Category Archives: Blog

Quilt exhibition

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For those who aren’t quilters, skip this post now, lol

This exhibition is massive over 20 different venues spread over 4 villages, I only managed to do 3 villages and not all exhibitions, due to my late start.
It was interesting that the Europeans tend to focus on design and not execution, their designs were fabulous but some of the execution was not quite to how we would do it, there were a few Australian quilts and they were densely quilted, like we do, compared to the European ones, although the photos of the ones I liked were well quilted.
 

 

There were lots of mono printed fabric or painted fabric, and a variety of textures used.

These couple of quilts below, are made from wool felt, and stitched by hand! They were massive

There were lots of this Yoko Saito quilt by French women, the one above is Yokos and the couple below were just two of the many variations

Here is a Kaffe Fasset one, lol

I will post more soon

Journeys

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Before we left home I had booked flights, accommodation and a rental car to fly from a Nice to Strasbourg to attend the European patchwork and quilting exhibition for one day. Air France decided to go on strike this week, good on them!! They cancelled my flight to Strasbourg. Anyway I decided to get the train – a 9 hour journey. I set off from Villefranche to Nice by train, got to Nice and needed to print out my online ticket, only thing is I couldn’t understand the machine, so I lined up at the information counter, got to the front and asked if the guy could speak English, he said no and asked if I could speak French, no luck, I was a bit worried as my departure time was fast approaching. I decided to approach a security guard and asked him if he could help he could speak English but told me to queue up at the ticket counter, the queue would’ve been half an hour long, sigh, I must have looked upset cos he got another guard, who spoke better English to help me and I explained to him that I would miss the train and I just needed to get the ticket printed. He took me to the front of the queue, yay, got my ticket printed and headed off to check which platform I needed to be on …… My train was delayed for 30 minutes, oh dear, could’ve waited in the queue after all. Meanwhile this is what the others were doing.

 

They were in Monaco, they didn’t like it and only stayed a couple of hours.

Meanwhile I was on my way …. They guard came through checking tickets and spoke to some of us in the carriage, all French, I couldn’t understand any of it, but he kept saying Marseillies and gesturing that he would look after me, anyway the train stopped in Marseillies and everyone got off, a lady gestured to me to follow her, so I blindly followed along, we got onto another train, guards and all, it was a nicer train and off we went, very fast, luckily I made my connection at Lyon and arrived in Strasbourg at 10pm. Meanwhile I was trying to contact the rental car company at the airport to advise them I would be late picking up the car but kept getting a French answering machine, eventually I got through and she spoke English, yay, she said they were closing so made arrangements to get the car at 8am in there morning. Got a taxi to my hotel.  Got to the airport the next morning to get my rental car, o !@&$ I had my international license but not my NZ drivers license, shit, they wouldn’t let me hire without it, what the hell was I going to do now, I had one day to view this massive exhibition, the rental lady told me there may be a train to the place. I went to information, they said to get back into the Strasbourg train station and do it from there, o boy I was totally p’d off.  Anyway off I go back to Strasbourg and thankfully eventually find an English speaking ticket lady, I have to take a train and then a bus, time is marching on, off I go and finally arrive at the exhibition at 11am. The exhibition is held between 4 villages the main one being Saint Marie aux Mine.
This quilt exhibition totally takes over this village and it is inundated with women, and a few men, they take advantage of it and put out little stalls and sell things, I was too busy looking at the more than 20 exhibits to take too many photos of the surrounding areas.

Bath

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Awake at 5am this morning, the sleeping is getting better.
Yesterday we went to Bath for the day, an hour and a half train ride from London.
 It is a touristy small city, very old and has hot water baths there. We did the hop on hop off bus to get a good over view and had a Cornish pasty for lunch.  The others looked around the centre and watched buskers while I caught the shuttle to the American Museum to the Kaffe Fasset and gold work embroidery exhibitions. I don’t know how to add a link to words on the iPad, so here it is http://americanmuseum.org/about-the-museum/current-exhibitions/kaffe-2014-the-colourful-world-of-kaffe-fassett/
It was a great exhibition

 

There was also a display of embroidery in the local cathedral. (For the embroidery ladies) This alter cloth was done by Jane Lemon and a group she belongs to

It was a stunning day and very warm. The train ride back was fast (125 miles per hour!) we headed out to Picadilly Circus last night to the hustle and bustle and we to Thriller Live a tribute show to Michael Jackson, followed his life from Jackson 5 to his last hits, the cast were amazing the dancing was incredible and one particular guy was very believable as MJ a great night.

This pic was taken at half time those two people up the front had nothing to do with the show.

Every morning we go to breakfast to a franchise here called Pret a Manger the food is all organic, freshly created on site and delicious, we also went there last night for a salad for dinner and Jenny and Kelvin found one at Bath and got their lunch from there yesterday as well, lol. (Hayley, the little cup on left is coconut yoghurt, yum) the little cup with lid is espresso, big cup of peppermint tea made with the large silk tea bags so yummy.
We have managed to conquer the underground here and I have an app on my phone that tells us what trains to catch to get to where we want, it is a life (and marriage) saver.
Today we are going to the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey and Harrods.

Fibre Arts New Zealand

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Gosh found this in my drafts folder, lol. In April this year I went to Fire Arts NZ in Wanganui, a residential fibre art retreat for five days, so enjoyed my class with Diane Savona she was very generous with her information sharing, was super knowledgeable about her art, and such a lovely lady, here are a few pics from the class (some I am unable to share – as what goes on tour, stays on tour), we had so many laughs and fun times – I have enrolled to go back again next year.






COOTs Challenge

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The members of COOTs were issued with a wee challenge by a local quilt shop, Christofer Robyn Quilts, to use a piece of Kraft Tex and make something and present it at our August meeting. I immediately thought I would make a box – but then thought no, thats what everyone else would make so I made a concertina ‘book’ and put it inside a gift box (we get given beautiful cheese every christmas by one of our subcontractors and the boxes are too lovely to throw away). Here are the photos of what I produced. I didn’t like the colour of the kraft tex so spray painted it, stencilled it, used matte medium and shellac on it – and it held up well, didn’t distort or change its hand in any way.

Other items produced were: a ‘cracker’, book cover, book wrap, box, a top for a stone bust. Sorry I didn’t get photos. They are all currently on display at Christofer Robyn Quilts in Wanaka (sorry no website).

Gifts

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Seems to be a time at the moment for making leaving gifts. A friend is leaving Queenstown and moving to Dunedin, we will miss her from our wee group, so made her a sketchbook bag to hold her moleskin journal and other arty things.

Also made a shoe bag to give to the National President of New Zealand Embroiderers.

World Quilts

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I have been very humbled to have had my ‘I am from …’ quilt accepted to travel with some others to represent New Zealand at World Quilts. The New Zealand quilts are co-ordinated by Helen Marshall, here is a link to her site showing the Quilts that went this year. And there is the website that shows all the venues that my lady will travel to.

Class from symposium

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I took two classes with Jenny Bowker at Symposium. The first a three day class called Images in Applique. We had to take a photograph and Jenny showed us how to translate it in fabric, here are some of the works in progress from the class. (I’m sorry I didn’t write down whose was who at the time).


This was Marie from Ashburton, you can see the photograph she was working from in the lower left hand corner.


This was my piece, it was from a photograph I took in Monterosso, Italy, through an archway.

Jenny showed us a wee trick that she uses when doing these type of quilts. She took a piece of paper (about A5 size) folded it in half and cut the smallest hole in it. Below that she cut another hole slightly bigger. You then put the small hole over the part of your photograph to get the exact colour you need and place the proposed choice of fabric under the bigger window to see if it really is the right colour. Hard to explain in words but such an effective tool. here is a pic illustrating this.

The top hole is over the part of the photograph I want to match the fabric to and the bottom hole is my fabric. What you think the colour is and what the colour actually is, is quite a surprise.

The second class was Shimmering Triangles and it really challenged me because I am not a mathematical person and it was all working out how and what fitted where!! Not really my cup of tea but I so admire those who make these quilts.
Here it is in the beginning stages, using Kaffe Fasset fabrics, yum.

Symposium Tutors

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Here are a handful of quilts from the Tutors exhibition – amazing quilts and I am sorry I didn’t take more, apologies for the quality they were taken on my phone.
Here is a link to one of the tutor’s blogs, which shows a bit of Taupo.
Michelle Hill of Australia.


Gloria Loughman is an amazing tutor, her classes always fill first at any symposium.


Pam Holland



Jenny Bowker.

Here are other links to blogs showing more about the Symposium/ specifically exhibitions:
Marion Manson
Razzle Dazzle
All of Me

Taupo Quilt Symposium

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Every two years we have a quilt symposium in New Zealand. In 2013 it was held in Taupo. Quilters from around the country converge on the host city and prepare for a week of exhibitions, classes, lectures, happy hours, and general socialising with each other.

I submitted four quilts to the Symposium exhibition an was very fortunate to have all four accepted. This posed a bit of a dilemma for me as I had sold one of the quilts at the COOTs exhibition in April. O NO – so I had to get going and make another one. Of course the second one (in my opinion) was not quite as good as the first one. But still such an honour to have it shown at a National Exhibition.


We arrived and immediately went to view the exhibitions. On the first night of the Symposium, they announce all the award winners and it is always good to see the quilts in person before the winners are announced so you know which ones they are talking about.(they don’t have the awards on the quilts until after they have been announced at the awards evening). At the awards night they do show the quilts up on the big screen but its better to be able to see them in person.

Anyway, I was so surprised and excited to win the Amateur Innovative category which came with prize money!! O my gosh so excited.
Here is a you tube video by one of the tutors Pam Holland which shows some of the sights of Taupo and some of the quilts at the exhibition. ( I see she has my name as Wendy Watson!!!)

Here is another blog showing some further photographs of the exhibition.