Bloggers Quilt Festival - Fall 2010 , Mountain Magic

Our entry for the the Bloggers Quilt Festival is our Springwood Community Quilt Show Raffle quilt. It's only been finished for a few weeks so this is it's first outing. Thanks to David Stott for this wonderful photo that will be the publicity photo for magazine articles and flyers.

Mountain Magic is a pictorial quilt depicting the Three Sisters Rock formation, the Blue Mountains' most well known and popular tourist attraction at Echo Point, Katoomba, Australia.

Here's a photo of its namesake.

The quilt was designed by Petal Davies, a local quilt and wearable art teacher, although assembly has been a group effort by members of the Show commitee. I think we've all learnt some clever tricks along the way.

There's a variety of materials and fabrics incorporated in the quilt. Some beautiful Jinny Beyer fabrics that were our prize for 1st place in the group category at the 2009 Sydney Quilt Show.

Furnishing fabrics were made into tree trunks. Those tree fern branches have wires in the spines so they can be manipulated into shape.

Layers of different shades of fine blue organza became the misty haze the Blue Mountains gets its name from.

Sunlight reflecting off the rocks was created with a gold ice cream wrappers.

Hospital grade plastic bags were used to construct the forest undergrowth.
Soon the quilt will begin it's tour to the many quilt shops throughout the Blue Mountains region so people can buy tickets for it's raffle at the 2011 Springwood Community Quilt Show held on the last weekend of April.

A super big Thank You to Amy for organising the Bloggers Quilt Festival. Make sure you visit some of the other amazing quilts and wonderful stories about them. All you need is a delicious devonshire tea and it's like being at the Springwood Community Quilt Show.

On the home straight

Well the raffle quilt is finished and looks fantastic. It will begin its journey around the shops in early January so keep an eye out for it and your chance to buy a ticket.

The committee is well on its way to organising all the behind-the-scenes tasks that go into running a successful show such as designing a logo for all our advertising, new banners for signage, new tables for the Quilt Show Cafe and even calico shopping bags with the show logo on them which will be for sale over the weekend of the show.

The big news is that we have been given a BERNINA SEWING MACHINE!!! to use as a prize! Can you believe it - we are so grateful to Bernina and The Stitching Post in Katoomba for their generosity. Not sure yet what the prize will be for but it really is exciting to have this as a draw card.

As our guest quilter this year we have Karen Cunningham and all her beautiful mostly hand-pieced quilts. Karen is a very well known Blue Mountains quilter and her display is sure to impress everyone. She will be supported by the delightful Isobel Lancashire, one of the founding members of the NSW Quilters Guild who will be on stage over the weekend demonstrating her expertise at hand quilting.

You may have noticed on the sidebar we have a follower from Norway! Bjorg is a friend of Petal's and is keeping an eye in our progress from afar. Wouldn't it be great if you could join us at the show Bjorg. It would be lovely to have more followers - just follow the prompts - it's easy.

Patching with Petal

I'd like to formally introduce you to Petal Davies of Patching with Petal. A quilter, wearable art artist, a very popular teacher and the designer for the 2011 Springwood High School Community Quilt Show Raffle quilt, Mountain Magic. She has kindly answered some questions for us.

How did you become a quilter and how did you learn to quilt?

After being a dressmaker for 20 or more years, and making clothes for children out of combining different fabrics and appliquéing motifs on them, I decided the next step was to apply the same techniques to quilts.

I had previously bought fabric with designs on them that I could quilt around. This taught me a lot about the “do’s and don’ts” of quilting. I then attended a workshop to see if I was missing out on techniques.

At what point did you start becoming interested in different techniques and making art quilts?

Approximately 10 or 11 years ago, I did a course with Carol Wilkes at Fibre Forum. That opened up a whole new world, and I continued to attend forum each year and learnt a lot. Although, I don’t think my quilts are “art”, more pictorial, combined with the traditional. I also create “wearable” wearable art clothes.

How did you come up with the idea for the 2011 raffle quilt?

I had done the three sisters before in daytime colours and wanted to see them in sunset colours. As we live in the Blue Mountains and this is a mountain quilt show, I thought them appropriate.

Can you describe to us your design process?

This started with a background of mountains and the valley behind the sisters. Then the sisters [the girls, as I refer to them] were made as a separate unit. As I had help from some traditional quilters, I devised the 4-side triangle block so they could piece it together, for the background and for the borders.

Then the appliques were made to embellish the quilt.

You use such interesting fabrics [and ice cream wrappers]. Can you tell us about those?

I very much have recycled fabrics all my life. As long as the quality, colour and texture are what I want, then I use them, and that includes the ice cream wrappers.

Thank you Petal!

If you've got any questions to ask Petal just leave a comment or you can always leave a comment even if you don't have a question. Just say hello!