Beryl Cadman's Quilts at the North Sea Quilters and Friends exhibition

This time you can read about Beryl Cadman's quilts, which were exhibited during the Patchwork en Quiltdagen 14-15 February in Rijswijk. We were very happy that she could stay with us during the show and some of you even had a chance to talk to her and listen to her explanations about the different long-arm quilting techniques.

Beryl Cadman: Fantasy Flowers (detail)
60” x 60”

"I love butterflies and feathers so incorporated them both in my Fantasy Flowers piece.
This quilt was made using cotton sateen fabric. Quilting techniques are trapunto, hand-guided longarm machine quilting with crystals applied."

Beryl Cadman:"Lady Chameleon"
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."

Bed Quilt Sampler

70” x 70”

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

Challenge Quilts from the Long-arm Quilting Gallery - Part III.

We continue with the presentation of the challenge quilts, which North Sea Quilters exhibited in the "Patchwork en Quiltdagen", Rijswijk with the cooperation of Jobina de Boer. These quilts were first shown in Birmingham and it is organized and presented by Beryl Cadman, (Custom Quilting) the European distributor of Gammill® Quilting Machines and Statler Stitcher™ fully computerized quilting system and co-sponsored by Twisted Thread. Scroll down to see the next three quilts and click on the photos to enlarge them.

Marybeth Tawfik: "Hortensia Hideaway" (detail)
90" x 90"

"When I received the purple and green for the challenge I immediately thought of the giant hortensia, or hydrandgea, bushes that are against the sheltering wall of my garden. In the summer they grow taller than I amand are very happy presences in my days, especially from my kitchen window. But each petal is different and many things live inside the blossoms. I have attempted to show the spectrum of colors the petals take on and tucked the details away in the quilting."

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.

Tracey Pereira: "A Year’s Worth of Bento Boxes" (detail)
90” x 90”

"‘A Year’s Worth of Bento Boxes’ was inspired by a recent passion for ‘Jelly Rolls' and an urgent need to meet a challenge deadline! The quick and simple box block was all that was needed to showcase these beautiful Japanese fabrics and the colourwash layout is designed to suggest the passage of the year’s seasons. I digitised a traditional Japanese Sashiko pattern called 'Nowaki' (or grasses) to produce my own bespoke quilting design. Quilted on a computerised Gammill® Optimum."

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)

90” x 90”

"This quilt was made for the long-arm challenge for the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham 2008. We were given two fabrics to use along with a spool of thread. I wanted a big block size in order to have big fields to quilt so that I could use different techniques to fill each block."


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.

This is the second part of the serie where you can see and read about the challenge quilts, which North Sea Quilters exhibited in the "Patchwork en Quiltdagen", Rijswijk with the cooperation of Jobina de Boer. The quilts were first shown in Birmingham and it is organized and presented by Beryl Cadman, (Custom Quilting) the European distributor of Gammill® Quilting Machines and Statler Stitcher™ fully computerized quilting system and co-sponsored by Twisted Thread. Scroll down to see the next three quilts and click on the photos to enlarge them.

Leslie Carol Taylor: Peony Pickle
90" x 90"

"The choice of design for this challenge was in order to give myself plenty of scope for quilting. I wanted to make a pickle dish with non-traditional colours, and I love using sateen for quilting.

I first drafted the quilting designs for the different parts of the quilt, then digitized and eventually sewed them, using a Gammill® Optimum Plus with Statler Stitcher™ and the new Creative Studio™ software. I first designed the swirls in the melons, inspired by one of the fabrics I had used for piecing. I then decided I needed something a bit more structured and drew several versions of the peony centre, with various swirls around them. The borders, which partly go into the main body of the quilt, are made up of several different quilting blocks.
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

Yvonne McKee: Purple Passion (detail)
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

Sue Philips: Checkmate (detail)
90" x 90"

"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.