Festival of Quilts 2024

I had the bestest time at the show! The atmosphere was great, the vendor hall so very tempting and on top of that I had the biggest surprise on the day.

As my readers would know (I talked about this for weeks on end) I entered my wholecloth quilt into the show. I have entered quilts before in the show and was familiar with the process. Normally if you win an award you do get a phone call a few days before to attend the award presentation. Well, I did not get a phone call so told everyone in the family that I did not win an award this year. Went to the show on the Friday to take some photos of my quilt and spent some money in the vendor hall. Had a fabulous time and was just at the Wonderfil stand when a friend texted me from the show grounds congratulating me!!! She sent a photo of my quilt. I was absolutely stunned and somewhat gobsmacked. Had not looked at the display as yet and actually went over to have a look. 

Won two awards: First place in my category which was 'Other Techniques' and also a Special Award for Excellence in Machine Quilting. Made my day...I am so very pleased with this.

Apparently somebody forgot to ring for this category. Bit of a pity that I did not get to the award presentation, but realistically I could have gone of course even if I did not win, however it was a rainy and very cold evening so I did do some knitting instead.

So finally I can share some process photos which I have been waiting for:

Finished project: can honestly say that this is probably the first time I was really happy with every aspect of my workmanship (...and this is big for me, does not happen that often!)

The centre motif: stitched with a combination of rulers, freehand and also used one of Cindy Needham's stencils (rope) for the inner border.

Lots of feather arrangements

Amish Curling Feather border: put the learnings from one of Bethanne Nemesh' workshop ( I think it was called Feather Fiesta) into practice

Lots of texture: chose to do mainly tiny lines in the background. While the main elements were stitched with Aurifil 50/2 thread I did use 100wt Invisafil thread of the same colour to totally flatten the background. Included a little bit of a microstipple in the feather centers, however that was tedious and very heavy-going on the eyes. 

I am so glad I finished this. This was a design that I started back in 2018 when I did a workshop with Cindy Needham. Was so enthused in her class that I drew up an entire wholecloth in the class. I was going to stitch this out but as the design needed several tidy ups never quite got around to it. Over the years then I altered the design several times...never quite happy with it until last year when I finally had enough and spent the time to finalise the design.

Well, onto the next project...

Karin