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.

 

 

 

Seeing a Quilt Show - a bonus

We recently had a great weekend in London - a re-run of one we had to cancel when our daughter was ill and we had to man the fort.

We had visits to two exhibitions planned: The Emily Carr collection at The Dulwich Art Gallery and The Rembrandt Exhibition at The National Gallery.

On the Saturday morning we headed off to Dulwich, a surprisingly easy and pleasant tube and overground train journey.  The Exhibition of Emily Carr's work was amazing.  I knew nothing of this Canadian painter who died in 1945.  She had trekked over many areas of Canada and painted some wonderful pictures of the abandoned villages left behind by the Haida First Nation tribes when they were decimated by smallpox in the 1860s.  Such a clear record of the houses and totem poles.  Emily Carr's pictures of trees and forests are magnificent. She was obsessed by trees and would take her little painting stool off into the middle of a forest and paint what was around her.  Very striking and dramatic works.

On our way to find an Italian Restaurant that had been recommended to us, my husband spotted a flier for a Quilt Show, tied to some railings!

It was the Dulwich Quilters' Show which takes place every two years and was held in the Old Library of  Dulwich College.

Lots of quilts - the ladies are prolific -, nicely staged, lovely homemade cakes and tea or coffee on sale and some very interesting and chatty quilters who were happy to talk about their work. 

A few photos for you to enjoy too:

 

Beautiful Hand quilting on both of these quilts:

 

 

One commemorating the Centenary of the First World War:

 

 

I also enjoyed the quilting quotations dotted around the exhibition:

 

It was an excellent end to a great visit to Dulwich - our first time there but we hope to see other art exhibitions in the future, and perhaps the Dulwich Quilters' next show?