on!, turn here!, keep going round!") we were exhausted and ready to fall into bed. Hysterical laughter wasn't far away. Actually, as exhausted as I was, I chilled out watching the Corrie repeat and then slept like a log!

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If you click the link to Sandra's blog you will see some of the detail of her Quilt Creation which I have shown below. It is titled "Wildwood -A Story of Life and Death". The pages of the book are partially see through to give a feeling of light showing through the trees as Sandra explains in her blog. I apologise to Sandra if my colours are a bit out but the light made photography really tricky at the show.

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I have many more photos of the show itself but have not uploaded all of them yet so I'll come back to the quilts later.

FOQ Confessions and ALQS

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Right, let's get the guilty bit out of the way! As is usually the way with these things I din't have a long shopping list but I did invest in quite a bit of shopping, not all of which I've photographed.

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I had been planning to buy the Surface Design Association DVD of demonstrations so that found its way to my bag along with a couple of magazines and a pack of postcards from Sheena Norquay whose work I have admired for some time. Sheena had a stand showing a retrospective of her work and it was wonderful to see it grouped together. 'Net references to Sheena are sparse but if you Google her and select 'images' you will find several links.
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Next up in the shopping stakes was a very little fabric and some threads.

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The threads above were from De Haviland Embroidery and were £2 each so I will be interested to see how they fare.

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These gorgeous threads were irresistible! They are all hand-dyed and the range of colours was fabulous!

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By far my greatest expense was at the Virtual Studio run by Committed to Cloth. I had been thinking of buying some thermofax screens and inks for some time and decided it was now or never! I invested in their new book "Screen Printing" too. Just one mistake, I bought it all early on Saturday and had to carry it round all day. By the time I arrived home (having linked up with my local coach that I was booked on) I was so exhausted I had to ring my long-suffering DH and ask him to walk down the road to meet me and carry my bag and pull case home! I couldn't have walked up the hill home without him! Bless!

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I was enlivened a little when I got home by the arrival of this beautiful quilt from Marloes in the Netherlands from the 'Another Little Quilt Swap'. It's beautiful and there's so much to look at in it.

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The quilt measures 21"x22" and incorporates layered and cut back fabrics, applique and printed figures, dyeing and screen printing. I'm going to find a place to hang it once I've bought a hanging rail. Thank you Marloes!
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Right, I'm off to dish up dinner. I'll post more about the quilts themselves soon.

Images of London

We've just had a really great weekend in London with the friends we went on the Norway holiday with. London in August is heaving with tourists so us country bumpkins found it a bit hectic lol! Our first priority of the weekend was for my DH and his friend to go on the London Eye which they thoroughly enjoyed.

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My DH will shortly have a great selection of photos of the experience on his blog and he'll no doubt be posting plenty about London so I won't fill up this blog with too many.

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I hadn't realised that St Stephen's Tower which houses Big Ben has glass all down its facades until I saw it glinting in the sun on Saturday.

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This beautiful reflection is of Westminster Catholic Cathedral which is just off Victoria Street.

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On Sunday morning we went for a walk from our hotel to Hyde Park via Belgravia and on the way I noticed these shapes on the pavement. These, and several other plainer versions, were, I believe, coal delivery shute covers and the patterns will be appearing in some artwork in the future I'm sure! Having seen the Wikipedia link I think I shall have to go back again to photograph some more!

Serpentine Gallery Pavilion

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Our reason for going to Hyde Park was to see the Serpentine Pavilion which has been designed by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa and which will only be there until 18 October. We had a lovely walk through the quiet back streets from our hotel and through Hyde Park which was alive with day 2 of a Triathlon event and the walk was worth the effort.

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The Pavilion is a beautiful structure and the reflections and distortions in the roof are fascinating.
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You should click on these images to enlarge them to see the full effect of the reflections.

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Serpentine Gallery Pavilion II

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This pavilion is well worth a look if you are in London this summer.

Exhibition in Newark Notts

This is another of those posts where I don't have many photographs as I wasn't sure whether I was allowed. However, I thought I would flag up a double exhibition that's on in Newark Nottinghamshire UK at the Millgate Museum.

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My friend and I had gone to see an exhibition by a group called Cinnebar who are based in the Midlands but before we reached their show we found an exhibition by Sneinton Artists in the Coffee Bar. Sneinton Artists hail from Nottingham and include many talented members in their number. Flickr have an album of their work here . I was particularly struck by the paintings of Daniel Rose which were exquisite and vividly realistic. Many of the artists in the flickr file had work on display at Newark including Jane Marrows whose workshop I attended some time ago, Amanda Davison who had some beautiful and definitely underpriced jewellery, and Carol Bates who works in mixed media.

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Upstairs in the Mezzanine Gallery 'Cinnebar' had a really beautiful and varied exhibition which had the title "Bordering on the Middle" and explored places the group had been on holiday, notably Northumberland. The works on display were of a very high standard and the stitching was beautiful. The works incorporated painting, dyeing and print with stitch and included 3 D pieces too.

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The work above is based on felt and is based around Boulmer Beach in Northumberland. It describes the beautiful colours in the water and the many limpets which litter the beach. The artist is Julie Williams.

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The piece above is very obviously about Silver Birch trees but its execution was intriguing. The artist has employed dyeing, paint and stitch to descibe these magical trees. I personally love Silver Birch trees for their beautiful bark and delicate foliage. The light around Silver Birch seems to me to have a magical quality and the foliage makes a lovely sound in the breeze. One of these days I will get round to exploring these trees creatively! The artist is Francine Wilkins and all her work in the exhibition is beautifully detailed and shows a high level of expertise and is beautifully stitched. From a viewing distance the stitch is barely visible.

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This is an excellent exhibition if you live within reach of Newark and I found it quite inspirational. It continues until 20 September. You can see more images from the exhibition on Liz Welch's blog which is also a treat in itself.

Sari Sister

A few days ago I had a lovely surprise through the post. Anneli, who blogs as Bockfilz, had told me that she wanted to send me one of her Sari Sisters that she had been making recently and this pretty package arrived before the weekend.

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Anneli had taken the trouble to decorate the envelope and the Austrian stamps are really beautiful and will be going into my stash. The card is made of handmade paper and you can still see some printed words here and there.

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The star of the show is this wonderful Sari Sister who makes me smile everytime I look at her. The limbs are poseable and the head is made from a large button. Isn't she grea\t? Thank you Anneli for such a lovely kind thought :-)