Fire and Ice Quilt

Apart from the exhibitions the Loch Lomond Quilt Show also runs two competitions during each show. One is for quilters living in Scotland only and the other one is international, and anyone can enter. The theme for the latter competition this year was Rejigged, and that is the one I decided to make a quilt for. I already knew that I wanted to make the quilt based on the severe winters we have here in Scotland which are sometimes accompanied by the most amazing sunsets. Probably sunrises too but I'm not usually awake to see those. I prefer staying up late to rising early! So sunset over icy waters was my inspiration.

To stay with the Rejigged theme I decided to use as my background some left over blocks from the above quilt. The quilt is called Gazania Galore and was finished in 2003 (180 cm square). It's a quilt that in itself was also rejigged as I undid it after having done much of the quilting already (not a good idea!) and that paid off as it did win the 1st Prize in the Expressive Quilt section at the National Quilt Championships in Sandown 2004. If you look closely at the above picture you will see that it's one in my series of quilts where the seam allowance is on the outside.

The blocks that hadn't made it into that quilt were kept in my studio and sometime in the intervening years I sewed them together, this time in the conventional way with the seam allowances on the inside. This was my starting point for the Fire and Ice quilt and determined what size it would be. It ended up 33.3/4" wide x 46" long or 86 x 117.1/2 cm.

I then rejigged lots of the yarns I had left over from my knitting days and put together a landscape with the fire and ice ingredients by simple machine couching, using a zigzag machine stitch. The open areas were filled in with seed stitching by hand as well as beading. It's hard to tell on the picture but this quilt is extremely sparkly with embellishments and also with the sparkly yarns I used. I have always been a magpie so even the yarns I used to knit with are mainly glittery! You will see that this quilt is related closely to the Thread Tangle quilt still on show at the Tweeddale Gallery (more info in a previous post here), so even the method I used is rejigged!

I further rejigged as the fabric I used for the back of the quilt was used on the front in the very  first quilt I ever entered into the first Loch Lomond Quilt Show, now 9 years ago. I thought that would make a nice link.

It was wonderful to see that this new but rejigged quilt is now hanging at the 9th show accompanied with a Highly Commended certificate as well as a Judge's Choice by the American quilter Katie Pasquini Mosopust as you can see. This just had to be my blip for today!

It was great listening to all the comments on my 52 Journals exhibition and many blippers that I had only met online thus far were also present in person! Thanks so much for coming!

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