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.

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

In the next blogs 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 2008 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 first three quilts and click on the photos to enlarge them.

Maria Laza-Bihari: Midnight Minuet
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.

www.northseaquilters.com

Emma and Pam Ablett: Dragon Flower (detail)
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)

90" x 90"

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.