Regional Day

Things here have been pretty busy. DD has gone off to Brighton to start her MA course (means : washing, ironing, packing, cajoling, jollying, driving to and from Brighton, unloading, unpacking, feeding etc ) and nearer to home I have been front of house manager for the local production of 'Whose Life Is It Anyway?' (means : rushing home from work to be at the venue for 6.30, staying all evening to look after the audience and then on the final night host the after-show party and drink till 3 am.) Tough week! Luckily, both events went off very successfully, so now I can relax and maybe do a little sewing!

I did find time to sneak off to the Quilters Guild of the British Isles Regional Day for Northamptonshire with Ruth. It's the first time I've been to a Region 7 day, and it was very friendly and enjoyable. Apart from the delights of the delicious array of home-made cakes, they had two speakers! In the morning was Ferret and after lunch was Katherine Guerrier.


I had seen Ferret's fantastic quilt 'Herd Mentality' at the NEC, but apart from a rumour that she made quilts featuring nudes, knew no more. She was delightful. Modest, young, down to earth and very inspirational, she showed a wide variety of different techniques and ideas. Her journey as a quilter (from using polycotton and bedsheets and binding her quilts with satin ribbon) was much like many of ours, but the range of her work and colour sense was uniquely her own.

Here you can see her with several of her quilts in the background. Apparently her nudes cannot be exhibited in some shows (she named Paducah) but I didn't think they were disturbing myself.

After lunch, I don't think I was the only one who struggled to keep awake during Katherine Guerrier's talk. It wasn't that her talk or quilts weren't good, but more the fact of lunch (and home-made cake) weighing me down. Katherine is the archetypal scrap quilter, and to see how her quilts developed into the wonderful kaleidoscopes of colours that they are today, was fabulous. I tried to get a photo of her, but the numbers of people wanting to look at her quilts,

and buy her books was too great.

You can just see her at the back in a white blouse and blue scarf.

I took the opportunity to seek advice about the old hexagon quilt. Margaret Armstrong, from the Quilter's Guild was kind enough to look at 3 hexagon quilts that people had brought along. The other two were silk and one in particular (which had been bought in a junk shop for £20) was a poor shape. Margaret felt that none of the quilts were museum quality, and said that it would be fine to replace the missing and damaged parts of mine with reproduction fabrics and thereby realise its original maker's intentions. I have emailed the Quilter's Guild twice to see if they would like it, but have so far not had a response. I'll hang fire for a while and see if I can get another opinion, but I think Margaret is probably right.