Alicia Merrett Workshop and more blogging friends

The Quilt Museum in York currently has a great exhibition on until 3 July (well, 2 actually) and I arranged to go up and see it and to meet up with Sandra who blogs as The Dyer's Hand and a friend of hers, Penny, who I hadn't met before.  Luckily for me Sandra happened to mention that Alicia Merrett was running a workshop in the morning of our planned visit (today).  I contacted the Museum and was delighted to find that there were places available.  I could not believe that a two and a half hour workshop, including admission to the exhibition, was only going to cost me £10!!  If you live within travelling distance of the Quilt Museum it's worth checking out their website for workshops.  Even if you are not an actual quilter you can still acquire very useful skills for textile artwork.  

Our two and a half hours were packed with tuition from Alicia on the theme of ' Fine Line Magic'. Alicia's work includes quilts which look like beautiful aerial maps with suggestions of fields and demarcations. 

These fine curved lines that make up the walls, hedges, rivers etc in her work were the subject of our workshop.  The method for making these lines was surprisingly straightforward although my poor confused brain did struggle just a little as we were working fairly quickly. 

You'll have to excuse the rough edges but this is just a sample but you can see the general idea.  You can see that some of the lines are indeed very fine and narrow and with a little more finesse and thought there are many directions that I can take this technique.  I made a couple more samples and will be carrying on with these pieces to make a larger piece so I'll post about that when I get it done.  

Quite a few years ago, when I was painting regularly, I made a small watercolour painting based on a photograph in National Geographic of an aerial view of an island off the coast of Ireland.

I would love to turn this little painting into a textile piece and hopefully, with Alicia's helpful instructions, I may be able to realise that ambition........but not till I've finished my Festival of Quilts entry!   

After the workshop I met up with Sandra and Penny and had a lovely chat and catch up and then got treated to a demonstration by Alicia to reinforce the morning's workshop.  I also had the chance to look at the Breakthrough exhibition which was truly inspiring.  Similarly to the exhibition at Quiltfest in Wales of one half of the Breakthrough quilts (which had all been made by members of the Contemporary Quilt Group of the Quilters Guild) the quilts were accompanied by samples detailing how the quilts were made. This is such a valuable addition to an exhibition as the structure of a quilt is always fascinating.  Unfortunately the Quilt Museum doesn't allow photographs so I can't show you any details.  However you can see Sandra's Breakthrough quilt here and Tina Slipper's entry here. Cath Stonard had an amazing quilt titled Kisses on Concrete which really grabbed my imagination.  You need to see it close to to appreciate the texture in all the little 'kisses'.  Liz Drake's 'Chesil' caught my eye, as did Mags Ramsey's Bexhill Breakwaters (hope I've got that right). Mags has included a lot of detail on her blog of how she achieved her quilt.  There are so many beautiful quilts in this exhibition so do go and see it if you can.

Ok, enough blogging without pictures!  Look what I received in the post this week

This lovely mixed media postcard is from Emma who blogs as A Little Bit of Everything The postcard is on a paper base and includes fabric, woven ribbon, collage, printing, stamping and stitching.  Emma reaches the big Five-O in June and decided to offer to swap postcards with 50 bloggers.  She has been much quicker off the mark than me and I have to get busy and make my card for her now that I have received her card.  Every time I look at Emma's card I see something new.  It's a lovely card for my collection.  Thank you Emma. :o)