Festival 2006

I was so intensely involved with the organising of the 2006 National Quilt Festival in Port Elizabeth which left me with very little time to quilt.   I did however design and oversee the making of a raffle quilt to raise funds for the festival.   As the theme of the festival was "Sands of Time", it lent itself to a traditional type of quilt.   Also, the public who would generally buy raffle tickets, were more likely to buy a raffle ticket for a bed quilt than a piece of wall art.  

I tend to prefer machine stitching to hand sewing, but I do love hand sewn stained glass applique work.    I brainstormed with my friend Joc Honeyborne who again love Celtic work about the feasability of making a stained glass quilt.    As we needed help to make this quilt, we identified quilters who had experience with either stained glass applique or Celtic work.     Fortunately everybody who were approached to help us sew, were very willing to help make this quilt.    The quilt had to be designed in such a way that we could cut and prepare each section and hand out ready for sewing.   We gave a deadline for the work to be completed after which I put all the different sections together.    It was a great sense of relief when all the sections fitted perfectly.   All the joining seams were hidden under the bias strips....     We used a very dark grey fabric for the endless bias strips patiently made by Joc.    I painted fabric for the quilt in pinks and greens, a safe colour choice for the masses.

The quilt was hand quilted by Dorothy Proctor-Golding in record time and eventually raised a substantial amount of money for festival funds.    One of our members bought a ticket on behalf of her daughter who lives in Australia and she was the lucky winner of the quilt.

Floral Window 2006 Raffle Quilt

The success of a festival depends on 3 very important aspects - a stunning display of world class quilts, wonderful and interesting workshops and of course the shopping mall....    Normally all other things take second place...   As in 1998 (when we also hosted the National Festival in Port Elizabeth), we decided to make the teachers small quilts with their names on to hang outside the classrooms on their teaching days.   It was eye catching and created a lovely atmosphere to walk along the corridors past all these little name banners....   I was asked to make the banners for the 3 teachers from overseas and I decided to use a South African theme and embellish it with ethnic beadwork.    As I did not know the teachers personally, it was a bit difficult to decide on colour, but I peeped around on their websites and hoped that I got it right......

The three name banners for Doerte Bach, Jenny Bowker and Pam Holland, the International Teachers at the 2006 Sands of Time National Quilt Festival held in Port Elizabeth

It is always lovely to receive such a personal gift at a Festival....  

Next time I will show you my studio as I have promised some time ago....    I have tidied, took some photographs and since then, created havoc once more....