Barge in the mist: Short Listed for Fine Art Quilt Masters Prize

Last month, I was thrilled to receive an email to inform me that  'Barge in the Mist' had been short listed for the Fine Art Quilt Masters prize. The selection is made from two photographs, one of the whole piece and one detail shot. Although the piece is green, it is quite subtle in many ways and I thought it might not suit selection by photograph but taking lots of photographs until I had a decent representation obviously paid off.

There were 20 quilts short listed and they were exhibited at New Designers last week. I do try to go to New designers (ND) every year and already had my ticket for this year when I heard I had been short listed but I had an additional  reason to go this year. So yesterday, as planned, I went to ND.  First stop the quilt exhibition on the top floor - what a relief to see my quilt hanging there - they hadn't changed their mind!  I always think of my work being generally quite large but next to the other pieces it looked quite small. 

You can find images and details of all the short listed quilts here: Fine Art Quilt Master 2014. Do have a look, as there's are some lovely work. I can't imagine how you pick a winner but perhaps I should try and find out!

I enjoyed seeing all the students work too. There was lots of fabric printing and came away with a desire to print a blind or curtains. Not sure when I'm going to get to do that though but I think that printing a smaller piece and getting digitally printed is the way to go - probably quicker and certainly safer. You wouldn't want to get to the end of a 4 metre print run and drop a blob of dye where you didn't want want one, would you?

I also noticed a number of students had pleated their fabric. Maybe there are always students who pleat fabric but I just noticed them more because of my fabric origami ? Sahsa Hocking had some lovely pleated knitted fabric and she generously recommended a book on pleating to me which I'm going to get. 

I always have my radar tuned in looking for stitching and there's never as much as I'd like to see, so I was pleased to see the work by Maria Boyle . I obviously wasn't alone as Maria had been selected to be the Textile Study Group graduate of the year. Congratulations Maria.

Now need to concentrate on my pieces for the next exhibition but looking forward to Festival of Quilts in August.