Judging quilts and fixing dyes

About once or twice a year I'm asked to judge a quilt show and last week I was one of two judges for for the Canteen Quilt Challenge.
Canteen is a charity which works with kids who have cancer and their siblings. Each year they raise money by selling bandannas and this year Canteen Manawatu initiated a challenge to make quilts using Canteen bandannas. The range of quilts was extraordinary and pretty amazing considering how bright and 'in your face' the bandannas are. The quilts ranged from extremely subtle to woah! There were 4 sections to judge, the Open section, Secondary school, Primary school and Special Needs student section.
Its always difficult to choose the top 3 quilts in each category, there are always some that get left out that should really have won a prize but between the two of us we were pretty well in agreement over the prize winners.
Canteen is keen to run this challenge again and if I'm not the judge I can enter the competition. After seeing the amazing range of quilts this year, I'm looking forward to the next show.

Here are a few favourites but my camera hasn't done them justice.

Open section quilts with the winner and 2nd prizewinner in the middle at the top.

The winner of the Secondary school section

My pojagi style wallhangings recently flew back from the exhibitions in the UK and now I'm fixing the dyes by running dilture soda ash solution down the front of them. I never have any idea of how they will turn out after the dyes are fixed, as the road ash change the patterns by running wherever it wants.
This is before fixing the dyes

before fixing the dyes

Soda ash starting to spread.

I'm doing this today, as this week I'm getting new carpet in my sewing room/studio and don't want dye going everywhere.  I ripped out carpet and underlay and then found carpet tiles underneath all that. No wonder the carpet felt squishy. The old carpet is a danger to anyone who touches it as it has 20 years of pins and needles stuck in it. When rolled up, they poke out like hedgehog quills. I really wanted to have lino put down on the floor to make it safe from pins but the carpet tile backing is still stuck to the floor and impossible to remove so I've had to go for an industrial nylon carpet with very little pile.

Visiting Melbourne

This week I am in Australia. I spent 3 days staying in Geelong with Dijanne Cevaal, machine quilter extraordinaire! Now I am in Central Melbourne, where my husband will be giving a lecture tomorrow. We are staying in a pretty amazing place on Collins st on the 12th floor which has a view out of the window showing a wide range of architectural styles. The hotel we face is the Intercontinental ( it has a chocolate shop right in front too which is hard to resist). Behind that are high rise with all different window shapes and sizes and wonderful reflections. To the left middle is a building with windows that are a snowball quilt pattern. I might get a better shot tomorrow.

This looks like a watercolour painting with all the reflections.

Dijanne took me to some of the galleries in Geelong. Including Geelong gallery which has a great exhibition of prints at the moment. A really good place to visit is a shop called 'A Piece of Cloth' which has vintage textiles from the 1800s to 1970s. The owner is a textile designer, and the address is

studio 9-100 Lower Paper Mill road, Fyansford, VIC 3221. Tel 0416052585

Www.apieceofcloth.com.au

Hours are 10-4 pm Wednesday to Saturday

It might be a bit hard to get to if you didn't have a car, but I believe they often have stalls at quilt shows and textile fibre forums. It is a great place to fossick and I bought a jacket made of recycled Indian saris which I couldn't resist. The jackets are from a social enterprise project in India run by Fiona Wright who also runs textile tours in Europe and India. 

Here is a picture of the jacket fabric - yum!

Tomorrow I am off to ' Beautiful Silks' in Fitzroy. 

Geelong quilters show is on the weekend after next, 23-24 th of November. Sorry not to include the links, I am scared that if I leave this page to find them I will lose the wifi.