British-German Stash Quilts

The past week has been among the more miserable of my life so far although on the other hand no-one died or was even seriously injured and on the further plus side I have also been overwhelmed by all the kind messages I have received regarding the postponement of the opening of the colour - quilts - collage exhibition. And all the walks to relieve the tension must have done me some good too!

I was particularly impressed by Popular Patchwork Magazine who have put the information about the change of date prominently on their homepage. Thank you!!

But life has to move on and so do I. It was a fellow artist who put her finger exactly on what the major problem would be. I found it almost impossible to return to my studio and actually do some work. Oh, I did get on with answering e-mails and getting to grips with updating everyone but hardly any art came out of my hands while that is usually how I sort out problems. I go and art. For now that all seems a bit pointless, and I'm also not in the right frame of mind.

Actually going and being in the studio is the only way to solve this artist block, so I'm pleased to report I've done quite a lot of tidying away while waiting for the muse to strike. I also looked around for fun stuff to do and one of the things I came across was the British-German Stash Quilt Challenge issued by the Quilters' Guild of the British Isles.

You have to be a member of either the British or the German quilting guilds to participate and the idea is to put together a package of fabrics from your stash, together approx. 1 M, and send them to the Guild. Quilters in Germany will do the same thing and then the bags will be exchanged. You can see the fabrics I put together above and at the beginning of June I will receive a similar package from an as yet unknown German quilter.

Then you make a quilt with the fabrics you've received as well as more fabrics from your own stash. The resulting quilts have to be 32" long x 16" wide and 60 of them (30 from each country) will be on show at the Festival of Quilts, Birmingham, 2012. My fabrics include some from Africa (the brightly patterned one) and Japan (the flowers) plus some matching fat quarters. Can't wait to see what someone in Germany is going to do with them!

And finally (this is going to be a returning addition to every blog post till the exhibition opens on the 23rd April), don't forget about the change of date. Read all the details here.