Quilted Jewels

As part of the Three Choirs Festival there have been lots of concerts, exhibitions and other events happening this week in Gloucester. I went along to St Nicholas Church to see a selection of exhibitions with a crafty theme...


There was an exhibition of work by textile artist Jane O'Leary - the posts on her blog about preparing for the exhibition are really interesting. I particularly loved this piece, the details in it are just lovely:


I fell totally in love with the selection of beautiful engravings by Sarah Van Niekerk (you can see lots of images of her current work here).


The main exhibition was "Quilted Jewels", a display of quilts by the members of three local quilting groups: Montpelier Quilters, Highnam Quilters and Churchdown Patchwork and Quilters.

Seeing the church covered in all those colourful patterns was a wonderful sight - they were hanging everywhere and draped all over the pews in a riot of colour. My little camera struggled a bit with the lighting conditions but I'm sure you can use your imagination a bit!


A few of my favourites were... "Mediterranean Madness" by Linda Simmons:


"Stained Glass Window Quilt" by Mary Davies and "Heraldry Hanging" by Pat Wilson (which included fabrics hand-dyed by Pat's daughter Cathy):


"Farmyard Fun" by Linda Simmons and "Freedom Road" by Valerie Pickard:


"Dazzling Diamonds" by Mary Davies and "Rice Bowls" by Linda Simmons from a Kaffe Gasset design:


"Joined Hands" and "Diamonds are Forever" by Polly Sutcliffe:


And a hand-pieced quilt by Anna Jones called "The First of Many" which was started years ago, abandoned half-finished in an attic and then re-started and finished with the encouragement of the Highnam Quilters group.


I also couldn't resist taking some snaps of the textiles and patterns in the church while I was there :)