Festival of Quilts

Last Friday, on our way to Sheffield, my daughter and I called in to the Festival of Quilts at the NEC. The variety and number of gallery exhibitions was truly inspiring. We kept thinking we'd seen everything, walk round a corner and find another amazing display.

Here are two that are related to the previous post on Coast.

Left: 'Shifting Horizons' by Caroline Higgs  Right: 'New Horizons' by Ann Louise Williams

 Left and top right (detail): 'Travellers Blanket with Circles' by Dijanne Cevaal. This was an old dyed blanket with scraps of fabric from around the world appliqued and stitched over (like Kantha) with a variety of hand stitched borders.
Centre right: this quilt won third prize in the art quilt category. The colours and stitching were amazing and we kept going back to have a look.
Bottom right: 'Honeychild' by Meredith R Grimsley. This was part of a gallery exhibition: SAQA Metaphors on Ageing.

Left: an example of quilting displayed in a 3D format
Top right: 'On the Edge' by Hilary Beattie. Go to her blog to see how it was constructed.
Centre and bottom right: two from a collection by Anatoly Belik.

Sandra Meech is one of my favourite artists. She combines digital photographs within her dyed and quilted work.

More of my favourite artists - Linda and Laura Kemshall. You can start from Linda's website, then go to each of their blogs and DesignMattersTV, all of which are worth visiting.

Below are two pieces of work by an amazing artist called Annabel Rainbow. Not only was the work beautifully made but each piece was thought provoking. I also like the way she included photographs of the construction.

'Switching Off'

'Hello dear, what did you do today?'

Coast

The second year students were set this topic as their summer project. Here are some images from my recent visit to Hayle in Cornwall. The presentation of the images has been inspired by the way that Carolyn Saxby  presents a lot of her work.

Hayle is about 5 miles from St Ives and has the most amazing beach.

People enjoying the sea, although it was still too cold for me.

A selection of plantlife.

The cheeky chap on the left would knock on our door everyday to be fed.

Some pages from my sketchbook

Yarn Bombing et al

Okay this is a little late but in July this year for the end of year activity we created this installation.
The boat is covered in knitting and sits on a large patchwork sea that contains sea creatures made from giant pompoms. The tie dyed bunting was from an earlier group project.

Sikh Wedding

The other weekend we went to Birmingham to attend a Sikh wedding. It was a gorgeous event, everyone was very friendly and we had a wonderful time. I thought I would share a few of the beautiful fabrics with you.

Most beautiful of all were, of course, the bride and groom