Wellington Quilters Guild Exhibition

The Wellington Quilters Guild 20th Anniversary Exhibition has been on show at St Patrick’s College, Kilbirnie for the previous week. With just two more days to go, I made sure I didn’t miss out and we took a trip in today. (I’m pleased I didn’t drive myself in, as I don’t quite know where I would have ended up – the college wasn’t quite where I thought it was).

This looks like the right place

A bevy of basket raffles were on offer just in the door, all nicely colour co-ordinated and packed full with fabrics, threads, and all sorts of interesting items. Wouldn’t it be great to win one of these, it would seem a bit like Christmas morning, I think. Also to be raffled was the lovely queen sized quilt “Golden Daze”. I took several raffle tickets so will just have to wait and see how my luck goes.

The raffle baskets

The “Destination NZ” Challenge was very innovative and certainly quite different. It was to make a double sided pennant of a designated size and shape, to clearly show the place name. Members were offered a random selection of three New Zealand places and had to chose one. The results were stunning, and all the pennants were beautifully crafted. The winner was “Napier”, made by Fyvie Murray, and showed the sea and hills of Napier set off with a glamorous Art Deco lady. Napier is known as the Art Deco city of New Zealand as it was mostly destroyed by the huge 1931 earthquake, and was later rebuilt in the Art Deco style.

Some of the “Destination NZ” Pennants

With over 140 quilts on display, there was something for everyone. In celebration of the club’s 20th birthday, members were encouraged to display winning quilts from previous exhibitions. I had seen many of these award winning quilts before, and it was good to be able to view them again, and read their stories. With so many quilts on display, I can only show a few of my favourites. So far I have never been bitten by the hexagon bug, and “I Tawt I saw a Puddy Tat”, by K-J Dillon made me smile. Each hexagon in this large quilt features cat fabric, much of it gifted to the maker who was worried that she wouldn’t be able to find enough variety.

A close up of the many cat fabrics used

I just love Fyvie Murray’s work and she had several quilts exhibited (also winner of the pennant challenge). “Baltimore Album VI with Stars combines neutral Baltimore blocks and dark pieced starts. Hand appliquéd and hand quilted, it was beautifully done. The pale understated appliqué blocks really needed close inspection to appreciate their beauty.

“Baltimore Album VI with Stars” by Fyvie Murray

With so many lovely quilts to show you all, look out for more photos from this show on the next blog.