The Malvern Quilt Show, May 2013

My winning quilts at Malvern earlier this month were a very gratifying moment for me. It is exciting to be recognised for all the hard work that goes into making large quilts.

Summertime took 18 months to put together and quilt and was in fact quilted during the appalling summer we had last year, hence its title. (It had a brief outing at the South West Quilters' Show and Tell as well.)


It was  made from a block of the month by Sue Garman via The Quilt Show from America. A challenge in precise piecing, and quilted on my much loved Bernina 1230 machine.  A great pleasure to do, and such happy colours to lift my spirits during the rainy days!

I was pleased to gain 3rd place in the Wellhead Books Shield for Bed Quilts plus the bonus of 1st place for the Christine Porter Quilts Award for Machine Quilting.

Gather Ye Rosebuds was another new challenge for me.

Yards and yards of black bias tape was all supplied by Stitch Witch until they had none left! Deciding how to quilt the 'windows' was hard until I hit upon the idea of using silver thread which glowed in the light and gave them luminosity. I added crystals in the windows to give the effect of more light and beads to create the likeness of the original window design by Alexander Gascoyne in 1906.

The pattern was originally produced by Kathy Adams of Koolkat Quilitng in Australia. Again, a great pleasure to make over nine months, mostly during winter and spring.

Thanks to Karin Hellaby of Quilters Haven for featuring this quilt in her blog on the first day of the Malvern Shows!

I was delighted that this quilt gained a 1st place in the Myra Coles Award for Machine Appliqué, and 3rd place in the Cotton Patch Award for a Large Wall Hanging. 


I also picked up a rosette for this small feather quilt:

The full list of Malvern 2013 winners can be found here.

To prove there are trophies, here I am with a couple from Malvern!

My thanks to Fabrications Magazine who featured two of my quilts in their June/July 2013 issue and who provided the two high-resolution photographs used in this post.