FOQ TEN: Contemporary Quilts

This the last post on quilt categories as I missed out on pictorial quilts and art quilts because of lack of time.

Tracy Aplin: Ellen's Quilt
Tracy is another dear friend and Usual Suspects member and I have watched this quilt in the making.
Tracy's quilts are always recognizable as hers, highly individual and imaginative, and this one is
packed with personal references so her daughter will feel wrapped in love as she starts college.

Louise Jessup: It's Lavender, Dilly!
Louise is an Oast member, again with a very different
approach to quilts especially in regard to construction
and applying separately made elements.

Detail

Anna Maria Turchi: Fly Away
I have a penchant for quilts such as this where a unified
composition is made up of different  sections and elements.

Detail

Carole Wood: Chrysler Alternatives
This is an archetypal contemporary quilt with its reworking of traditional New York
Beauty blocks, asymmetric border and bright colours (I think of the as American colours).

Isobel Loftus: Cabin the woods
This is a favourite: I love the woven recycled fabric, traditional but enlarged block and balanced improvisational placement.

Kate Dowty: Crazy Fields
I heard Kate speak at the Torquay AGM earlier this
year and was impressed by the quality of her work and
her throughgoing approach to design and
inspirations from nature.

Wonderful quilting

FOQ NINE: Miniature Quilts

Miniature quilts or anything very small are not my thing but these were hung at the end of one of the main sections and I couldn't but admire the technical skill and artistry that had gone into the making

 of these pieces.

Sylvie Plested: Angry Bird's Bath
Sylvie is an Oast member and based her piece on a
calendar picture by American artist, Charley
Harper called Brrrrdbath. What a wonderful choice of
subject!

.

Helen Howes:: Interpolated Roses
In silk free cut and quilted. The start of  a new
series for Helen who has made many
quilts based on trees.

Helen Butcher: Mini modern sampler
I just loved this but thought it would be better writ large only to discover Helen had already
done that as a 4 ft sized piece for a beginners' course and the full size pattern
 is available from Little Patch Pockets.
Oakshott  fine cottons and Liberty lawns

Amy Pabst: Tight pineapple
"Cotton, silk and linen blend fabrics, foundation pieced and machine quilted.
inspired by late 1800s quilt and has 2772 pieces. Crumbs!
Would look wonderful in any size.

FOQ EIGHT: Modern Quilts 02

I hope I've ascribed these aright. Realising I hadn't charged up my camera the night before I stopped photographing aide memoire labels and jotted down numbers.

Abigail Sheridan de Graff: Wasabi on the side
Kona Solids quilted in straight lines. Made as part of the Sewcial Bee Sampler Sew-Along.
Love the colour choices and the choice of blocks.

Margaret Ager: Margaret's modern hexies
Sew Hexie pattern by Kenzie Mac and Co. She solved the problem of how to quilt all
that negative space on a domestic machine very well I thought.

Detail

Chris Mason: Discombobulated
Improvisational  piecing quilted on a domestic machine.
I'm not sure about the overall balance of this and if emulating I should want to
vary the size of the blocks.

Love her choice of fabrics.

FOQ SEVEN: Modern Quilts 01

Christina Arcenegui Bono : Getting On
A Moda building blocks pattern. I wonder what it would look like the other way up.

Dorothy Hill: La Passacaglia Goes Large
My visitor's choice and this one brings out the copyist in me. She made just one round of
Willyne Hammerstein's pattern enlarging the templates to cover a double bed.
Uses modern cottons, Liberties and linen and perle cotton big stitch quilting and
machine quilting,

Juliet Nelmes: Elm Creek Sampler by Jennifer Chiaverini
This is a very nice quilt which stuck out like a sore thumb is this category.
The maker didn't realise that here the word "modern" is limited to a specific type of quilt.
Also it has been quilted by Midsomer Quilting; the rules are insistent that long armed quilts
should go in the two person category. No doubt the judges gently pointed all this out and
she will know next time.

Detail of Wild Colours
I was fascinated by the crazy layering

Frieda Oxenham: Ramsay Monument Quilt
Colours and pattern very "modern", raw edges and embellishment less so. She used Ella Blue's
 Linen Cupboard line. I tried in vain to buy this after seeing pictured swatches in a magazine.

Eva Le Blanc: Lone Star
EPP method. The star is beautifully set off by the vbrant background.

Lisbet Borgreen: White January
I remember the maker's quilt  from last year which I think may also have come
second in the modern category as did this one.
Super restrained exploitation of fabric set off by close quilting. Another favourite.

Teresinha Roberts: Wild Colours
Made entirely by hand using naturally dyed fabric. The use of hand dyes makes me
think contemporary section as modern quilts use manufacturers' solids in my
experience.

FOQ 2017 SIX: Two Person Quilts 02

Natalie Taylor and Frances Meredith (longarmer): Houston Fabric Highlight
Tumblers using fabric collection bought at Houston 2015. Tumbler seam matching proved tricky.

Heather Hasell and Mary Jane Hutchinson (longarmer):Chic Modern Neutrals
This colourway is very popular just now (this is from a Moda layer cake) and fits in with modern
decorating trends.
I like it.

Natalie Taylor and Frances Meredith (longarmer): Houston Fabric Highlight
Tumblers  made with a collection of fabrics from Houston 2015. Seam matching
proved tricky.

Lisa Taylor and Trudi Wood (longarmer): Space Dust
Tula Ping FP pattern using 44 individual pieces. The maker matched the original effect
as closely as possible using 22 Cotton and Steel basics and V&Co's Simply Color Metro Dot.
Made to celebrate 10 years of a happy marriage.

Anne Marshall and Trudi Wood (longarmer): Club Tropicana
Her first magazine quilt using traditional HST's and symbol of welcome to very modern
graphic effect. I note the maker is the same as for Pink Roads in an earlier post.

Pauline Smith and Marlene Chaffey (longarmer): Estuary View
Uses Janet Clare's Hearty Good Wishes fabric to represent the view of the River Exe
from her bedroom window. The theme is echoed by the custom quilting.

Close up of Janet Clare fabric. I like her distinctive designs but would find them hard to
 combine with others. This quilt ses them to full effect.

FOQ 2017 FIVE: Two Person Quilts 01

This section is usually my second port of call because as well as creative collaborations it usually contains significant traditional pieces quilted by someone else, generally a professional longarmer.. This year three Oast members had quilts in this section and two of them were brilliantly custom quilted by a fourth member, Maggie Breakspear.
First up is friend Belinda Jeffries with her quilt pantographed by Mandy Parks of Cats' Whishers Quilting, another friend. Such clever friends!! The Abbey Lane pattern Belinda chose makes excellent use of the fat eighths of the unusual Carrie Blopmston fabrics bought in Houston.

Love the way block and sashing backgrounds meld

I like the manipulatiom of stripes

And a paler one to set off the strongly
coloured blocks

And this faric in sashing post stars sets off the
whole so well.

And next is Beverley Brawn's version of a Kim Maclean pattern. I like the selection of backgrounds she has used rather than the white of the original and Maggie has paid individual attention to the quilting of each block.

Finally Tansy Martin;s "Find the Frog", her rendering of Stonefield pattern. Three other friends have been making this quilt so I have had the chance to admire the many delicate details and quirky aspects of the blocks. Truly a tour de force! Custom quilted by Maggie Breakspear.

Textile Traders

I am having a short cottage holiday in Shropshire which is so beautiful and so empty; driving is a real pleasure. Although towns are small and few and far between I managed to beat a path despite a gammy leg to  a special shop Textile traders and made some special purchases of ikat fabric though I was planning to buy batiks. I also got a richly coloured silk scarf..

FOQ 17 FOUR: Traditional 02

Linda Forey: Diamonds Last Forever
Judge's Choice

Detail: brilliant manipulation of stripes

Dawn Monk: My Butterfly Garden
I met the maker of thisone; she said she started out out determined not to fussy cut but
succumbed to the butterflies and blossoms to the point of unpicking her earlier work.
A favourite

Detail

Valerie Huggins: Seed Packet
Simple piecing letting the fabric do the work. An idea I like and have just spotted the
large pink lily bottom row which was the focus of one of my quilts.

Barbara Doyle Davidson: Arrowheads
I've always liked this pattern since making a block for my first Quay Quillters' Sampler piece.

Elizabeth Johnston: Shades of Colour
I like the way this isn't quite Bargello with the use of alternate wide and
narrow  gradations of strips.

Detail: batik textures work well here

Anne Marshall: Pink Roads (detail)
Block design noted..

A quick quilt to celebrate a collection of fabric, here Tula Pink's Tabby Roads