We were delighted to be back as exhibitors at this year’s Festival of Quilts. For one reason and another it’s been a long time since we were at the show and it was so lovely to be back. Festival of Quilts always provides an opportunity to meet up with friends old and new and to chat with people we so often only connect with online.
We were there with a display of our work supported by Madeira Threads in celebration of the launch of their brand new thread Sensa Green. The space we had enabled us to show a collection of our smaller works. We also had a demonstration area where I spent the four days showing how I use digital stitch in my work.
Amelie came along for one day and was a brilliant help giving out our leaflets, postcards and the free Madeira pens. The pens, made from thread scraps were so popular!
Here’s how some of the work looked in the gallery area. You might have seen some of these before on the website or Instagram but it was the first chance we’d had to exhibit them and it was great to see how they all hung together.
I showed a poppy quilt, a couple of my teapots and some works from my This is Me series of silhouette heads. I’d not seen them hung together like this before so that was fun. You can see more of all our work on our websites:
Some of the pieces found their way to new homes which is wonderful! We’ll be adding those still available to our websites over the coming days.
Here’s my demonstration area. Our friends at Husqvarna Viking loaned us the beautiful Designer Ruby machine for the demo. I worked on a variety of examples all using digital stitch. You can read a bit more here.
Amelie worked on her hand embroidery for a while, but don’t be fooled by this photo. It didn’t last long, she would much rather chat to visitors and hand out the merchandise!
We were delighted to meet award-winning artists Olivier and Vendulka Battais. We had no idea that they had chosen us as two of the women who had inspired them and made a piece of work in our honour! Wow!
Here they both are standing in front of the piece they made featuring two mandalas, one to represent each of us. If you’re not familiar with their work do take a look here.
And I managed to find some time to catch up with Leah Higgins and listen to her demonstration on breakdown printing in the Creative Studio.
Leah is an expert on this technique so if you’re interested in giving it a try do check out her website and book. I left inspired to go and set up some screens!
And finally I’ll just leave you with this quilt which is by Danny Amazonas and is a complete masterpiece in applique! Let’s not underestimate the skill it takes to create an image in this way, and on this scale. I seem to be seeing octopus everywhere at the moment, and here was another!
Bye for now,
Laura
