North Sea Quilters in the Patchwork en Quiltdagen in Rijswijk

Of course it can't be a"North Sea Quilters and Friends" exhibition without showing our own works. We selected "Little Amsterdam" and "Kyoto Nights" to exhibit during the Patchwork en Quiltdagen in Rijswijk.

"Little Amsterdam" quilted by Marybeth Tawfik,
designed and pieced by Maria Laza, Leslie Carol Taylor, Marybeth Tawfik

72” x 72”, 2007

This quilt was conceived by the North Sea Quilters as a tribute to the beautiful and distinctive architecture of the Netherlands, our host country. The house facades are all based on real houses found on the canals of Amsterdam. The quilting was done to replicate all the different textures found around these houses: smoke, wind, vines, bricks, cobblestones, and water.

This quilt won 1st prize for Long Arm Quilting at the Open European Championships, Waalre, the Netherlands, 2007.

Kyoto Nights (2008)
by North Sea Quilters: Maria Laza, Leslie Carol Taylor and Marybeth Tawfik
67” x 73”

Kyoto Nights celebrates the large-scale asymmetrical Japanese floral prints that have been so popular in the last few years. Using a hexagon as a base, North Sea Quilters have isolated vignettes of the fabric to give the impression of looking into a Japanese garden at night through a window. The Japanese crests were stitched from patterns on the Statler Stitcher™, the chrysanthemums were first drafted and digitized by Leslie and the “rain” in the bamboo forest was stitched freehand.


This is the end of our report on the exhibition. Thanks for following it during the last couple of weeks.

Marybeth Tawfik's Quilt at North Sea Quilters and Friends exhibition in Rijswijk

During the Patchwork en Quiltdagen in Rijswijk in our exhibition you could also see a quilt of our friend, Annelies, which were beautifully quilted by Marybeth.

"Simply Delicious" quilted by Marybeth Tawfik,

46” x 46”, 2008

This Piece O’ Cake design, hand appliquéd by Annelies Nijland, reminded me very much of my grandmother’s garden. My grandmother spent many, many hours growing the fruits and vegetables that her family would eat throughout the year. She always put up her vine supports by hand using small branches and twine and I have tried to replicate that look by quilting freehand, not using any rulers or markers, to give it that old-fashioned, homemade look that was so very beautiful to me growing up.

details of the quilt

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.

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

Summer in The Netherlands

We have been very busy over the summer, not updating the blog obviously, but then it is no secret that we really prefer sewing and quilting to doing anything else.
Now what have we been busy doing??? Well for some reason we thought we would have a quiet time over the summer regarding our machinequilting for customers. Well we are pleased to inform you that there are enough really addicted quilters in NL who keep up their patchwork and quilting all summer and don’t want to go and sit in the garden or go to the beach. Maybe it was because we had rather a lot of rain.... Now we really enjoy quilting other people’s quilts, and we will show you some of the pictures over the coming weeks, but we also like quilting our own projects!!!

So our plan was to work on our own quilts. Our friend Beryl Cadman (Gammill long-arm representative for Europe) organises the long-arm gallery each year at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham. She usually selects a theme beforehand such as Blue and White Stars (2006) or Black and White and One other Colour (2007). This year the challenge was to completely incorporate two half yards of fabric which we received beforehand: a mauve Japanese floral with chrysanthemums and a small green floral to make a 90” by 90” quilt (about 230cm square - yes that is quite big).

Detail of Robyn Fahy's black and white and yellow quilt

Now we each had our own ideas of what we wanted to do. Marybeth was inspired by the hydrangeas in her garden. Her idea was brilliant: to use a snowball block in different sizes, and vary the colour from top left to bottom right; the centre of the blocks the flowers ranging from hydrangea blue to mauve to pink and the corners the leaves in a variety of greens. Now we don’t know exactly how many different fabrics she used in her quilt, but we think equilter did quite well out of it...

Marybeth Tawfik's "Hortensia Hideaway"

Next time more about Maria’s and Leslie’s quilts!!