Thursday, February 26, 2009
Martina Curtis's Quilts at the North Sea Quilters and Friends exhibition
"I had collected the fabric some years ago and decided to use the Lady of the Lake design for them. Edge to Edge quilted on a Gammill® Classic Plus quilting machine."
"Created for a challenge held at the Festival of Quilts, at the NEC in Birmingham. Freehand quilted on a Gammill® Optimum Plus quilting machine."
Martina Curtis was born in the Netherlands but has been living in Ireland for the past 30 years. She is an award-winning quilter who has been quilting professionally on a Gammill® machine for over 8 years. She continues to advance her skills and is still a keen patchworker and quilter.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Beryl Cadman's Quilts at the North Sea Quilters and Friends exhibition
60” x 60”
This quilt was made using cotton sateen fabric. Quilting techniques are trapunto, hand-guided longarm machine quilting with crystals applied."
80” x 80”
"I have always loved silk fabric and have made several quilts with this material over the years.
This wholecloth quilt is made using 100% shot silk fabric. The design is a feathered wedding ring and it was quilted using a Statler Stitcher™ fully computerised quilting machine."
This quilt was made by a group of friends as a birthday gift for me. It was a surprise gift, they got together for a secret weekend to make and quilt this for me.
Cotton Fabrics, machine pieced and hand guided longarm machine quilting.
Beryl Cadman has lived in Castletownbere since moving to Ireland from Australia in 1997. A keen patchworker, she imported a Gammill® Quilting Machine shortly after her arrival and subsequently became a distributor in 2000. She has been actively involved in longarm education since this time. Beryl is the only accredited longarm teacher in Europe, having received recognised training from America’s Linda Taylor. She has taught all over Europe and at the Quilt Festival in Houston. She and her students have won numerous awards in the UK and Europe and her quilts have been exhibited all over the world including Yokohama, Japan. An active committee member of the Quilters Guild of Ireland, she is also a member of the Irish Patchwork Society, the Quilters Guild of Germany and an accredited quilt judge. She is also the co-founder of the European Machine Quilters Expo, which provides ongoing education to the longarm quilting community - web site: www.emqe.eu “Custom Quilting Limited has been in business for over eleven years. Many years of experience have taught us the skills and knowledge needed to provide our customers with the support they need to start a quilting business or invest in a hobby. We are the longest-standing dealer of Gammill® Quilting Machines and the Statler Stitcher™ fully computerised quilting system in Europe. We offer a fully integrated service including set-up and training, advanced tuition, maintenance instruction, and follow-up support provided locally.” You can contact Beryl on www.customquilt.com or phone: +353 27 70414
Irena Bluhm's Quilt at the North Sea Quilters and Friends Exhibition
54” x 54”
Cotton, cotton and polyester batting,
Cotton and polyester thread
Hawaiian Punch was started as a practice piece before stitching on my Paducah 2007 entry, but life did get in the way. My real Paducah entry has not been completed. I submitted Hawaiian Punch to the AQS Paducah instead and was not sure whether it would be accepted. It turned out, it was accepted and subsequently has won five awards at other shows. I used 100% cotton sateen for the top and backing and double batting
[polyester for the top and 80/20 for the bottom] to create the raised design effect. YLI variegated thread was used on the top and Maxilock in the bobbin. Maxilock was used for the background filler as well. After the quilting was complete, the color was applied using colored pencils and textile medium to make the color permanent. All flower centers are turned edge appliqué stitched using the needle position button on my Gammill® Optimum Plus.
This quilt won an Honorable Mention at Machine Quilters Showcase 2007, 2nd place Machine Quilting Excellence at Quilter’s Gathering 2007, 2nd Place, Innovative, Wall, Mixed at the Road 2 California 2008, Honorable Mention at Dallas Quilt Celebration 2008, Honorable Mention at Quilt Expo 2008 in Madison WI, USA.
Irena Bluhm is an award winning quilter, instructor, pattern designer and the author of 6 books. Irena is also a National Sales Representative for Gammill® Quilting Systems.
Irena Bluhm was born and raised in Poland. She moved to Germany in 1981 and then to the California, the United States, in 1991. After her husband retired in 2001, they purchased a 71-acre property in rural Antlers, Oklahoma where her large studio is located. With 18 years of garment making/design and 12 years of doing art for hobby, she has transitioned the experience in creating fine art and other skills into making quilts for shows and exhibits exclusively. Irena is very passionate about creating many different quilting design patterns, innovative ways of making show quality quilts, writing books and teaching.
Her enthusiasm is very contagious as she loves to share, encourage and inspire other quilters to try something new that they never thought they would be able to do. After long arm quilting for just a little over 1 year, Irena started teaching long arm quilting nationwide in March 2006 at many major venues MQX 2006, 2007, HMQS 2007, MQS 2007, AQS 2007 in Paducah, Innovations 2006 and 2007, MQS 2008, AQS Quilt Expo 2008 in Des Moines, Iowa, USA and Germany.
Irena is hoping that her encouraging nature, very contagious enthusiasm for creating art and what she loves to do is going to inspire many others to try her techniques. Some students, who participated in her workshops, are producing award winning quilts.
Since she started entering her work into major national and international quilt contests in 2005, she developed a strong and lasting passion for this art form. Her work has won 54 awards in national and international quilt contests. Among all awards, some of them are won at: IQF in Houston, AQS in Paducah and Nashville, Road 2 Ca, PIQF, NQA, MQS, MQX and Innovations to name just a few. She has designed hundreds of quilting patterns and only a very small portion has been published and is available on the market. She also has authored six books so far and more books are in progress.
www.irenabluhmscreations.com
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
North Sea Quilters and Friends Long-Arm Quilting Exhibition in Rijswijk
To have a feeling of the exhibition look at the photos, taken during the exhibition in the Patchwork en Quiltdagen in Rijswijk!
Monday, February 23, 2009
Challenge Quilts from the Long-arm Quilting Gallery - Part IV.
Designed and pieced by Krys Evans
90" x 90"
This quilt was designed and pieced by Krys Evans and quilted by Beryl Cadman for the Long-arm Gallery at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham 2008.
Beryl Cadman has lived in Castletownbere since moving to Ireland from Australia in 1997. A keen patchworker, she imported a Gammill® Quilting Machine shortly after her arrival and subsequently became a distributor in 2000. She has been actively involved in longarm education since this time. Beryl is the only accredited longarm teacher in Europe, having received recognised training from America’s Linda Taylor. She has taught all over Europe and at the Quilt Festival in Houston. She and her students have won numerous awards in the UK and Europe and her quilts have been exhibited all over the world including Yokohama, Japan. An active committee member of the Quilters Guild of Ireland, she is also a member of the Irish Patchwork Society, the Quilters Guild of Germany and an accredited quilt judge. She is also the co-founder of the European Machine Quilters Expo, which provides ongoing education to the longarm quilting community - web site: www.emqe.eu “Custom Quilting Limited has been in business for over eleven years. Many years of experience have taught us the skills and knowledge needed to provide our customers with the support they need to start a quilting business or invest in a hobby. We are the longest-standing dealer of Gammill® Quilting Machines and the Statler Stitcher™ fully computerised quilting system in Europe. We offer a fully integrated service including set-up and training, advanced tuition, maintenance instruction, and follow-up support provided locally.” You can contact Beryl on www.customquilt.com or phone: +353 27 70414
90” x 90”
Robyn Fahy moved to the small village of Drumquin, Co. Tyrone, Ireland from Margaret River in Western Australia 22 years ago. Her interest in patchwork began in 1992. Initially self-taught, she studied every book she could get her hands on. She has since been fortunate enough to travel widely, and take classes with many wonderful teachers in both patchwork and longarm quilting. About 8 years ago she began her career as a teacher when a local women’s group asked her to teach them patchwork. Since then she has owned her own quilt shop and now holds classes in her custom built studios at home. From there, she felt it was a natural progression to owning her own longarm quilting machine. She now has a hand-guided Gammill® Classic on which she does her own custom work and a Gammill Optimum Plus® Statler Stitcher™ for customer quilts.
90” x 90”
Myriam Debuscherre lives in Belgium and received her Gammill® Classic on 11 September 2001. She had her basic lessons during 2001 and 2002 and after practising a few years went to Dallas, Texas, to Linda Taylor’s studio. This was an absolutely perfect week, during which she learned more than she thought was possible.
In October 2006 she won the third prize in the Open European Quiltchampionships in Waalre, the Netherlands.
She is anxiously awaiting delivery of her new Gammill Optimum Plus® with the Statler Stitcher™. To contact Myriam go to her website www.quiltstudio.tk
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Challenge Quilts from the Long-arm Quilting Gallery - Part III.
90" x 90"
Marybeth Tawfik received her first electric sewing machine at the age of 10 so that her mother would be able to use her own Pfaff. Originally sewing garments, she became interested in patchwork in 1996 while living in Japan, but was too intimidated by the process to begin patchwork until 2001. She purchased her Gammill Optimum Plus® in 2004 at the International Quilt Festival in the Hague. She “practiced” on the machine for 3 years before attempting to quilt other people’s quilt tops. She tries very hard to sew every day, believing that therein lies the path to sanity and serenity.
90” x 90”
Tracey Pereira is an award-winning quilter based in the South of England. She has been quilting for many years and has taught at both national and international levels. She is also a published author and has made several contributions to UK patchwork and quilting magazines. Most recently, Tracey has produced a number of designs for robotic and computerised quilting and embroidery systems. Tracey is also an accredited judge with the Quilters Guild of the British Isles. You can see more about Tracey and her work at www.teepeequilts.co.uk.
Andreas Wolf:“Symphony in Purple” (detail)
Andreas Wolf was born in Hamburg 1965 and grew up on the Lake of Konstanz. He began making handicrafts at a very early age, knitting and cross-stitching. The first quilt show he attended was an exhibition of Amish quilts in Konstanz in 1995. He was then inspired to begin making traditional quilts. In 1998 he opened his own quilt shop in Hamburg and began as a professional quilter. In the shop he has everything any quilter would need. He holds classes, attends quilt shows all over Europe, and produces templates for cutting fabric. In 2005 he purchased an Optimum Plus® long arm quilting machine from Gammill and began to custom quilt clients’ quilt tops. Andreas loves to meet nice, creative people and brings a unique perspective to quilting. You can contact him on phone: 0049 40 226 97 070 or e-mail to quilthouse@t-online.de www.quilthouse.de The templates are available from: www.rainbow-house.de
Challenge Quilts from the Long-arm Quilting Gallery - Part II.
90" x 90"
The peonies are quilted in a light mauve, whilst the surrounding swirls use a variegated thread. The pickle dish itself is stitched in the ditch using a lime-coloured thread, which gives an interesting pattern on the back of the quilt!!!!"
Leslie Carol Taylor was born in the UK and has been sewing for as long as she can remember. She officially learned to do patchwork by hand in France in the eighties. Whilst living in Japan in the late nineties, she discovered you could also quilt by machine and from then nothing has been able to stop her.
She has been back in the Netherlands since 2001 where she later met Maria Laza and Marybeth Tawfik. Together they founded North Sea Quilters in 2007. Her trip with Marybeth to the EMQE long-arm quilting retreat in Ireland in May 2007 was to become the most expensive holiday ever, as it resulted in the purchase of a Gammill Optimum Plus with Statler Stitcher.
Leslie has been quilting for customers since December 2007. She loves enhancing a treasured object entrusted to her, and turning it into something even more beautiful.
She has a scientific background which helps and inspires her to digitize her own quilting designs, which the Statler stitches out beautifully.
And she has even been known to still sew things by hand...
www.northseaquilters.com
90" x 90"
This quilt was designed on EQ6 when I was at the EMQE Retreat in June 2008 in Castletownbere, Co Cork, Ireland. I had intended to do a lot of the quilting freehand, but became enthused by the possibilities of the Statler Stitcher™ programme and proceeded to do most of it using the computer.
Yvonne McKee, 53 years old, owns a quilt shop in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She has been longarm quilting for five years now and currently has a Gammill Optimum® with a Statler Stitcher™ and an Optimum. Her shop is called Quilters Quest. She teaches classes and workshops, as well as providing a quilting service.
www.quiltersquest.co.uk
"The quilt name is Checkmate, which I pieced and machine quilted on a Gammill®Optimum Plus."
Sue Philips is a longarm quilter in Wales, UK, and has been quilting for about five years. In 2008 she took delivery of a Statler Stitcher™ and hopes to offer all sorts of goodies to new and existing customers.
Sue’s company name is School House Quilting and the telephone number is +44 1633 401222.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Challenge Quilts from the Long-arm Quilting Gallery - Part I.
96" x 96"
"I love colours therefore I tried to incorporate the two challenge fabrics into a colorful palette of yellows, reds, purples and greens, moving from dark to lights towards the middle of the quilt. I was always fascinated by the dynamism of the Storm at Sea Pattern, the way it moves your eyes and lets you discover new patterns. This variation of Storm at Sea gave me the opportunity to play with the circles that formed as a secondary pattern. In the quilting I tried to emphasize the circles, by quilting in the ditch, then stitching an airy free-hand quilting around them. The stars were stitched in the ditch. The quilting was done on a Gammill® Optimum Plus long-arm quilting machine, which my North Sea Quilters friends kindly let me use. It is my first long-arm quilted project."
Maria Laza-Bihari was born in Hungary and has always been interested in handicrafts. She bought her first sewing machine with the first bonus from her first job. She caught the “quilting bug” about 10 years ago. She started with traditional hand-pieced patchwork and later moved to piecing and quilting by machine. She was one of the founding members of the International Women’s Contact patchwork group in The Hague. In this group, she met Marybeth Tawfik and Leslie Carol Taylor, who then all travelled together to the International Quilt Expo in Lyon, France, in 2006. By that time Maria was occupied with the idea of how to turn her hobby into her profession. The following year the three women established North Sea Quilters, which gives Maria the wonderful opportunity to combine everything she likes best, patchwork, challenging herself, working in a group and meeting people, making them happy and helping them to learn, grow and find their own ways in quilting.
90” x 90”
This quilt was a joint effort. Emma Ablett designed and pieced the top, and advised on quilting patterns to accentuate the piecing. Pam then completed the quilt on the Gammill® longarm quilting machine. The quilting is a mixture of free-hand stitch in the ditch and embellishment, and blocks and borders were fitted using the Statler Stitcher™ computerised quilting system.
As the proud owners of “Quilters Trading Post”, Pam and Emma Abblett are pleased to offer approximately 3000 bolts of fabric. Along with this large collection of fabrics, the shop also offers a quilting service, classes and a fabric printing service for those precious family photos.
The shop has been open now for just over a year and a half and gets busier as each week passes.
www.quilterstradingpost.com
Cheryl Thomas: Cheryl's Star (detail)
This quilt was created for the Long-arm Gallery at the Festival of Quilts, in Birmingham, 2008. This year the challenge was to create a quilt of 90" x 90" with two Japanese fabrics provided, along with any other fabrics we liked.
Cheryl Thomas lives in Southwest Wales. She is married with 3 sons and a full time job as well.
Cheryl had been a keen quilter for many years and in 2004 her Gammill® Optimum Quilting Machine became a welcome addition to her family. She loves her Gammill and regularly takes classes and attends EMQE each year to further her quilting skills.
Even with her limited time available she contributes to the Longarm Exhibition held at the Festival of Quilts, NEC Birmingham each year.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Long-arm Quilted Challenge Quilts in the "Patchwork en Quiltdagen" in Rijswijk
In 2008 each participant was given two Kona Bay fabrics, a green and a purple, and a variegated thread. The finished size of the quilt had to be 90"x90". These were the only parameters and everyone finished their quilt as they liked. In the following blogs you can see the results and read about the quilters and their statement about the quilts.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Behind the Scenes of the Long-arm Quilting Exhibition at "Patchwork en Quilt Dagen" in Rijswijk
We have a very busy weekend or I should say busy weeks behind us. We spent the winter months organizing the Long-arm Quilting Exhibition "North Sea Quilters and Friends", which took place on 14-15th February in Rijswijk during the "Patchwork and Quilt Days" show. But it began a long time before, when we had an idea that we would like to show the Dutch quilters the possibilities and the beautiful work that can be done on the long-arm quilting machines. But which quilts shall we show and where to find a venue? That was the time when we worked on our challenge quilt for Birmingham, so it seemed an obvious choice to ask Beryl Cadman (Custom Quilting Limited), the European distributor of the Gammill® Quilting Machines and Statler Stitcher™ fully computerized quilting system,
In the extended part of the exhibition the visitors could have a close look at the quilts of Irena Bluhm, Beryl Cadman, Marie-Christine Chammas, Martina Curtis, Robyn Fahy, Liesbeth van der Hilst, Yvonne McKee, Mary Palmer, Tracey Pereira, Andreas Wolf and ours, the North Sea Quilters (Maria Laza, Leslie Carol Taylor and Marybeth Tawfik).