Colour Relationships by Colorminds

As we walked around the exhibition halls at the Festival of Quilts out of the corner of my eye I kept getting glimpses of a gallery full of colour, and there’s a lot of colour in those halls. But these bursts of colour were different, as you’ll see.

Eventually as we worked our way around the suppliers and amongst the quilts on display it was time to stop and enjoy the Colorminds gallery. Colorminds are a Dutch group of eight art quilters who’ve worked together since 2013 and who aim to inspire each other while creating high quality colour driven textile art.

In their display titled ‘Colour Relationships’ they showed seven series of how colours interact visually and emotionally, highlighting contrast and harmony and how hue, tone and intensity along with warm and cool colours influence each other.

I took way too many pictures of this exhibition to show here, but even with this relatively small selection I think you’ll be able to see why I was wowed.

I’m not surprised that I was drawn to the quilts shown above and immediately below, as they all are ‘my colours’ so I guess it’s natural to be pulled towards those. But the more you look, the more you see - as with everything, but the level of detail on each of these quilts is definitely to be admired and something to aim for, that’s for sure.

The following quilts aren’t in my natural colour palette, or not fully anyway, but I was also drawn to these especially the dots and detail on the one below. It’s mind blowing isn’t it?

I’m so glad I spent some time looking at and enjoying these quilts, and I’m also glad that I didn’t rush over to them at first glance, but instead let them tease and tempt me until it was time!

And as good as these quilts looked individually, displayed as a series you really get the whole picture of how the colour relationships work. It was hard though to capture the overall effect like this from each series of quilts, which was a shame really, but I had to share one of these series photos (chair and all) to help explain the complete mind blowing-ness of this colourful gallery of quilts.

Even looking back at these photos now some six months on I can see why people say you need more than one day at the Festival of Quilts, I think you’d definitely take more in but I also think you’d still never quite have had your fill!

If you enjoyed this post from my visit to the Festival of Quilts 2025 then please do check out my other posts from the show. Even though my mind was blown by the sheer volume of quilts on display, I’m pretty sure I’ll be going again!

The gardens at Coleton Fishacre in winter

Coleton Fishacre is one of the gardens in Devon we visit most times we’re in Devon, but it’s been a very long while since I shared it here on my blog - I’m not sure why. But anyway we last visited in December and our visit coincided with some of the celebrations to celebrate their centenary, which also included a visit to the Speakeasy for proper (but understandably tiny) cocktails.

The weather was wet - on reflection it’s not only been wet so far this year, there was so much water around for our pre-Christmas visit, but thankfully we mostly got a chance to take a look at the gardens during one of the breaks in the weather.

And even though it was a wet, wintery day there was still plenty to see around the gardens - and still plenty of colour. We even spotted our first daffodil in flower, in early December - eek!

The colour was more autumnal in other parts of the garden, and this remains of the flowering seedhead from what I think is a ginger lily was typical of the colours on show. Isn’t it fantastic?

Like many gardens in Devon and Cornwall, this one heads down towards the coast, though in this case where the gardens end you reach the coastal path on the clifftops, rather than the sea but with the amount of plants it’s clear to see that the garden has its own microclimate. But even so I was surprised to see the new lush growth on the banana plants with leaves ready to unfurl themselves.

The burnished autumnal leaves were more what I expected and it was great to catch this in a burst of sunshine and to bask in its warm, however briefly.

It was no surprise that the stream through the garden, and especially in the Rill garden (not pictured) was full and fast flowing given all the rain that had fallen in the past few days brought by the Storm Bram, which was almost a memory now that we were among these more tropical plants.

Then I stopped to pick up one of these fallen fruits, curious as to what it could be. While it looks strawberry-ish, it’s harder than that more apple in texture, but clearly not an apple. It almost looks as if its from a more Mediaeval time doesn’t it?

It’s actually the fruit of a dogwood, and gloriously so. I think we’ve seen them here before but never from my dogwoods in my own garden.

As you’d expect in the damp mossy parts of the garden there were plenty of funghi growing amongst them, and if the skies didn’t look quite so heavy I might have had more pictures to share, but instead as we were at the furthest point away from the house we decided to head back before getting rained on again.

But that didn’t stop me snapping a couple of hastily taken shots of these gorgeously coloured berries, and the start of a camellia - again that’s early, surely?

We only made it halfway back up to the house before the drizzle got heavier, but we stopped in the gazebo for shelter and were rewarded with this amazing, if not a little misty, view.

We weren’t there for long though before the weather passed over, and our patience was rewarded with a clearer view over the garden. Coleton is a great place to visit, even in winter. Now my challenge is to visit in sunnier weather to show you how glorious the garden can be all year round.

A British Rainforest

* I was invited to the Gardeners’ World Live show and provided with a pair of tickets to the show, therefore all my posts will be marked as 'Ad’ though as usual my views and opinions are very much my own.

Given the amount of rain we’ve had this year I thought it topical to share this garden designed by Chris North, as the title caught my eye as I was scrolling through my photos of the gardens that I still want to share from the 2025 show.

It was a fascinating garden, or Beautiful Border, and it was easy to see why it was awarded Platinum.

Chris said that his border ‘encapsulates a regenerating rainforest, underplanted with native British flora’ and aims to ‘raise awareness of these magical woodlands and the need to protect them.’

Temperate rainforests are globally important habitats found in mild climates with particularly high rainfall and humidity. They’re rarer than their tropical counterparts but are rich in biodiversity which supports populations of ferns, mosses and liverworts. Though the remaining rainforests in western Britain are threatened by deforestation and overgrazing.

Alongside the planting, I particularly liked the iron fern frond sculptures inserted into the space, and I would happily have left the show with a couple of sets of these had I seen them. I didn’t get a chance to speak to the designer either as both times we visited the border he was being held deep in conversation by someone else, and the same someone else, which was a little frustrating! We waited both times, but it was clear the conversation wasn’t ending anytime soon, so I left with just the pictures - and wondering how MOH could replicate these, I do like to give him a challenge!

I do love a fern or two, and it’s something we don’t have in our garden here. After having so many growing, and self propagating, in our previous garden now that I think of it it seems odd for us to have none at all. I’m sure though, that’s something I can correct!

These sculptural mushrooms also looked right at home in the garden, I’m not sure they’re something I’d go for, and if I did I’m not sure I could make them look this natural either. At least not in the timescales required for the build for a show.

Isn’t it an amazing space, and doesn’t it make you think differently about the lush green plants that are native to where we live?

* With thanks to Gardeners’ World for inviting me to Gardeners’ World Live, it was quite a show! I’ll be sharing more from my visit to this year’s show throughout the year - I hope you enjoy them as much as I did the show.