Howdy!
It’s been a while since I dropped in to your inbox, but seeing as I’ve a whole new bunch of subscribers I thought it was time to say hello again.
Last weekend I was in Christchurch for The Great New Zealand Quilt Show. What a whirlwind! About a year ago I made the crazy committment to be a merchant at the show, selling my hand-dyed fabric and threads. So that was me, frantically planning and preparing for the last few months. Plus I wanted to have quilts hanging in the show, so there was also some busy creative stitching happening.
And it was a big success! I had loads of fun, saw heaps of friends and made some new ones, got lovely compliments on my work, and I made enough $ that I’d consider doing it again (let’s not beat around the bush, I couldn’t do it just for the love!)
Now that I’m home, and the next deadline isn’t looming, I’m a little bit aimless. Do you get that? When you’ve been super busy, but then the goal is reached, and you’re a little bit lost? The to-do list was bulging and then suddenly seems sparse, with nothing urgent enough to spark motivation?
What do you do to kick yourself into gear again? I’m going to do some serious journalling, studio tidying, and UFO sorting so see what sifts to the top, but I’d love to hear your ideas.
Charlotte
My Quilts at The Great NZ Quilt Show
I was thrilled to have five quilts accepted to hang at the show. It’s a juried show, which means quilts are chosen from photographs to make a quality, cohesive exhibition. I also had two quilts hanging in the challenge sections; one of which is off to it’s new home in Australia shortly and the other will travel around NZ for the next year.
Here are two of my quilts that were hanging in the main exhibition. Both are about vines, but in different ways….
Vine 1.0
This is a bit of a departure from my usual style, it was fun to play with and respond to shapes that had featured in my 100 days project paper cutting sketchbook from a few years ago. I entered this into the modern category.
64cm x 130cm
Made from linen, upcycled fabrics, hand-dyed embroidery thread.
Techniques: Hand applique, machine piecing, hand embroidery, hand quilting, free motion and ruler quilting.
$800
Tangled
The vine motif has long been used as the supporting act in traditional quilting. I decided to elevate it to the starring role in this quilt, giving it a contemporary colour palate and drawing the viewer in to the beauty a vine has in its own right.
60cm x 144cm
Made with hand-dyed fabric and upcycled textiles.
Techniques: hand-dyeing, upcycling, raw-edge fusible applique, free motion quilting.
$900
Thoughts on Feedback
The Great NZ Quilt Show is run by Aotearoa Quilters, the National Association of quilters in New Zealand. One of their missions is to educate, and to support this they ensure that their show judges provide feedback to exhibitors.
I’ve made quilts for more than 20 years now, and I’ve heard many people talk about whether you should or should not get feedback, how helpful or unhelpful feedback can be, how they don’t want to enter because they don’t like feedback, or they didn’t get feedback and they wanted it….so many contrasting conversations!
I think the judges did a good job on feedback at this show, it’s not an easy job. Personally, when I am asked for feedback I want to give supportive comments that point out what was successful, but I also want to give the creator some direction to improve – because otherwise what is the point? I dug through some of my older writings and found this extract from my speech from when I judged the Auckland Festival of Quilts in 2022.
“One of the major requirements of being a judge is to be able to remove ‘self’ from the process and to be as objective as possible.
We take it very seriously – we are quilters too and know how special our quilts can become to us. We spend so much time with them they can become like our babies! So we know that a misplaced or misinterpreted comment can wound and negatively impact our joy of making.
But I also believe feedback can help us on our quilting journey, it can give us a new perspective on our work. I hope that if you receive constructive feedback from the judges, that you too will be able to remove ‘self’ and look at it objectively before you agree, disagree, or flush the comment sheet down the loo!”
Do you find it easy to receive feedback or a critique? It’s both a skill to receive as well as to give.
New Thread Colour
At the show I asked for votes to decide the name of my new thread colour, a vibrant orange. The choices were:
- Valiant Charger (my husband’s first car was an orange Valiant Charger!)
- Traffic Cone Season (it’s a NZ themed joke about road works…)
- Orange Roughy (a deep-sea Pacific Ocean fish that can live for a hundred years)
- Copper Butterfly (a native NZ butterfly with several subspecies)
Funny thing though – choices one, three and four all got the same number of votes. So I sent an emergency votey email to my stitching group, and the new name for my thread is:
ORANGE ROUGHY!
P.S. The beautiful pink fabric is a tea towel from Flossiphy.art who was also a merchant at the GNZQS. She does lovely stuff, and I’m always happy to support another NZ artist. You should check her out.
Thanks for reading, happy stitching!