Subtle Differences wins Best of Show!

I certainly never expected to get the phone call from Grosvenor Shows last week saying I had won 'Best in Show' at the Scottish Quilt Championships at Ingliston, Edinburgh. I have seen so many beautiful quilts out there this year that I really thought I was only supporting my local show, I never expected to win but still wanted my work to be seen.  I only had time to make this one small quilt in the past year, you can read about it here in this post, 'Subtle Differences'!
Winning at this show meant that I kept my title of Scottish Quilt Champion for another year.  Thank you to Grosvenor Shows for your great organisational skills and also to David Drummond, Sewing Machines  and Kaleidoscope Books and Quilting Fabrics for sponsoring my award at the show again this year, it's all greatly appreciated by many.
It is all great but I also feel a little guilty for winning again, there was a time when I would have said I wasn't at all competitive.

There were lots of other worthy winners in the show....in no particular order here are some of the quilts that caught my eye, if you see one of your quilts with out your name attached drop me a line and I'll add your name to it.....

Frieda Oxnam's fabulous enbellishment

Rhianon Taylor Runner Up

Birgit Schueller

This one is for sale....

Rhianon with her fabulous Dresden Quilt

Andrea Strache

Love this quilt by Sheena Norquay, exquisite details

Andrea Stracke

Andrea Stracke

Jelly Roll theme quilt

Jelly Roll theme quilt

One of my all time favorites by Rhianon Taylor

Exhibition by Lippetal Quilters in Germany and Gone to Pieces Quilt Group in the UK

My home is feeling a little bit bare just now. I had thirteen quilts away from home last week, this one in Edinburgh, two at the Textile Towerhouse in Hawick and ten of my earlier quilts have gone away on tour with Grosvenor Shows for six months, starting with Malvern Autumn Quilt Show and then all of the Spring Quilt Shows next year. Subtle Differences looks very well here in my hall for a while!

Off to The Tower....

For those of you who would like to see my quilted wallhanging '1514 aka The Horse' again, it's on display along with 'Inner Circle - Flower of Scotland in 'The Tower', The Borders Textile Towerhouse in Hawick, here in the Scottish Borders for the next 3 months.... 

 http://www.heartofhawick.co.uk/info/1/about_us/13/borders_textile_towerhouse

1514 In Machine Quilting Magazine

Look what dropped through the door this week, fabulous magazine and a wonderful article even though I say so myself! Thank you Machine Quilting Unlimited, so pleased to play a small part, well five and a bit pages....hehe....lot's of other wonderful articles in there too. You can purchase this magazine on line and have it delivered to your door or your PC straight from the US at https://mqumag.com or have a hard copy delivered from http://www.contentedcat.co.uk here in the UK.

You can also see more of this quilt in this blog post 1514 aka The Horse

Back next time with some customer quilt...that's a promise...again....

The World Quilt Show 2013 or What came next?

It's been an eventful week.....

Monday...Driven home by the ever eventful Linzi....some week that was....quilts and quilting arrived home safe and sound regardless of the fact that some of our packaging had gone a stray....Thanks for a great trip Linzi.....

Tuesday.....I took the plunge and entered 'Inner Circle - Flower of Scotland' for MQX in Portland, Oregon, just need to wait and see if she gets through the jury process......

Wednesday....Tested the water to see if I could find a roomy in Portland and found Sharon from Arizona who has already booked a room for the show....sounds like we would get along famously....I've been planning this all year but looks like I'm seriously going now....

Thursday..... had news that my wholecloth quilt 'Flourish' has been honoured with a 'Best Machine Workmanship' in the Traditional category at The World Quilt Show in Manchester, New Hampshire, USA......how exciting is that....WOOHOO....The show was very well represented by British entries which gained 3 winners awards and 3 honourable mentions.

You can read my original blog post here, Flourish


Click here for the World Quilt Show 2013 Results page

I sent out a plea for someone to take a photo with a camera, you know, as in high resolution not on a cell/mobile phone and guess what, JL (you all know JL right, Janet Lee co-owner of Machine Quilting Exposition as in MQX Quilt Shows). Well JL organised for her quilt show photographer Jeffery Lomica to take some photos for me at the World Quilt Show. Jeffrey took some high resolution photos for me to keep. Wow,  these are sweet people, I wonder, is this what happens when you become an international award winning quilter?

Seriously....Thank you Janet Lee and Jeffrey....

The two photos below take you to my Flickr page where you can get a closer look at the quilting....

The back....

That's what came next.....

Festival of Quilts 2013

What a great time we had....of course it was a working trip but we all get a long so well and laugh so much that we hurt sometimes.

Once the stand was ready and the show was under way we were all more relaxed. We had many International visitors to the APQS stand...Linzi, Ani, and I along with Lilly LaPink (our sidekick who is such a great help on the sales table and tea trolley that we just couldn't manage without her), and Ellen helped out too. We were kept very busy demonstrating the machines. We did a bit of 'Swanning off' every now and then to see who was milling around through in the main quilt show area. As usual we searched out the best food  available in the area and had a 'Brummy Curry', visited the 'Middle of England' pub and had a Carvery on two evenings.  Believe me we would never go hungry along with full english breakfasts at our hotel I have to say at times we were a little stuffed....

Lilly LaPink

Our Quilt show entries were very well received, Linzi won 2 x 1st prizes and a Judges choice

My Inner Circle - Flower of Scotland won a Highly Commended, I think may be two HC's are awarded per category rather like an Honourable Mention.....

My little shelf is starting to groan with the weight of all the silverware and rosettes etc. It's time to box up the perpetual cup from the Scottish Quilt Championships 2012....I'm afraid it needs to go back to Grosvenor Shows so that they can have it engraved with my name before it goes off to the next lucky recipient in September. It's been a fun year.....I wonder what comes next?