Bloggers' Quilt Festival

I've notice lately that some of the blogs I read have entered their quilts on the Bloggers' Quilt Festival run by Amy on Amy's Creative Side, so I have decided I would join in the fun on this online quilt exhibition.  At the time of writing this post there are almost 500 people from all corners of the "blogisphere".

So here is my entry which does have a story to tell.  This is my Oriental Fan quilt which I made almost a year ago at a weekend workshop that I thought I would treat myself to for my birthday at the end of November.

I was living in Yorkshire at the time and this workshop was held at the Silver Thimble Workshops between York and Malton.  The tutor was Pat Archibald, whose quilts I have admired and really looked forward to this but what I'd not bargained for was the weather as I hadn't ever experienced snowfall before the end of November! The weather was exceptional for last year.

Anyhow we were all ready for a weekend away as David and I were staying in a hotel just outside Malton, which looked really nice (it was quite a good hotel) after the first day of the workshop.  David was keeping himself entertained going into York for the National Railway Museum and doing some Christmas shopping.  There had been falls of snow in the north eastern counties and north of York and a small flurry where we were living and some doubt in my mind whether the workshop would take place, but indeed it was.  Once off the main road, which was clear, to the Silver Thimble the snow was about 4" deep and we just made it down the lane.  There were snow flurries during the course of the day which others there who were local worried about and the sky had that greyness about it. So it finished early and David and I departed to our hotel. The next day was just as bad, David had trouble getting out of York to collect me and it took us 3 hours for a less than one hour journey to get home.

About the quilt - the workshop was called "Ghost Images of the Orient" where there was a choice of 2 patterns - the fan or the boat - and the sheer images created by layers of net going from dark to almost faint in the top fan.  The curve to the left of the quilt was appliqued on after making the curve with stitching very close to the turned edge.  The quilt was layered up and the left side was quilted (I stitched echo quilting following the curve) before the fans were stitched and there was further quilting to follow when I used some gold metallic thread to machine stitch some stars.

Earlier this year we moved back to Poole and by chance at the regional meeting of the Quilters Guild in June one of the speakers was Pat, so I had an opportunity to show her my quilt from the workshop.

I hope you enjoyed my story and I'll have lots of quilts to see too.