London 
Quilters
Winter 2000 Newsletter
Millennium Challenge
From the 10th--29th April 2001,
twenty-six quilts will be displayed at the London Quilters¹ forthcoming
exhibition in:
Lauderdale House (upstairs hall)
Waterlow Park
Highgate Hill N6
There is still time to submit your quilt, but hurry! This is a wonderful chance
to exhibit your work in a lovely venue.
The theme is: Women into the Millennium/Our Hopes and Dreams. The quilt should incorporate a skill, technique or colour you have never used before. The size is a minimum of 24" square; maximum size is 36" X 48". Phone Marlene Cohen if you would like to participate.
NEW COMMITTEE MEMBERS
We are still looking for new people
to join the Committee. In particular, the job of Chairman is vacant, and the
London Quilters will be unable to continue without a Chair! If you haven¹t
come forward yet, now is the time to do so.
SIX IN STITCHES
A Textile Exhibition featuring work by
Jean Edwards, Ruth Ingram, Fay Clark, Margaret Cooter, Daphne Giles and Joyce
Daniell
at Sutton House
Hackney
London E8
6th through 22 December and then 10th January through 4th February For further
details, phone Jean Edwards on 020 7267 9803.
NEW
NEWSLETTER EDITOR
Goodbye! from Alicia Merrett, who
has been editing the London Quilters Newsletter for several years now. Thank
you to all that have contributed to its success by writing articles, either
spontaneously, or when requested, or even after a bit of arm-twisting....
Remember the Newsletter can only be as
informative as its contributors, and that the editor does not know everything
- so if you have some information to share, please let us know....
Linda Seward is taking over from this issue, so contributions should now be sent to her.
YOUR NEWSLETTER NEEDS YOU!
The deadline for the next Newsletter is 3rd January, 2001. Hand in your contribution at the next meeting, e-mail it (l.seward@virgin.net), fax it (020 7916 3366) or post it to Linda Seward (47 Kingstown Street, London NW1 8JP).
Please telephone me if you have
any questions at all: 020 7586 3382. Many thanks!
CHAIR CHAT
This is my last "Chair Chat" as my term of office fast approaches its final days.
Overall it has been a privilege
to fill the position of Chairperson. There have been many bonuses. I have
been able to personally meet so many of our guest speakers and learn so much
from them. More important than this, I have also had the opportunity to speak
to many more of our members that I had
previously. I think it is quite possible that just about everyone now knows
my name and if I do not know yours I am sorry. Sometimes I cannot
even remember the names of my children and my cats, so truly it is nothing
personal.
Last year I believe I made the
decision to stop going on courses and to quilt. My intentions were not
fulfilled. I have done workshops with Sue Wademan, Irene MacWilliam, Pauline
Burbidge and I¹m off to do another class with Nancy Crow in the
US this week. Maybe next year I will keep to my resolution and you will see
me presenting lots and lots of wonderful things at "Show and Tell".
The major disappointment
I have had as Chair, has been the lack of interest in the "Challenges"
I set. Whether they be block, cushion or quilt the response has been
poor but that leads me to question my ideas and accept that perhaps what I
like to do may not be what everyone else wants to do. Good learning!
Certainly other Chair people seemed to have had a better response to their
challenges. Therefore, it is almost certainly my problem. Do let me know
I would love to hear your views. Also several times, I
have asked questions of you in my "Chat". It is very rare that I
received any answers!
Anyway, no more moans just a very special thank you to you all for trusting me enough to take on this role. It has been special for me and I was also fortunate to have a good, strong team around me. I just wish that at this moment I knew the name of my successor (or successors) so we could have a good old chat about the pros and cons of the job. Also, most importantly - how to do it better.
By the way I haven¹t completed my cushion either!
Happy quilting everyone.
Marlene
Women into the Millennium/
Our Hopes and Dreams
by Meg Turner
As a new recruit to London Quilters (September 2,000) I am tempted to make a quilt for the Millennium Challenge, albeit at very short notice from my point of view. But as a woman of the Millennium’ I am torn as to whether or not to go for this project as I will be setting myself yet another deadline! Basically what I am trying to say is that as a mother extraordinaire/a 25 hours per day housekeeper/a full-time student (seriously!) and so on, women in the Millennium have to be super-human to keep everything going, and particularly if they still want to do something for themselves, eg. quilt making.
This brings me onto my quilt idea. Two years ago I finished a very enjoyable and challenging City & Guilds at Morley College and ever since then I have been searching for that masterpiece of design for my next quilting project, a quilt for my bed. I have spent hours looking for new designs and sketching future quilts but I have always ended up with the feeling of "that's not good enough" or "I need to do better if I want to get this quilt into an exhibition" etc! One day I will produce a quilt of my wildest design dreams but right now the clock on the wall ticks very loudly.
Three weeks ago I had a revelation. I suddenly realised who I was making this quilt for: ME and my husband and no one else. So abandoning all my frustrating designs I settled on the idea of using my favourite blocks to build a sampler quilt . I now feel totally content making up this quilt that will lie on my bed and I am sure give me hours of pleasure in the future. (A point of difference in this quilt is that I have used pink - a colour I have never been that fond of but always wondered what I could do with it, so here we have it.)
To conclude, as a woman going into the millennium at break-neck speed my quilt is about my hopes and dreams that I can slow down a little in order to appreciate what I do and would like to do and stop chasing Utopian clocks and designs!
Happy quilting for the Millennium and do as I recently discovered: take the stress’ out of quilting. At the end of the day you are quilting for yourself and as the ad says "just do it"!
AUTUMN QUILT FESTIVALS
by Christine Restall
The Autumn Quilt Festival this year is exceptionally interesting. I went to see it at Ardingly, and other members may have caught it at Linton in mid-November. It was the Australian exhibit, 'Australian Bounty', chosen and presented by Dijanne Cevaal, which was the centrepiece and the main attraction. These quilts were 30 in number and all wonderful, without exception - strong in ideas, varied in concept, excellent in execution, many building on patchwork and quilting tradition, yet innovative to our eyes, graphic, colourful, and moving. Some incorporated embroidery and threads to great effect, others used novel types of piecing. I was delighted with them. Dijanne was there, working on her quilting, and selling a good catalogue.
In addition to the Australian quilts, the Fourth Horizon entries looked very good too - generally of a high standard, even if fewer than on previous occasions. London Quilters had three entries - Kate Cox, Alicia Merrett, and myself - and I'm very happy to say that Alicia won the silver award with her lovely quilt Blue Planet - Red Earth. I also thought that the overall winner - Sheena Norquay's Caithness Colours - was very beautiful.
For traditional patchwork lovers, sampler quilts by the students of Lynne Edwards were both interesting and well-made - good to see so many large bed quilts hanging together, a splendid sight. There were interesting night sky themed hangings from the Two Square Feet group, plus the winning quilts from the Hoffman Challenge 2000, and a small but classy entry for the Quilt Festival High Noon Challenge. A nice-sized exhibition, and really varied and interesting.
IRENE
MACWILLIAM¹S WORKSHOP
17TH OCTOBER 2000
by Christine Restall
Irene gave us a most enjoyable
workshop, not only showing us how to do machine appliqué with relative
ease (she basically uses Linda Straw's method of working from the back, and
explains it with great clarity) - but also giving us lots of extra interesting
information and help on sewing (of course) but other things too. Particularly
striking was how to arrange your sewing machine table, chair and anatomy to
be relaxed ("Those with a large bust should rest it on the table!").
We all made, and mostly finished, attractive pieces, and had a very pleasant
time, too. Many thanks to Kate Cox for arranging it.
SUE WADEMAN WORKSHOP
by Alicia Merrett
Sue taught her technique of fabric collage, which was eagerly absorbed and put into practice by a good number of participants, not all of them London Quilters. Collage is quite a different technique from appliqué, it is freer and more relaxed in nature, and very suitable for the expression of feelings and emotions. Sue is an excellent teacher, and she successfully puts across the originality and diversity of her work as a quilter in the very different environment of first Australia, and now New Zealand. Everybody was very pleased with what they achieved in this workshop.
FABULOUS
FABRICATIONS -
The Wonderful Work of Wild Wild Women
by Claire Crocker
Mill Lane Gallery, London NW6 Sept
12-23, 2000
An exhibition by Kate Cox & Alicia Merrett
This exhibition was an impressive
collection of quilts and other textile pieces. Quilts hung in a proper gallery
space are always striking - all credit due to Kate for securing the space.
Kate's work in the exhibition,
which included some of her pieced and quilted coats and embroideries, as well
as wall quilts, was figurative, focusing on landscape elements - trees, waterfalls,
leaves - in quilts such as
Springtime Silver Birches, Waterfall and Guildford Road November 1999. She
creates richly varied textures in a kind of fabric collage by layering and
overlaying a wide and eclectic selection of fabrics such as net, organza,
sheers, metallics and satins as well as traditional cottons, with almost
impressionistic effect. She also uses very dense machine stitching to create
a striking intensity. Her aim seems not to create a realistic account of her
subject, but to convey emotion by focusing on one item. I also liked a simpler
piece, Water/Sky?, which Kate explains was inspired by a beautiful piece of
hand-dyed fabric which suggested sky or water to her. It forms the background
to a design of leaves and branches, and is simply machine quilted in metallic
thread, which glints beautifully to suggest fluid movement. Her appliqué
coats are fun, funky pieces, adorned with tropical fish or art deco
faces, and found objects. A fellow guest at the private view was sporting
a commissioned waistcoat - clearly desirable pieces.
Alicia's work is more abstract. Her titles - The Alchemist's Journey, Tales of Tsars and Treasures, Divertimento for Piano and Spectrum - paint the world of the imaginary. She explores luminosity, using many brilliant jewel-coloured plain fabrics glowing out against a black background. In one way she uses simple colour combinations, like rainbows, and simple shapes - squares, circles - but the ultimate effect has 'something of the night' about it, with the subtle colour modulations of hand-dyed fabrics. This work seems rooted in the spooky dark shadows of fairy-tale, and simple, relatively sparse quilting lines depicting stars and circles meander across her quilts like hieroglyphs and alchemical symbols. Alicia also works to environmental themes in pieces such as Blue Planet, Red Earth, but still uses the same glowing colour combinations. The brilliance of these colours is picked up by her use of brightly coloured quilting thread in the bobbin, so that the back of her work is magically decorative also. Both quilters talk keenly of further development of their ideas - I look forward to seeing future pieces.
QUILT
2000
by Linda Seward
Subtitled "The Best in Contemporary
Quilts," this show, held at Alexandra Palace in October (and then going
on to Dublin and Harrogate) was well worth visiting. The show was hung more
sympathetically than the previous year, with more room for spectators to view
the quilts and more space between the
quilts themselves.
This year there was no doubt that the winning quilt deserved its accolades It must have been an extremely difficult decision for the judges, however, because there were a good number of wonderful quilts from which to choose. Nevertheless, Elizabeth Brimelow¹s Appeltrebankes was a popular choice, and there was a general feeling of approval in the winning selection because the quilt was visually pleasing with lots of interesting techniques: appliqué, reverse appliqué and slashing. Some other memorable quilts were Janice Gunner¹s Carnival, a bright and stimulating departure from her other work, and Irene MacWilliam¹s Red Hot Chilli--very colourful and textural. Sandra Meech¹s 5 Days in May - pages from an Arctic Journal gave the viewer much to look at, while Joanna Waller¹s Architectural Quilt (is it really a quilt??) provided an interesting contrast to the rest of the pieces in the show. The catalogue was well produced.
INTERNET INFORMATION
The London Quilters website address
is:
http://members.tripod.co.uk/London Quilters/lq1.htm
It is run and maintained by Tricia Revest, whose e-mail is: p.a.revest@qmul.ac.uk