As the year has progressed I have got no better at keeping this blog up to date. In late October, after a couple of weeks in Kenya, I went to Maastricht to the Open European Quilt Championships. I was there to help steward our Fifteen by Fifteen Quilt exhibition, we are a group of 14 international quilters and we make a new 15 x 15″ quilt every two months, the subject of which is chosen in turn by the members. This gave me the chance to photograph 8 of my quilts together. They use various techniques, some very machine stitched and some almost totally hand stitched. There was an exciting moment when somebody showed interest in buying one, it didn’t come to anything but made me feel good!

I also submitted a piece in to the ‘People’ category – the judges comments were very fair but I was miffed that it missed being ‘good’ by 0.1 point! The comments made me realise that living in a small space I can’t judge the impact from a distance very easily, the piece is 92 x 122cm, combined with the fact that the quilt was free hanging and was relatively light-weight so the outline of my two main characters became a little lost. I know better for another time!

This quilt, ‘Disappearing in to the blue….’, came about after my visit to the Gambia in 2014 and the ongoing stories of refugees being lost at sea. The blue fabric was dyed in India and the forms created with mud resist; sky and soil is fabric which I snow dyed. The outlines are hand stitched with chain stitch.