More quilts and more variety at the Newark Quilt Show

In this final post from the Newark Quilt Show I’m sharing many more of the fabulous quilts on display, and I think they’re somewhere in between Alicia Merrett’s modern quilts and Carolyn Forster’s traditionally scrappy quilts, but still just as amazing and beautiful in their own right.

Many, like the Jubilee quilt below, are made from scraps collected over many years - so that brings me some solace!

JUBILEE, JANET BEVAN

The bold quilt below is by Australian artist Brenda Wood and reflects her love of colour and shapes in her local environment, and as the blurb said truly does take an ‘in-depth and close up look at shape, colour and texture.’ For me it’s the attention to detail, even on the binding - it’s not just plain black, but some has that barcode pattern which brings further interest.

FLIGHTS OF FANCY, BRENDA WOOD

The quilts by Gillian Travis were full of colour and full of memories from her travels - both of which looked amazing!

BURANO WINDOWS, GILLIAN TRAVIS

There were also quilts by the Pearoom Quilters based in Lincolnshire who responded to the challenge to produce a piece reflecting time in any way, using the log cabin block as their starting point. Unsurprisingly when you ask creative people to approach something like this, there were many interpretations - here are some of my favourites:

SUNDAY AFTERNOON, DI BELL

NUMBER 7, MARY JACKSON

ALL THE SEASONS’ COLOURS, SALLY WARREN

MAY TIME BY PAM BUNKER

There were so many in this part of the exhibition I could have chosen to share though, and narrowing it down to four quilts was hard enough.

But that wasn’t all, there’s another quilt that is absolutely stunning coming up…

THE COLOURS OF LOVE, HELEN BURNHAM

Helen made this as a wedding gift for her mathematician godson and his wife of Indian heritage - who have generously lent it back again according to the card alongside it. I do wonder just how much they’ve seen of it as I’m sure this one is in demand from all the quilt shows!

AFRICAN KELS, JANET BEVAN

One of the things I took from the quilts on display is that a quilt can be anything you want it to be - bold, bright, modern, traditional or anything in between. Whichever it is it’s most certainly made with love, and by someone who loves to create.

So often we focus on the small detail forgetting the bigger picture - I’m sure there’s a life lesson in there too!

Alicia Merrett's wow factor quilts at the Newark Quilt Show

In my first post from the Newark Quilt Show, where I admired Carolyn Forster’s quilts, I promised to show you more of the quilts on display, however I realised there were so many more that I wanted to share that I’d need to break them into smaller sections and do that over at least a couple more posts.

So in this post I’ll share something completely different to Carolyn’s quilts, but no less amazing. Here Alicia Merrett’s quilts were grouped under the title ‘Ways of Seeing’ and it’s obvious that she loves colour and texture. Alicia says that ‘beauty and feelings are important’ to her and she tries 'to convey them in her work, searching for the ‘wow’ factor’.

Alicia says her current work is ‘mostly abstract and is the result of experiments with photography, iPad apps and computer design’. The digital paintings are played with, altered, changed and distorted often with several layers being superimposed. The final designs are printed on fabric, then layered and machine stitched.

It’s a completely different approach to the quilts I shared in the previous post, but I think it’s fair to say that Alicia has definitely succeeded as her quilts definitely have the wow factor and are also beautiful works of art.

ALICIA MERRETT: DECODING THE RAINBOW

As you’ll see the rainbow is Alicia’s main source of colours, for the quilt above she says that ‘it seems as if the rainbow has an almost undecipherable code hidden within it, defiantly asking us to discover its meaning’ and so the computer code like letters accentuate that. Maybe that’s why we’re fascinated with rainbows, we’re trying to understand them as well as admire their beauty.

Alicia describes this next quilt as a ‘magical kind of Urban Jungle’ to me it has a hint of moroccan spice to it, but as for other pieces of art, we each interpret them differently and they can be many things to many people.

ALICIA MERRETT: URBAN JUNGLE

I really like this next quilt, though it’s hard to chose an absolute favourite from any of these. I think this one appeals as it is so dramatic, and so different - and once you know it’s called Eye of the Storm, that almost pulls you in too. Look closely and you’ll see the quilting is exquisite, but it also has a serious meaning the card alongside it reminding us we all need to take action, governments and individuals, as there is no Planet B.

ALICIA MERRETT: EYE OF THE STORM

Though her work Alicia also explores colour further as waves of colour transmitting through the air which become particles when on the fabric. I don’t know about that but this interpretation does make for a fascinating quilt.

ALICIA MERRETT: WAVES OF COLOUR

I also enjoyed the smaller quilts on display purely for the colour, the contrast and their designs, as well as the amount of work that’s gone into creating these. Of the four below, the Colour Burst quilt (top right) is my favourite, I think that matches most closely to how colour explodes for me.

ALICIA MERRETT: HILLSIDE VILLAGE AND COLOUR BURST QUILTS

ALICIA MERRETT: LITTLE BOXES AND DANCING SQUARES QUILTS

This last quilt which I’m sharing is one that I think you could look at for a while, and it’s the sort of image that could take your imagination in different ways depending on your mood. Knowing this is titled ‘The Colour of Nature’ initially leads me to see a garden pond with flowers, lily pads and frogs - though I suspect this isn’t quite its intention, and you may see something else entirely.

ALICIA MERRETT: THE COLOUR OF NATURE

But isn’t that the beauty of these magnificent quilts, they allow your mind and imagination to roam?

Starting to look back at Gardeners' World Live

* I was invited to the press preview for and provided with a pair of tickets to Gardeners’ World Live so I’m marking posts from the show as 'Ad’ - as usual my views and opinions are very much my own.

This morning I’ve been looking through and editing more of my photos from Gardeners’ World Live last June, with everything else that’s gone on in the past year I seem to have been even worse than normal at keeping up with this. It’s been an ideal task for today as we’re waiting in for multiple deliveries - some of which are more exciting than others, but as we’ve grouped them to arrive on the same day where we can, it doesn’t feel like time wasted. It’s also a good time of year for me to do this (though it’d be better to do it throughout the year!) as I’m not a big fan of January, which I agree seems to go on forever, plus the weather so far hasn’t been great for getting out into the garden either.

So what better way to get my garden fix. I had to smile to myself though when I saw the name of this beautiful garden - SubAqua - it almost sums up the dire weather we’ve had this winter, where there’s been a lot of water about. Either the day of rain we had with Storm Babet back in October, or the more recent Storm Henk, thankfully there wasn’t quite so much rain with Storms Isha and Jocelyn, but the wind was something else.

I’m sure many of us can relate to the wet conditions around the country and beyond this winter, the weather has felt never ending and times, and seeing the disruption and damage it’s brought to villages across our local area is sobering. I’m hoping that we won’t continue on this record breaking storm season for much longer, and I’m very much looking forward to more spring-like weather.

Despite this introduction though this isn’t about the storms, but a beautiful and tranquil garden which incorporates a pond into its space in an unexpected way. And as you can see the pictures are from a much warmer summer’s day, you can just feel the warmth.

The garden is designed by Joshua Fenton who acknowledges that ‘most people can’t afford to give up too much space in their garden to house a large pond despite knowing that it brings a tranquil quality to a garden and brings many benefits to the local wildlife.’

And so in this garden the seating area outside the garden room is suspended above a pond, which not only allows for the space to be fully utilised but also enables planting and provides that oh so calming sounds of water.

Clever, hey?

But it’s more than just the pond, just look at the planting.

It also incorporates my favourite corten steel planters, and with the plants tumbling over the edge towards the coolness of the path - well, it just makes you want to pull up a lounger and relax.

And what a space to relax in.

For me this is one of those gardens you could escape to, and while I admire it and the work behind it, it’s not something for our new garden, though I would be very tempted to have an area/bed planted with similar plants - but I just need to work out how, and where - and how it would fit into the overall design - something we’re not even close to properly considering, yet!

Now that I’ve made a good start on editing my photos from last year’s show, I’ll start to share them here more regularly - with the hope that I’ll get through them in time for the show this June - well, that’s the plan anyway…

* With thanks to Gardeners’ World for inviting me to Gardeners’ World Live, it was as fabulous as ever!