Journal Quilts 2008 Contemporary Group

Four of the Journal Quilts I made for the Contemporary Group of the Quilter's Guild of the British Isles are going to be exhibited at the Harrogate Fashion & Embroidery show during the first weekend in October. This event used to be known as the Madeira show and I still think of it as that but the name changed quite a few years ago. Regular readers will know that these JQs are dedicated to Venice this year, the city of my dreams, and are each 12" square.

So they are off on their journey but not until I had a hard time agonizing over which of the 8 I have made so far to select. In the end I went for the 4 which looked best together rather than the 4 I liked the best and after putting them together I was pleased I had done so. They really look great. They are clockwise from the top left: January, February, July and June.

At the same time there have been furious discussions on the Quiltart mailing list about the selection of the JQs for Houston. For the first time ever this is a juried exhibition as I explained on an earlier blog, with the theme of the Four Elements, and my JQ Flames of Passion was lucky enough to get in.

The discussion made up Karey Bresenhan's mind not to repeat this again and this will now definitely be the last year the JQs will be in Houston. Karey was the guiding light for the JQ project and the editor of the book dedicated to them. Perhaps she is right and I can well understand that all the uproar has seriously disturbed her as she is gifting us with the exhibition opportunity for only a small contribution to the posting costs and maybe too, the project has simply run its course but I will really miss it!