Lutterworth Piecemaker's 2011 Exhibition

I had a very inspiring afternoon yesterday, wandering around Lutterworth Piecemaker's exhibition, they hold a meeting on the third wednesday of each month for local quilters and it is a group that I have been meaning to go along to for a while now- maybe it should be the first of my (many) new year's resolutions?! You can check out their blog here; they are a bunch of very friendly and talented ladies, but I guess what you really want to see is the quilts, here is just a small selection of the quilts on display...

This reminded me of one of my very favourite quilts, Composition II by Shoko Sakai which can be seen Here.

This quilt was designed for a minimalist daughter who enjoys the sports pictured here. I love the complex simplicity in this quilt and the colours are beautiful!

The following quilt's top was found in an attic by one of the ladies, who carefully repaired, backed and quilted it. The top still had its original papers tacked in and rather than lose the history these papers have been scanned and printed onto the rear of the quilt, along with census data to match the woman who is believed to have pieced it, so that it's history may always go with it.

Four of the five blocks shown here are the product of the scanned paper pieces.

An interpretation of the paper pieced artwork on display at the Charles Rennie Mackintosh House and Gallery in Northampton by Helen Spence.

EDIT: The inspiration for this tryptic is the beautiful window of 78 Derngate and not the Helen Spence piece, my apologies for the mistake, thank you to The Maker for pointing this out; I tried to reply to your email but you are a no reply blogger.

Sorry, I forget the story behind this lovely baby quilt.

This piece was the quilter's first foray into art quilting and she remarked how easily it came together, this left me feeling totally inspired, I would love to be able to achieve something like this one day!

Jx

Mastering curved seams... maybe

Aaaargh this month was a scary one! I kept looking at all the pretty fabrics all perfectly pre-cut for me by Miss September; Susan (thank you for being patient!) but no matter how they gazed lovingly back at me I could not be tempted and kept putting them back in the box.

It suddenly dawned on me that the end of september was fast approaching and I had procrastinated long enough, so in 3 gruelling evenings I sucked it up and got on with it. With the help of a lovely video tutorial from Very Kerry Berry whose sewing and flipping was so easy to follow I almost got them all right!


And it wasn't long before I had enough to start piecing them together...

Once I got into it I figure it took me about 10 mins per little block to line up and sew (and then all the extra time I spent pressing and playing with the possibilities)

(don't worry, this one hasn't been ironed yet- i'm sure it didn't end up all wrinkly)

And I finished off with two of the loveliest blocks I have seen (not trying to make my sewing sound any good, I just love this layout) ... I am now a complete drunken convert and think I may be needing to make a substantial investment in the near future as I NEED a table runner of these guys!!!

I am hoping they make it you soon Suzi-Q, I think they should be there by now

J x

Colour Play

Today I stumbled across a series of posts on The Colour Challenge at Very Berry Handmade which reminded my of Palette Ping Pong, which has been going on for a long time at Ginger and George and I was inspired to give it a go.

I started with one of my favourite images at the moment from Wildflowers Photography and got so into it that I tried a whole lot more!

After playing with lots of different coloured images, I decided to try an "all white" image and I found this bedroom on my pinterest stream, it was amazing how many colours could be found in it once I started looking closely.

When you look at all the images as one, I was surprised at the colours that seemed to be coming out; I guess I now know that I lean towards dusty colours, but I would never have thought that for myself!

J x