Tod und Leben Quilt wins price at Open European Quilt Championship

I was phoned from The Netherlands today to receive the glad tidings that my quilt Tod und Leben has won the 3rd price in the Advanced Section of the Open European Quilt Championships, held in Veldhoven in The Netherlands. My Dutch reply was no doubt quite garbled as I was so unprepared to start talking in what used to be my mother tongue but hopefully I did make some sense.

The block I used for this quilt was inspired by a small detail on Klimt's painting Tod und Leben(hence the name!), which translates as Death and Life in English, and Klimt was also the inspiration for the added embellishments of beads and buttons. He was a master of decorative painting. The quilt was designed using EQ5 where I draw the block and played with it till I achieved what I wanted. Inspiration also came from a long and narrow horizontal window in my neighbours' house who is an architect. I tend to prefer vertical quilts and hangings but his window persuaded me to try a horizontal orientation for a change.

Unlike most of my work, this quilt is quite dark as after all Tod (or Death in English) is not a cheerful personality, and to my surprise I really liked working with the darker batiks and I can easily see more dark quilts popping up in future.