S&B – Excellence And Diversity

As part of the Heritage Open Days held each year by English Heritage, Standfast & Barracks, a fabric printing company in Lancaster, opened its doors which meant visitors could go behind the walls of the severe Victorian building and take a glimpse into the world of printing fabric. Having only ever dyed fabrics with lots of water and messy dyes in my kitchen and printed with wooden blocks on fabric, I was intrigued to see behind the scenes.

Meet A Quilter Joë Bennison

If you’ve visited a quilt show in the last couple of years you can’t have failed to miss the rise in longarm quilting both from the quilts on display to the manufacturers demonstrating the latest machines. I first took notice of longarm quilting when I attended the National Quilt Championships at Sandown in Surrey; here one particular quilter, with her exquisite wholecloth cot quilts, has swept into prominence. The quilter in question is Joë Bennison. I met her at the end of last year to find out more about her and her quilting journey.

First And Last Sally Ablett

This month regular contributor Sally Ablett tells us about two of her quilts.

Six Years Of Journal Quilting

In the last issue, Joanna introduced us to journal quilts. This month she tells us more about her own journey in journal quilt making.

The Sewing Group

Emma Crowe’s new play ‘The Sewing Group’ shows the impact of 21st century technologies and the pressures of high powered work places on our minds and temperaments by conjuring up a simpler life in pre-industrial England.

The Jane Austen Community Quilt – An Update

2017 saw a bustle of activity here at Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton, Hampshire. In May, Lucy Worsley came to the museum to place flowers at the front of the house marking 200 years since the death of Jane Austen; followed swiftly by a year of events including writing workshops, village walks, talks (a highlight being Sue Dell’s presentation of her research into the Austen coverlet, now conserved and redisplayed in the museum) and community sewing workshops in preparation for the completion of our community quilt.

Greenhill Quilting

This month Jacob Reading from Greenhill Quilting tells us his story about becoming the Gammill UK representative and his love of longarm quilting.

A Splash Of Colour In A Bleak, Grey World

It is 1943 and Mies Boissevain is imprisoned with seven other women. A member of a prominent banking family, Mies and her family had been sheltering persecuted people and using the cellar of her house as a base for the Resistance group known as CS-6, one of the few groups that performed acts of sabotage. Mies, two of her sons, her niece and nephew were members of the group when they were discovered by the Germans. Many members were immediately executed but Mies and her niece were arrested and sent to the concentration camp at Vught, then Ravensbruck.

First And Last Sandie Lush

My first quilt was completed in early 1990 and was made out of necessity. I'd always had a keen interest in crafts but this had been confined to knitting, counted cross stitch and the occasional stint of dressmaking. Before getting married, I had never even seen a patchwork quilt, let alone thought about making one.

Let's Go Shopping To Backstitch

Sometimes it’s easy to miss things that are completely under our noses, we forget to look close to home for a solution. And that is what happened when I was looking for a quilt shop to visit for Let’s Go Shopping. I suddenly remembered there was a shop I had never visited before that was pretty much on my doorstep. So on a sunny early spring-like day, I headed off to Backstitch in the village of Barton near Cambridge.

To Cruise or not to Cruise: Is that the question?

Well, a few years ago now I had the amazing opportunity to go, not only on my maiden cruise, but also on my maiden P & Q Tour. Double whammy! The cruise was a joint endeavour between Judi of P & Q Tours and James of Japan Journeys, also a maiden endeavour that proved so successful the experience was repeated a couple of years later, having ironed out a few of the wrinkles from the first trip.

First And Last Judith Dursley

Judith Dursley tells us about her first and last quilts this month. A fan of miniature quilts she recently won a Judge’s Choice award in the Jen Jones Challenge 2017.

The Scottish Quilt Championships 2017

The Scottish Quilt Championships are staged in The Royal Highland Centre outside Edinburgh, a venue close to Edinburgh Airport and well served by good roads and signage, with absolutely no need to get involved with city traffic! The car park is free, and a kind gentleman in a steward’s uniform saw me across the road to the hall, even though there were scarcely any cars about. I say ‘staged’ advisedly, because walking into the show hall is very much like walking onto a stage, albeit a very large one. The walls and ceiling are black and the carpet dark grey, which might be considered oppressive but which I find exciting; there is an air of drama and the competition quilts are displayed with the panache of a theatrical event.

Colour at Mottisfont

It’s not often that I get the chance (or time) to go out for the day to visit a quilt exhibition but when we received notification of the latest exhibition featuring work of Kaffe Fassett at the National Trust property, Mottisfont in Hampshire this autumn, I decided it was time I made the effort even though it was a couple of hours drive away.

Quiltfest 2017

For the fifteen years that this exhibition has been running, Val Shields has been the driving force behind Quiltfest. Over that time she has managed to bring a wide range of both exhibitions and international quilters to mid Wales. However, this year The Quilters’ Guild Region 13 has taken over the running of the event whilst still retaining the help and advice of Val who forms part an integral part of the committee. It is hoped to build on and expand the very successful formula that she has created. In the planning for over a year, Quiltfest hosted not one but four excellent exhibitions this year.

View Seven – ‘A Sense of Place'

Last December, View Seven held their biennial exhibition at The Menier Gallery near London’s Borough Market. The group consists of seven textile artists, whose ‘shared aim is to create great art for contemporary living – art people can live with and enjoy.’ The Menier Gallery itself is an interesting place; a large partitioned room, bare brick walls and a winding staircase set the mood. Claire Benn, Claire Higgott, Claudia Helmer, Susie Koren, Leslie Morgan, Daline Stott and Karen Farmer have put together another very interesting show entitled ‘A Sense of Place’. It explores the artists’ response to different environments and each artist has responded in their own unique style.

First And Last

This month former editor, Judi Mendelssohn, tells her about her first quilt and how she got involved in this crazy world of quilting and also about her most recent finish.