Canterbury Patchwork and Quilters Exhibition.

This past week has been mostly about my studies. I have made time for a little sewing, but nowhere near as much as I hoped. This stage of my studies will be more time consuming, though I am trying to make sure I reward myself with some fun stuff too.

Yesterday was some of that fun stuff. 

The local guild hired a mini bus and eight of us headed off to Christchurch for the day in order to visit the Canterbury Patchwork and Quilters Guild Winter Stars Exhibition. It was a fun day out.

The exhibition consisted of almost 200 quilts, don't worry I didn't take pictures of all of them.

As well as quilts made by local Cantabrians there was also two collections of challenge quilts.

LINES, Members were given the opportunity to create a quilt on the theme of LINES. Any form of quilt design or style could be used. And BROWN, the 2022 colour challenge was to create a 12x12 square quilt which is predominantly brown in colour. Both of these challenges were set by the national quilters guild Aotearoa Quilters. 

So here you go, my photos in no particular order. 

I loved this piece, it has those tiny LED lights poking through the fabric, which really doesn't show up here. 

This blue one really stood out for me.

I might have to make something like this. 

Oh look, more blue. LOL

And it received a judges award. Just goes to show you don't have to make fancy complicated designs, sometimes simple is best.

This collaborative quilt was stunning in person, I really fell in love with it.

Not the best picture I'm afraid, but I had to get an image of the chooks, for Chooky!

The fabrics used for the chooks is very pretty. 

This was not the only Lucy Boston quilt I saw yesterday, but more about that another time.

More brown. These dragonflies and dandelions caught me eye. The dragonflies were painted/printed on to the fabric, I think there is some gold paint under the dandelions too, but it was hard to say with all the golden threads she had used to create/quilt them.

You can see some of the quilting in the lower image too. 

This hexie quilt in the brown challenge caught my eye too

Where the hexies intersect, the designer/maker has sewn on tiny beads.

This next piece was the only one in the lines exhibition that caught my eye.

Having recently studied two papers about dementia and also working with people who have dementia I could see exactly what the designer is saying here.

I just might have to make something similar.

You should all know by now just how much I love poppies.

It's difficult to see in this image, but those words are hand sewn beautifully .

I tried and tried to get a better photo. They are beautiful sentiments, surrounded by that border of tiny squares. (Live, Love, Laugh, Sing, Dance, Dream, Play, Give and Smile).

The quilting is delightful too.

Good things are worth waiting for.

These guys caught my eye. They all look like they are half asleep.

While I was admiring Paddington's Party someone stopped beside me and we had a chat about it.

We agreed that it is a very clever way to make a tiny piece of fabric go a long way.

You know how sometimes you have a piece of character fabric left, not really enough to do anything with? Maybe it will go in to a scrapper or an eye spy one day?  This lady made a whole quilt out of her small piece.

This next piece was mind boggling. It was tucked away in a corner all on it's own. The only entrant in it's class.

So of course it won the blue ribbon.

Those hexies are tiny all 918 of them!!!

I wonder how many people did miss out on seeing it hidden away as it was?

Of course there were lots of scrappy quilts

This one caught my eye, so bright and colourful.

During the bus ride up to Christchurch we had been chatting on the bus about how to use/preserve our collections of doyleys etc so it was interesting to see some in use. There were only three of this style of quilt in the exhibition.

This one in particular caught me eye, the doyleys had been sewn on to an old table cloth, the border has antique items on it too, such as hair brushes and mirrors. I liked the fact that it was all tatted and crochet doyleys, there were a couple of embroidered napkins and here and there I could see embroidered motifs on the tablecloth, but they were all in a soft beige/neutral colour. 

I need to come up with a plan for my own threads from the past.

And my final favourite of the day, Totems for the rainbow.

All those tiny pieces of coloured fabric.

I very much enjoyed my walk around the exhibition, seeing so many lovely quilts, gaining ideas and inspiration and discussing them with other members of the group and one or two strangers also. There were people leaving as we arrived, and more arriving as we left, the numbers inside were just right, not too crowded. 

There was only a small area available for vendors, there were three tucked in to the small space yesterday and I found out somehow that each vendor was only allowed to be there for one day, so that others could have a turn too. No I didn't purchase anything from them.

But I did shop. We didn't go all that way just to look at quilts, we made two stops on the way up and another after seeing the exhibition.

More about that another time, along with more about that other Lucy quilt that I mentioned seeing.