Great Northern Quilt Show 2011

I had a lovely time at the quilt show in Harrogate on Sunday (and even saw Katy from I'm a ginger monkey but didn't say hello...sorry about that and "Hello, Katy, lovely to meet you!") but before I tell you about it I'll just make a couple of mentions...

Judith at Rags to Bags is holding a giveaway for River Fabrics and you could win ten fat quarters of Momo Freebird and what's more you get to choose which two bundles of five you would like (choose from brown, green or blue/orange colourways) so please pop over and leave a comment by Friday 9th September - good luck!

I'm a few days late but Rebecca has posted her weekly update on her Tumbling Blocks Challenge - she's had a tough week (one of her beloved Teacup Yorkies has gone missing) so she hasn't quite hit her target for this week but if you could pop over and encourage her I know she'll appreciate it.

Right, back to the quilt show!  I'm assuming that this notice...

...means I'm not allowed to show photos on my blog but Ferret has written a blog post about her work in the show and Susan Briscoe has a few blog posts about the show which include her quilts which were exhibited there and some quilts that were entered by people she knows.

Happily all that doesn't stop me taking and showing photos of my own quilt.  I found it difficult to decide which category to enter this into and I ended up putting it in the small wall hanging (up to 60"x60" which seems large for a 'small hanging'!) as it was that or the bed quilt category which I didn't really feel it belonged to either...unfortunately there wasn't a category for 'bright quilts that I made because I felt like it and didn't give a thought about what I'm going to do with it or which category it would belong to' but you can't have everything, can you?!!

Without further ado (drum roll please!) I present to you 'Going in circles'

The colours are a little dull in this photo (lighting not great) the colour is better here in my Flickr stream

I will confess to being a bit disappointed when I saw it as I'd spent an hour blocking it (and 48 hours keeping the dogs off it while it dried!) before I rolled and posted it and it was perfectly flat and even when I sent it and the first thing I spotted was the (ok, slight) wave on the edge.  However I soon got a grip of myself (well, it took about 45 minutes if I'm perfectly honest!) and was happy with how it looked.  You can just see the label on the lower left hand side of the quilt - I kid you not, this description took hours to write and involved a lengthy phone call to my dad (who's very good with words) to ensure it read well!

The quilt measures 56"x56".  The circles were appliqued by hand (needle turn) and the blocks were joined by machine.  I added trapunto to the circles to make them puffy (I wanted a textured look that made you want to touch the quilt and used Polydown wadding for the same reason) and then hand quilted spirals to add more texture and movement.  The spirals were quilted using brightly coloured Coats cotton (the type I use for piecing) as I wanted to see the texture of the quilting from a distance and then see the colours when I was closer to the quilt.

Some of the spirals took at least two hours to complete but I love them!

This quilt also inspired a workshop - I taught the techniques needed and they made a version of this cushion, unfortunately I don't have any photos of what they made but they were lovely!

Say hello to Panda!

It was lovely to see my quilt hanging up there - I got a bit bashful while I was stood near it and so didn't hang around!  I didn't hear any nice comments about it but neither did I hear any nasty ones and I'm already thinking about entering next year.  (Although I wasn't given an application form when I collected my quilt so maybe that's a not-so-subtle message?!)

I think that's quite enough for now (congratulations for making it this far - one day I will manage to write a short post!) so I'll leave the photos of my goodies and impressions of the show (going to be difficult without photos!) for another day.  I can't leave you without a photo of Archie, though...I love the way he arranges his legs when he's asleep and frequently looks like he's got more than two front paws...

Alfie has been to stay today and livened up breakfast by pouncing on Archie at every opportunity - this was taken during a rest period!

Archie spends most of his time on this bed (except in winter when it's far too cold out there!) and Alfie decided to see what the attraction was - I don't think he found it!  You can just see Archie's back on the bottom right of the photo - he was stretched out on the floor...

And then there's what I did before I sat down to write this post

Answers on a postcard!

Hope everyone is having a lovely day!

Edited to add: Melissa at Happy Quilting is having an Aurifil giveaway - you have until 8th September to enter, good luck!