FOQ and FAQ

Last Thursday my DH and I set off at 6am and headed for the NEC at Birmingham to the FOQ - Festival of Quilts. An unusually easy journey down which meant we got there sooner than expected. We had a coffee, went to look for a loo and then joined the queue to wait for the show to open.
I decided to do the stands first and the quilts later. I also wanted to see if my book was on the book stands. What a strange feeling seeing it there with all the others. I found out some days later that on one stand they had sold out and were waiting for more to arrive which sounds promising. I do hope those who bought it liked it and found it useful. I have had some lovely emails praising it and one purchaser wrote what can be described as an 'essay' in a review on Amazon.
I digress. I gave most of the fabric stands a miss as I don't buy fabrics. I prefer to dye and print my own. I bought some Evolon and another large piece of bleached mulberry bark at a very reasonable price for the size. I bought some rusting powder and have already had a play with that. Some threads and that's about it.
Then I went around the quilts. There were some amazing quilts my favourite being the art quilts. The winner was well deserved - beautiful work.
I called at the Computer Textile Design Group stand and had a chat to those who were stewarding something I had done a lot of myself in the past.
I particularly wanted to see the stand of Linda and Laura Kemshall whose work I really like. I bought their book.
We didn't stay until the end which meant we could miss the worst of the traffic and had a smooth trip back home.
A friend told me that there are usually about 2000 quilts displayed but not as many this year. Not sure that I would want to look at that many.

Now for the FAQ - Finished Art Quilts.
In my last post I showed a finished and a couple of not quite finished art quilts.
I have now finished all four quilts. Here is the finished Echinacia quilt.

I found the border fabric in my green fabric box and was the left over fabric from when I made my sister in law's curtains many many years ago. It was a glazed cotton and worked well around the piece. Everything comes in useful eventually!!

The blue quilt which was a computer generated design and when I had finished the quilting I couched some black metallic twist along one of the lines working down the design then decided to add some free machined sheer fabric leaves which were on the computer affect prior to this one combining the two.

Here is a close up of the leaves.


The last of the quilts was again generated in the computer and printed on silk. It was from a photograph of some hydrangeas.


I used a simple filter on the image which enhanced the colours and features if the flowers. I must have done something else as the printed image was much lighter than this. I really must remember to write down what I do as I play with images on the computer. I tell everyone else to do this and forget to do it myself.

Once the image had been printed, I added some acrylic paints on the petals and large leaves then free machine quilted it.


It was edged with some silver grey slub silk. I rather think I would have preferred the stronger image and am wondering why I didn't use that one. Ah well c'est la vie.

I am now on with something completely different. I have a roll of hessian coloured tapestry canvas which I bought back in the days when I was really into contemporary canvas work. I have never used any of it so decided to try and think of something to at least use some of it.
I decided to make a cover for a large A4 ring file which is about 8cm thick. I cut the canvas and painted it black. Then I finger rubbed blue, gold and green interference over the surface letting them blend together. It looks really nice.
Now I am embellishing the surface which will be mostly hand stitching. I have dyed threads and yarns to go with the piece which I expect will take quite a while to finish so until then
Cheers everyone.