Local Quilt Show

Yesterday I had a super time, firstly attending an excellent lecture by a wonderful quilter called
Ansa Breytenbach, now living here in New Zealand but originally from South Africa. The Show was being held at St Thomas's Church in Motueka and before the Show officially opened Ansa inspired and amused us all explaining how she came to quilting after she and her husband and sons arrived in NZ back in 2002.  She had always been able to sew but had not been interested in quilting until her husband enrolled her in a quilting class to help her overcome home sickness.

What a journey he started Ansa on!  Her style is machine applique, very large quilts with amazingly intricate machine quilting.  She enters many shows, a lot in the States and has won Blue Ribbons. Several of her quilts wer hung at the Show and they were absolutely breathtaking.  The amount of work, applique and quilting were unbelievable! Google Ansa to find out more of her work.

This huge quilt was called Good Vibrations (remembering the Beach Boys' pop song)

 

 And here is the back where you can see the amazing quilting!  

You can see how Ansa matches all her colours of threads to the actual colour of fabric in the quilt top.  She does all her quilting on a domestic machine!

 

These four stars were part of a very large red and white quilt: amazing points, quilting and hundreds of diamond-like tiny beads.

One of the stars in even more close up.

And a fun quilt, smaller this time, with funky frogs.

 

One of the local quilters, Linda Payne, had this amazing work on show.

She had taken 17 years to complete her work of art. The idea started when she saw an article in a newspaper article about a Persian rug which was in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. The rug was over 2000 years old and caught Linda's attention. She decided to replicate it.  Just incredible.  Can't imagine how many thousands of stitches are in it.

This photo shows most of the rug, but I couldn't get all the borders and the wool fringe top and bottom into my picture.

 

 

Part of the centre Stars section in close up:

 

 

One of the horses in a border. Some of the horses were being riden others led:

 

Another border of moose-like animals: 

 

Many, many more lovely quilts, showing all kinds of craftsmanship.

This cot quilt amused me. The maker said she had been given the partly worked cot quilt so she had finished it. She now had to make another as her daughter is expecting twins!

 

 

I loved this Dragonfly. It's body was 3D:

 

 

And the Owl Quilt, which was full of Maori symbols:

 

 

 

This sign explains their meanings:

 

 

So, a wonderful Show, a great tribute to all the clever sewers in our district.  Thank you to the organisers, the contributors, Ansa and all the folk who set up the Exhibition and who will be taking it down tomorrow teatime.