British Quilt and Stitch Village Show Championship Quilt

Time to reveal all! This weekend the British Quilt and Stitch Village show is on at Uttoxeter Racecourse in Staffordshire. Today is the last day that you can visit, if you're in that area. It's a relatively new show and I've entered it quite successfully in the previous years but never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined what happened this year! My quilt Klimtesque (seen above and read more about it here) came first in the Innovative Quilt section. And also..........drumroll please......... won the overall championship. All that glorious news came in a phone call on Friday afternoon.  I probably sounded completely daft to the person who was giving me those glad tidings as I was so totally taken by surprise (and our dismal phone connection didn't help either).

Above a detail of the quilt that started life as a series of monthly journal quilts made in 2013, inspired by the Austrian artist Gustav Klimt. I put all the separate journal quilts together into one quilt
.

And then, yesterday afternoon, the phone went again and this time I was told that the other quilt I had entered, The Colours of Burano (see above)  had taken 1st Prize in the Modern Quilt section. Oh yes! I made even less sense during that call, I strongly suspect! One of these days I will write a post here about the whole Modern Quilt movement. Enough at the moment to say that although the movement itself is quite new, when I look back on my previous quilts going back to 1998 or so, some of those quilts are what now is typically understood to be  "modern quilts". I have been an individual member of the Modern Quilt Guild in the US for a few years.

The pictures are from my archives as the quilts themselves won't be back home till a few weeks yet but when they do arrive they will be accompanied by a brand new Brother sewing machine which is what I won for producing the Championship Quilt. There will also be some trophies! And rozettes!  You'll see them here!

Of course I still needed to take a photo for the Blipfoto site, and that needed to be taken today. And it seemed very appropriate to take this snap shot of my desk where in prominent sight is that card (from Tamara Laporte) with the message every artist (maybe apart from Picasso!) needs to keep telling his or herself, whatever they win or sell: " You are Good Enough" There is always that niggly voice in his or her head saying: " that win was just an accident" , or: "you will never again produce anything that good" and "just who do you think you are?" . That voice is still strong in me although I am getting a lot better at beating it down. That's what that card is there for and one day I hope it's message will get through to me and I will learn to believe in myself!