Festival of Quilts

Well, this time last week I was just back from my first experience of this amazing celebration of all things quilt related. I had the pleasure of helping out in Christine's gallery on the Saturday morning - there is a lovely blog post here by Helen Conway which says much better than I can what a lovely and moving gallery it was. It was very engaging to spend the morning there greeting people who came to look, watching their reactions to the emotion and thought in the textiles, moving towards and away to get the detail and the overall view. In expressing her experience of watching her father succumb to dementia, it was obvious that these quilts and textile portraits were deeply moving to many viewers; they touch a chord with those of us who have watched one we love slowly disappear, piece by piece, as the mind fragments; I felt privileged to be there.

Christine Chester - Palimpset, detail

So what is my newcomer's impression of the event? Astonishing, exhausting, inspiring, overwhelming, um, all those superlatives. It shows one how wide the umbrella is that embraces the term quilt; themes were as broad as human ingenuity can imagine:

there were traditional quilts, 

Lynne Johnson - Billings Coverlet Reborn

Liz Jones - All Things Bright and Beautiful

art quilts

Chrry Vernon-Harcourt - Coastal Study 1

hand quilting, 

Vanessa Stanfield and Tricia Neale - A Medieval Bestiary, detail

machine quilting, 

Ximo Navarro - It is not a dream, this quilt is real, detail

pictorial quilts, 

Hilde van Schaardenburg - The Threatened Swan, detail

Sally Hutson - The Clothmakers Window, detail

landscapes, 

Kate Dowty - Marshwood Vale

Jean McLean - Silence. Judges Choice

quilts full of detail, 

Kirsti Hovland - The Milky Way - Stars Wandering

Kirsti Hovland - The Milky Way - Stars Wandering, detail

quilts with presence, 

Judy Doolan Kjellin - Sadness, detail

those about ideas

Natalia Manley - Beyond the Black Hole. Judges Choice

or poetry - in this case one of my favourites by Yeats

Jill Exell - Stairway to Heaven

or history, 

Marisa Marquez - Lost Inheritance

decorative embellishments, 

all sizes and shapes, 

Amanda House - Dragons Ho!

some to be viewed from both sides 

Sue Palmer - Bou Baretea, one side - detail

and the other

oh I could go on and on. I saw work there that was a million miles from anything I could, or would want to achieve, some that was akin to the tentative experiments I'm working with, some that I might perhaps aspire to one day. And I haven't even mentioned the marketplace!

It is marvellous to me to see how great the variety of human expression is when you come to a show like this, be it large or small. We see things and think, "gosh, I couldn't live with that", or "how on earth long did that take to achieve", others that leave us in awe of the skill or a technique, yet others that we could just gaze and gaze at. It is such a celebration of skill, artistry, invention, technique, thought, hand work, colour, texture; things which we are unique in being able to create and then use to express our endless inventiveness.

Here are a few more favourites

Gloria Loughman - Merrill Hall, Asilomar, California. Detail

Kate White - Dragonfly Studies, detail. Judges Choice Contemporary Quilts

Dianne Firth - Earth Bones

Annabel Groom - Costa Rican Moons

Christine Restall - Estuary

Mary McIntosh - Copper Plates

I loved it!