North Sea Quilters and Friends Long-Arm Quilting Exhibition in Rijswijk

Visitors in front of Irena Bluhm's "Hawaiian Punch" quilt

For the Patchwork and Quiltdagen festival in Rijswijk, The Netherlands, over the Valentine's weekend, we were privileged to bring together some of our favorite quilts from some of our favorite quilters to expose the Dutch quilting public to the possibilities of long-arm quilting. Many thanks to Jobina de Boer for making this exhibition possible. And many, many thanks to all our friends for loaning us their wonderful works of art to hang!

One of the purposes of the exhibition was to expose quilters here who haven't had the opportunity to travel to Birmingham or France or the United States to see the work of longarm quilters from other places. We found that people were extremely interested and asked lots of questions on techniques. They were also interested and sometimes amused by the motivations behind some of the works. Our friends have been extremely generous both with their quilts but also with the information behind them that makes the works more accessible to people on a personal level. Hopefully, quilters here in Holland now feel as though our friends are their friends as well!

To have a feeling of the exhibition look at the photos, taken during the exhibition in the Patchwork en Quiltdagen in Rijswijk!

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

This is the last "chapter" of our reports on the challenge quilts show, 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 following three quilts and click on the photos to enlarge them.

"“Bouquet of Stars” quilted by Beryl Cadman
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

Robyn Fahy: "Epoch"
90” x 90”

This quilt was created for the Long-arm Gallery at Festival of Quilts Birmingham 2008. This year our challenge was to create a quilt measuring 90” x 90” and using two Japanese fabrics provided, along with any other fabrics we chose. I then quilted the quilt with cotton thread on my hand-guided Gammill® Quilting Machine. I spent 54 hours quilting this quilt.

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.

Myriam Debuscherre: "Fanny’s Fans" (detail)
90” x 90”

Fanny is my needlework friend. As she loves fans, I made the quilt for her: Fanny's fans.

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

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.

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.

Long-arm Quilted Challenge Quilts in the "Patchwork en Quiltdagen" in Rijswijk

Leslie Carol Taylor is answering questions about her challenge quilt

If you have read our earlier blogs, you know that we've brought over the travelling exhibition of the long-arm quilted challenge quilts, which were first shown at the Long-arm Quilting Gallery in Birmingham. We exhibited the quilts as part of the "Patchwork en Quiltdagen" in Rijswijk over the weekend of 14 and 15 February 2009. This challenge is organized and presented every year since 2003 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.
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.

Visitors at the exhibition of Long-arm quilting challenge quilts in the Patchwork en Quiltdagen, Rijswijk

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,

who organizes and presents the Long-arm Quilting Gallery in Birmingham, if we can show these challenge quilts in The Netherlands as well. She was very supportive of the idea. We had the quilts, but no venue yet. Marybeth approached Jobina de Boer, the organizer of the "Patchwork en Quilt Dagen" in Rijswijk, who kindly offered the place for the Long-arm Quilting Challenge show and more, the opportunity to showcase 24 more quilts. Thanks to our long-arm quilter friends, who were very happy to share their best quilts with the Dutch public, we could easily put together the extended show. I can say this was a one-of-a-kind event. It was never before in The Netherlands that the patchworkers could see as big a collection of long-arm quilted patchwork than during this weekend. You can imagine how excited we were before the BIG DAY. It was nice to see that so many of you came to the show and were interested to see the quilts of Emma and Pam Ablett, Beryl Cadman, Myriam Debuscherre, Robyn Fahy, Maria Laza, Yvonne McKee, Tracey Pereira, Sue Philips, Leslie Carol Taylor, Marybeth Tawfik, Cheryl Thomas and Andreas Wolf in the Long-arm Quilting Challenge Gallery.
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).
Look at the photos here and the following blogs, may be you can spot yourself ☺ And as you noticed there are some real behind the scenes photos as well!