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The Harvest Festival and Quilt exhibition is behind us now. The
small church was crammed full of colour from flowers and fabric and we took the
quilts down late this afternoon when the exhibition closed. I missed the Saturday
of our exhibition because I was at the Quilters’ Guild Regional day at
Frodsham. There were 2 very good speakers. The first, Judy Fairless, talked about
her journal quilts which were part of the Contemporary quilt group challenge.
They were many and varied but for me the sketchbooks that went with them were
brilliant! Stewart Hillard was the afternoon speaker. He talked about his
quilts and his time on the BBC’s Sewing Bee. He was very eloquent and regaled
us with story after story, name-dropping with impunity! He used his ‘campness’
to excellent effect as he kept us entertained for nearly 1 ½. A brilliant day
all round!
In my work room I have been working on the final layer of the
table runners. Pieces of synthetic voiles and chiffons have been placed along
the entire surface, held in place by the layer of a painted fusible. So the layers that make up the runner are felt,
fusible, satins, painted fusible and voiles (a much simplified version of the
Susan Lenz method). Now it is time for the decorative stitching with black
cotton thread and that is what will take the time.
And here are some images of our exhibition for you to enjoy.
Harvest altar display
A large and important part of this exhibition was the enthusiastic
sewing done by the children at the village primary school. The hangings were
designed specifically to hang off the ends of the pews. A few of us went into
the school, and after a talk about patchwork, we started to work with smaller
groups of children. The older children had resource material to look at and they
were asked to compose an A4 design in portrait style. They traced or drew what
appealed to them before transferring the images onto a fusible and from thence
onto batik fabric which they cut out and ironed onto a background. The adults
helped with the ironing and the finishing. The pictures were placed onto felt
(the remnants of curtain lining removed from a large local school!!) and the
children were then allowed and encouraged to do some sewing through the layers.
The younger children drew autumn pictures with a patchwork surround using
transfer crayons and their designs were ironed onto the calico and finished.
The nursery children used stamps to make a small hanging which will hang in
school. It was a brilliant effort all round and so much enthusiasm was put into
the sewing!
Child’s quilt detail
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