CQ14 at the Harrogate Show

Undoubtedly CQ14 star of the show was Heather Pratt, seen here with her award, well-deserved, for Best Machine Quilting, for her quilt Mingulay - a Hundred Years On, which also came third in the Large Wallhanging category:

Heather has also sold her first quilt - parting with it must have been difficult but it has gone to a good home.  Her other quilt came second in the Theme category - again well deserved - pipped to the post only by Hilary Beattie's quilt which was runner-up to Best in Show.  Congratulations Heather - good to have such a talented quilter in our midst!

Other successes - Janet Bottomley came third in the Cot Quilt section with this lovely quilt using the crumbs technique (improvised piecing using leftover scraps).

Congratulations Janet, both on this and on the Judge's Merit for the group quilt made using leftover blocks from your group's International Quilting Day event earlier this year.

And to my delight and amazement I got a Judge's Choice for my Green Fuse hanging:

I also entered Sea Edges (having actually managed to finish it in the end!)  Kate Smith was kind enough to say she liked it best of my quilts (it's my favourite too, I must admit, but it tends to hide in the background in quilt shows).

 ...and a miniature quilt, Just for Fun, which to my amazement got third in the Miniature group

... which left me feeling rather embarrassed as I really felt Davina's mittens should have won the Miniature prize (it is much, much better than mine)

 Davina also got my vote for the piece with the most entertainment value - her theme entry contains numerous items beginning with 's' - how many can you see?

I think we've done pretty well especially for a new group.  But we do need more people to enter next year...

July meeting

Another really good meeting at Clifford, beginning with a talk from Davina, who is also a member of the Miniature Group (one of the other QG specialist groups).  She brought along a huge range of beautiful pieces, some of them very tiny indeed:

A number of the pieces above are inspired by the work of Janet Bolton.  They are amazingly tiny

A range of tiny miniatures, some made as presents - birthday, housewarming and so on.

One of my favourites - love the colours!

And this one won an art competition: a picture of the windmills near Denholme, Bradford, set onto the Ordnance Survey map.

And this is Davina herself, with her quilt (in the shape of a teacup) based on Clarice Cliffe.

She also brought along two quilts, including a theme quilt for Harrogate and a beautiful piece also destined for the Miniature section in Harrogate.  Not shown here - you'll have to wait for the show!

A great deal of the remainder of the day was taken up with discussion of the numerous items people had brought along for the Show and tell:

Margaret M and Carol had been to Kate Smith's Disappearing Nine-Patch workshop

and are continuing to explore the many and varied ways in which this technique can be used to produce designs...

and being the prolific people they are had also produced quilts/tops from a workshop on Japanese design given by Gene Bowen:

 

and Leah also attended this workshop and produced two pieces:

And Val Barnard, Andrea and Kath Morrison brought quilts they had made for other people:

Jackie brought a selection of fabrics she had made:  unfortunately one of the most intriguing, made of crumpled brown paper painted red - intended originally for a "red rooster" journal quilt, did not photograph well, but here are the others.  The first has fibres layered with organza (?)

and three pieces of discharged fabrics using different types of twists/folds:

I really should have taken notes then I could have provided more exact details.

Heather showed two beautiful quilts - not shown here because they are bound for Festival of Quilts and the Harrogate Show where they should do very well.  Heather has also offered to bring her work to present to the group at a future meeting.

I brought a couple of unfinished pieces as well, but again these are going to Festival of Quilts so I would prefer not to show them here.  But here's a teaser (this quilt eventually had hop leaves and tendrils added to the vines) complete with quality tester (note the matching eyes!)

Look out for the names Davina Adams, Heather Pratt and Sandra Wyman at the shows this summer!  Django the cat will not be going...

We had intended to discuss ways of approaching designing your own quilts, and there was to be a session on using weird and wonderful fabrics, but the first had to be deferred  because of lack of time, and the second seemed redundant (after seeing the amazing fabrics people had used in their quilts.

And Jacke reckoned it was worth coming from Staithes for: you can't say better than that!