Textile Art Festival- Brisbane

I took the afternoon off last Friday to venture into the Textile Art Festival. It turned out to be a very inspiring afternoon.

Twelve by Twelve

The Twelve by Twelve exhibit was my favourite. It is the result of an online collaborative project where twelve quilt artists from all over the world present each other with a challenge based on a particular theme or colour palette. You can see the quilts on the web but it's not as impressive as seeing them up close.

I was fascinated as I listened to one of the artists, Kirsten Duncan of Pom Pom Rouge, Townsville talk about the ideas, inspiration and techniques used to create these marvellous little quilts. Kirsten sells these neat little colourful cut-out felt shapes. Check out her website and blog, PomPom Rouge.

I also caught Brenda Gael Smith’s photo transfer demonstration using a product designed to remove "sticky spots and goo" and saw some great pieces from the Shibori Dying demo she had given in the morning. Brenda gives more info here at Serendipity.

Resisting Temptation - or not!

I managed to walk past the numerous stalls selling all sorts of wool and yarn, (there just aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything) but I couldn’t resist the colourful display of Lisa Walton’s dyed fabric. I bought some! You can see her range at Dyed and Gone to Heaven.

Down the hole with  Alice...

I went down the hole to see the very imaginative entries in the Alice in Wonderland Art U Wear competition, found an interesting selection of triptychs in the Elements display by the Darling Downs Textile Art Group and saw a stunning piece of freeform crochet produced by Prudence Mapstone. WOW! I ran into a few friends and stopped for coffee. I had a great time and although I had never been to this Festival before I certainly want to go to the next one.

What a wild quilt!

Isn’t this a wild quilt! I just love all these beautiful animal prints.

The quilt was made by Jane Bester for her son Jonathan to celebrate his 15th birthday.


She fussy cut all the blocks for maximum effect from several jungle animal prints. She made three different sized blocks and framed them in different colours to add movement, variety and interest.



Here are some close-ups:

Jane has also pieced some leftover blocks into the backing and in so doing, she has created a double-sided quilt.

When Jonathan and Jane asked me to do the quilting they said they would like the quilting to give the effect of swaying grass.

I used a pattern called ‘Blackberry’ which was designed by Hermione Agee of Lorien Quilting. It added so much movement, you can really get the feeling of the savannah. The quilting is easier to see in the above photo of the pieced back and the one of the border on the right, shows the detail.

Happy Birthday Jonathan and thank you for sharing your quilt with us.

You can see more of Hermione’s digitized and paper quilting patterns at http://www.lorienquilting.com/