La Passacaglia - a trip down memory lane

 This week I've been reminded about the fun I had making my la Passacaglia quilt.  

Tula Pink did a little video earlier this week about her la Passacaglia quilt, and it got me thinking about mine again.  You can watch Tula's video about her quilt here: 

https://www.facebook.com/tulapink/videos/309154120366478/

  

I still love my quilt, and I use it on our bed sometimes.  I also take it to show other quilters when I get invited to speak at other guilds.  

It wasn't Tula Pink that inspired me to start my quilt, but rather two other quilters that I stumbled across online.  One of them was Sharon of Lilabelle Lane Creations in Australia.  Sharon is a big Tula fan, and she was inspired to make her own la Passacaglia after seeing photos of Tula's la Passacaglia.    

I got to meet Sharon and Willyne Hammerstein in Melbourne, Australia back in 2018.  It was lovely to all meet up at AQC. 

I started planning my la Passacaglia quilt back in late 2014.  I got the Millefiori Quilts book by Willyne Hammerstien for Christmas in 2014, and I immediately launched into it. 

I chose Kaffe Fasset's Millefiori fabric in blue as my inspiration fabric, and from that I chose these fabrics as my starting point.  

As you can see from my finished quilt, I didn't use all of these fabrics, and I introduced plenty of other fabrics.  I just let the colour scheme evolve as I went along.  The most important thing was balance, so if it needed more green or yellow, I added more green or yellow.  

It took just on one year for me to finish English Paper Piecing my quilt top.  I was thrilled when it was all joined up and I could finally hold it up. 

I wanted borders, and fortunately I had seen some wonderful border fabric, so I tracked it down and very carefully applied my borders.  You can read about how I added my borders, and all other aspects of my quilt, on the la Passacaglia tab at the top of my blog.  

While I was making my quilt my mum got interested too, so she made her very own version of la passacaglia.  

It was fun comparing progress when we met up.

Mum's quilt was one of the ones selected to go to Houston for the QuiltMania exhibition.  It hung with 19 other quilts, including Tula Pink's enlarged version.  And then mum's quilt was selected to go on to another exhibition in Nantes, France too!

My quilt wasn't selected to go to Houston, but I was super thrilled when it won the top amateur award at the QuiltNSW Sydney Quilt Show in 2017. I think that award was even better than it going to Houston, because the quilts weren't judged in Houston - they were for exhibition only.  In Sydney I was surrounded by friends, both from NZ and Australia, and I had the most wonderful time with so many people congratulating me and telling me they loved my quilt. 

Thanks to Tula Pink finding Willyne's book and making her la Passacaglia quilt, Millefiori Quilts has become very popular and Willyne has now written four books.  I own them all and have lots of plans for more quilts yet.  

Although Willyne hand pieces all her quilts, you can hand piece or English Paper Piece these designs.  They're all wonderful.  I encourage you to find a book and take a look. 

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  Feel free to link up a recent blog post below.  

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Best Hand Pieced award at Capital Quilters QUILTED Exhibition

Thank you for all the kind comments on my last post.  So many people said lovely things about my quilts over the weekend.  I'm all enthused to start something new now, but I'm also enthused to finish some of my WIPs - which is a very good thing.

The final quilt I won an award for at the Capital Quilters exhibition was la passacaglia.  I won the "Best Hand Pieced" award and was thrilled about that. 

If you'd like to read more about how I made this wonderful pattern by Willyne Hammerstein, you can click on the link at the top of blog (or here) and visit all my previous blog posts.  It is all English Paper Pieced and hand quilted by me!

Some of you will remember it from the QuiltNSW show last year, where I won the Bernina Amateur Encouragement Award. 

Like Vibrant Curiosities, this will be la passacaglia's last outing.  I'm going to enjoy using it, because my quilts are made to be used. 

My friend Debra who designed the layout of the show, put my la passacaglia next to another millefiori quilt, and they looked perfect together.

The Moncarapacho in the centre is one of Willyne Hammerstein's designs from Millefiori Quilts 3. This version was made by Amanda Evans and I just loved it - quite possibly because it's blue and green - my favourite colours.

I will write about how I get my quilts basted by a long armer in my next post. 

Auckland Festival of Quilts - 2017

On Friday I went to the Auckland Festival of Quilts with my mum, Joy, and my friend from Wellington, Anne.  We had a good time and were very impressed with all the beautiful quilts on display.

Here are some of my favourites:

Firstly my mum, standing next to her la passacaglia.  It was entered as "Exhibition Only" because it was finished in 2016, so not eligible for prizes.  Mum couldn't enter it last year because it was away in Houston as part of the Quiltmania la passacaglia exhibition. Lots of people said it looked lovely, so that was very nice for mum. It's all English paper pieced and hand quilted.

Next was mum's other quilt in the show, her Summer Garden, made from Karen Tripp's Mischief pattern.  Again, it's all English paper pieced and hand quilted.

Some other quilts that I liked:

These dragonflies were my favourite quilt in the show.  They just shimmered in the light.

I met plenty of quitly friends while I was at the show.  Some of them have blogged about the show too so you can see photos of the quilts they liked here:
Sue Flego - Susanna Quilts and a second post here
Julie - Julie Lou

QuiltNSW - Sydney Quilt Show - I'm a winner!

Wow!! What a crazy few days that was!

Many of you know that I entered my la passacaglia into the QuiltNSW Sydney Quilt Show in Australia.  I was there for the prize giving on Thursday and was totally stunned when I won the top amateur prize!!

Yes, I won the Bernina Amateur Encouragement Award and the prize is a Bernina 215, very kindly donated by Bernina Australia.

Bernina Australia are lovely and they are sending a machine to Nancy's Stitch Studio in Wellington for me to collect.  I didn't want to have to try and bring it home on the plane yesterday.

I also won a Judges Commendation in my category - Pieced Quilt and Hand Quilted (Amateur). That's the blue ribbon pinned on my quilt.

So it was an amazing day which seemed to just fly by after the prize giving.  The congratulations kept flying in on Instagram and Facebook.  If I haven't replied to you personally, please accept my thanks now.

I met so many people who follow my blog, facebook or Instagram at the show! Thank you all for coming up and saying hello.  My friends were laughing that every 10 minutes or so someone would say, "Are you Wendy? You don't know me, but I follow your blog."

The first kind lady approached me on the first morning at 8.55am before the doors even opened to go in, and it continued until I was walking to the exit at 4.30pm closing on my last day.  You're all so kind and it was lovely to meet you all.  Thank you for reading my blog and being interested in what I make. I don't do selfies, but if I did I could post at least 30 selfies here with blog followers I met at the show.

So now my quilt is showing on the QuiltNSW page of winners.  What an honour.  You can click here to see more winning quilts from the show, and I'll post some of my favourites in a separate blog post soon.

If you'd like to know more about how I made my la passacaglia quilt, you kind find all my previous blog post on the tab at the top of the page, or by clicking here.

Final advice:

This success is a story in not giving up. Many of you have told me my quilt is beautiful and it has inspired you to start making your own la passacaglia.  I've also been told many times that I must enter it into a show and let other people see it in real life.

My own guild (Capital Quilters) hasn't had a show since I joined because the hall we would use has been demolished and is being rebuilt due to earthquake risks.

Our national show - Quilt Symposium - is only held every two years, but they require all quilts to be original designs, so I couldn't enter la passacaglia in that show because it's from a pattern by Willyne Hammerstein.

Last year I applied to have my quilt included in the Quiltmania exhibition of 20 la passacaglia quilts at the Houston quilt show in 2016.  My quilt wasn't selected and I was naturally quite sad about that. I would have loved to have had my quilt at Houston, even though it would have been for exhibition only, and not judged.

So then I emailed the Auckland Quilt Guild to see if I could display it at the Auckland Festival of Quilts in November 2016, even though I'm not a member of that guild.  I said it could be for display only, and not judged.  But they came back and said they only allow entries from people who live north of Taupo - and unfortunately I don't.  That's fair enough, it's their guild and they make the rules.

Undeterred by two rejections, I joined QuiltNSW because they allow international memberships, and allow each member to enter two quilts into their show each year.  I'd seen photos from their show in previous years and knew their quilts were beautiful.  I just wanted my quilt to hang in a show and let other people see it in real life. So I joined QuiltNSW a year ago, and entered my first quilt show.  And look at the result!! I won the top amateur award.

So the moral of this story is, don't let a rejection put you off.  If you think your quilt should be in a show, keep trying until you find the right show for you.

Thank you to QuiltNSW and Bernina Australia.

Happy New Year

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and are now are now looking forward to New Year's Day. I'm staying with my mum and dad in Auckland at the moment.  It was lovely to surprise mum with the latest issue of New Zealand Quilter magazine.  

Both of our la passacaglia quilts are shown and there's a little article about the quilts.  Mum was very surprised to see her quilt there when she turned the page.  It seemed a lovely way to end 2016 for us both.  We're both very pleased we made our quilts, but they were a lot of work and required dedication to get them finished.  Now we can both move onto other exciting things.

A few days before Christmas I saw some beautiful knitted Christmas Balls on Instagram.  I discovered the patterns were by Arne & Carlos - Norwegian guys who design fun knitting patterns.  Naturally I had to give it a go, so I rushed out and got their book from the library and a set of 5 knitting needles.  I've never kitted socks, so this was always going to be an adventure for me.

I used scrap wool for my first attempt while I struggled to keep the knitting on the 4 needles.  It turned out a bit too big for mum's little tree.

I've never been one to give up easily, so I found their pattern for mini Christmas balls online. This one is smaller but still a bit chunky because I bought 4mm needles and had to use 8 ply wool. At least I've mastered the technique and could make more for next Christmas with 3mm needles.

I gave mum this Stars Upon Stars pattern by Laundry Basket Quilts for Christmas.  We've been making a test block out of these fabrics, and learning as we go.  I'm not sure which fabrics mum will use in her blocks yet. 

On Thursday I went shopping with some friends and came home with this lovely selection of fabrics. I'm naturally drawn to the blues and greens. I purposely chose fabrics that I hadn't seen in my local Wellington shops.

  

Finally, as it's summer here in New Zealand, here are some photos from my mum's garden.  Happy New Year everyone and best wishes for 2017.  

Lilium Regale - known as New Zealand Christmas lily.

Dahlia - Tsuki Yori No Sisha - Messengers from the Moon