In 2009 a group of American quilts shops designed the Civil War Tribute quilt between them as a block of the month. Homestead Hearth designed the finished kit. I think I didn't start the quilt till 2010 or 11. All done in beautiful Reproduction fabrics from Marcus Brothers designed by Judy Rothermel. I tended to only sew a block or two at retreats over the years but this year I did the final month of blocks and got my act together and finished it! Quilted on my hand guided Gammill longarm with rasant 50 weight thread. Pantograph is called Chartreuse by Patricia Ritter.
Design Source: Group collaboration of various American shops
Retaining the Tradition Award
Highly Commended: Pieced - Open
I fell in love with this quilt when I first saw it in a book by Edyta Sitar. I have a large collection of scraps, so this quilt was perfect to use up a vast quantity of pieces. It was a joy to make and a long hard road to finish the hand quilting. It is still one of my favourites.
Design Source: Edyta Sitar from Laundry Basket Quilts
Second: Pieced - Open
Favourite medallion quilt layout, centre block found on calendar as "Double Twist" by Barbara Brandenburg. Drafted it on EQ8 to 20" block and designed the border for a charm pack. For a niece, 20 years after the wedding quilt wore out.
Design Source: Barbara Brandenburg block Double Twist used at centre of my medallion design
Best Applique (Hand or Machine) Best Hand Quilting First: Applique - Advanced/Professional
The Caswell Quilt was designed by Corliss Searcy. The pattern was inspired by the Caswell carpet 1835. I started the quilt in 2018 and completed it in 2022. I have used my favourite reproduction fabrics. It has been a labour of love.
Design Source: Corliss Searcy, The Caswell Quilt
Second: Applique - Advanced/Professional
This quilt features needleturn and reverse applique. Four block quilts such as this with their four identical blocks have been documented from the early nineteen century.
Design Source: Irene Blanck
With a nod to William Morris, in name and formality of style, my design depicts the little thief and his wife who take up residence each year in my bramble patch snaffling the juiciest berries and decorating my garden with purple poo!
I love applique. Over the years I have been inspired to make a lot of applique blocks, and the time has come to assemble and quilt them! The colour combination and designs give these four 'tiles' an Indian feel.
BERNINA Best of Show First: Combined Pieced & Applique - Open
Common Bride (a pattern by Edyta Sitar, Laundry Basket Quilts) has been in my sewing room for years with the plan of doing it someday. There had even been a tentative attempt at one eight-pointed star. However, during lockdown in June 2020 I decided I needed a project and I had a stash of batiks so that was the perfect fabric for the exercise and serious work was done to get the eight-pointed star sitting flat and to start piecing and appliqueing the top. So finally, two years later, it is completed! Now the next dilemma – finish off an older project or start something new!
Design Source: Edyta Sitar, Common Bride pattern, Laundry Basket Quilts 2011
Highly Commended: Combined Pieced & Applique - Open
In 2020 I decided to make up everything from my pattern collection - somehow. This was a memento of a trip to Canberra via Castlemaine decades ago. If a quilter went to Castlemaine they HAD to visit Threadbear and Corliss Searcy. I adapted borders to suit my stash and final preferred quilt size.
Design Source: Threadbear Castlemaine, Corliss Searcy
Blue Counterpoint: a shared challenge with my sister in Canberra. Original had no borders and needed tweaking to create balance that pleased me. Half the border stars were lonely orphans from another project and the Laura Ashley floral print waited decades for fussy cutting into usefulness.
Design Source: Lisa DeBee Schiller, "Small Rhapsody in Blue Major" Quiltmania #130
First: Other Techniques - Advanced/Professional
An experiment in drawing with thread and creating the illusion of transparency inspired by bluebottle jellyfish.
Best Machine Quilting Award Highly Commended: Other Techniques - Advanced/Professional
This quilt is a wholecloth panel and I have quilted it using a Janome stationary machine. All the quilting has been free style without using any patterns.
First: Commercially Quilted - Open
Foundation paper-pieced quilt, cotton fabric, woollen batting. I spent months tracking down this pattern, after seeing a photo online. Best rendering of a solar flare that I have seen.
Quilted by: Katherine Jones
Design Source: David Gilleland, Vector Quilts (vectorquilts.com)
Joint Second: Commercially Quilted - Open
I enjoy patchwork as I find it very relaxing. This quilt is paper pieced for my daughter-in-law who loves the color red. Enjoyed the exactness of paper piecing and a good challenge. Inspired by Spiral Lone Star by Judy Krentz.
Quilted by: Jess Dobson
Design Source: Judy Niemeyer, Summer Solztice
Joint Second: Commercially Quilted - Open
Paper pieced from a pattern by Judy Niemeyer, Bali Fever. I first made this quilt design in autumn colors in 2016, while living in our caravan waiting for our house to be rebuilt after flooding. Since I enjoyed making that one so much I decided to make another in fresh spring colors.
Quilted by: Jess Dobson
Design Source: Judy Niemeyer, Bali Fever
Highly Commended: Commercially Quilted - Open
I hand pieced this quilt top about 30 years ago and started hand quilting it. I was never going to finish it so unpicked the quilting. After almost being trashed a few times, but I love it now.
Quilted by: Anne Brown
First: Modern Quilt - Open
I made this quilt as I was recovering from cancer treatment and thinking about memories that we leave behind when we die. I think of memories as being in little boxes in our mind, often related to places and people. In time our memories become a little bit frayed on the edges and over years slowly fade, until, one day, they just live on in someone else’s little boxes.
Design Source: City Nights by Jane MacDonald of BeBe Bold 2014
Second: Modern Quilt - Open
This quilt is made with offcuts from a "mother quilt" and an Op Shop piece of fabric, so all reuse and recycle! It shows the ups and downs from the year that was and all the balls we have constantly in the air. For me, quilting is my everything and my go to and there is never a day without fabrics.
Third: Modern Quilt - Open
When you need some colour in your life and you inherit a box of solids, you have to find a pattern to suit. Tilda gave me the answer and this quilt was right up my alley. The backing is also very colourful and was a quiltcover in its previous life! It made me a very happy Quilter!!!
Design Source: Tone Finnanger, Tilda's world
BERNINA Amateur Encouragement Award
First: Pictorial Quilt - Open
Misty was a very Moody cat due to a lot of illness throughout her 13 years. So I decided that she should be done in blues to reflect this. Raw edge applique and quilted.
Second: Pictorial Quilt - Open
This quilt was inspired by some photos that I took in Europe. The flowers and leaves are machined on and the flowers in the pots hand stitched. I used a bit of paint to make the door look old.
Highly Commended: Pictorial Quilt - Open
This quilt is a portrait of my miniature schnauzer Willow, this was my first ever usage of foundation piecing and was very much a learning process. I have used this quilt as a stepping stone into pattern design and creating more unique quilts!
First: Art Quilt - Advanced/Professional
A triptych of tiny quilts inspired by the organic patterns formed by lime leaching from the concrete piers that support the bridge at the Brooker Highway exit to Link road, Claremont.
Best Use of Mixed Media Second: Art Quilt - Advanced/Professional
The 2020 bushfires in Australia were catastrophic. Landscape left blackened and lifeless. Only piles of melted corrugated roofing and rubble remain where homes once stood. Garden paths lead nowhere. Everywhere there is devastation.
Third: Art Quilt - Advanced/Professional
"Traversing the Night" draws on my experience of walking through the Australian bush, captivated by the magic of a moonlit night. The work aims to capture and reveal the wonderment and otherworldly nature of landscape that allows us to both find and lose ourselves at the same time.
Highly Commended: Art Quilt - Advanced/Professional Judge's Commendation (Jenny Bacon)
Waverley Tasmania gives its name to Australia's last remaining working woollen mill. Established in 1874 it now produces designer wool products samples of which make up the quilt's surface. The quilt is pieced together from a bag of off-cuts bought from the factory shop.
Highly Commended: Art Quilt - Advanced/Professional Judge's Commendation (Barbara Mellor)
The artist is attracted to pattern in nature and is currently working with linear landscapes and impressions cobbled together from travels around the Tamar Valley. Not direct depictions they capture abstracted elements and fleeting moments such as the banks and wisps of fog repainting vistas.
First: Tiny Quilt - Open
My treat during Covid lockdown was to do an online quilting course with Philippa Naylor. This miniature quilt is inspired by her quilt "Hello Dolly". It is comprised of 2" log cabin blocks, machine appliqued hearts, dots and egg yolks. I machine appliqued and quilted it using Kimono Silk thread (40wt) and a 60 needle.
Although tiny and my first attempt at anything so small I just loved doing it!
Size: 27cm x 27cm
Design source: Philippa Naylor
Highly Commended: Tiny Quilt - Open
Whilst doing a Celtic braid for another project, I saw on the internet a table runner with bias strips running quite haphazardly. This was my inspiration to do my Tiny Quilt entry depicting a Celtic Braid unravelling. Technique used was bias strips made using Tula Pink fabric and machine sewn.
Size: 50cm x 25cm
Best Use of Colour
Saw this quilt on Pinterest, no information available. Decided to make it and chose my fabrics, also designed my own flowers. After I had finished it, I found that the designer, Jason Yenter, had published it as BOM in Quilters Companion. Too late for me. I sincerely thank him for his inspiration.
Design Source: Enchanted Garden by Jason Yenter
Best Commercial Quilting
Quilt made by Wendy Wilson Beautiful unique log cabin style blocks. It was very different to do a big log cabin.
Design Source: Laurie Shifrin
BERNINA Student Award
Best Secondary
I designed, cut, sewed and quilted this quilt myself.
Student Awards - Best Primary
I wanted to raise awareness about the threats to the Tasmanian Devil.
Made at sewing class with teacher advice.
Student Textile Participation Award - Primary
I love quilts because they are like a puzzle. They are pieced together to create a patchwork puzzle of especially chosen materials. This quilt will be for me because it will be the first quilt I've ever entered in a competition. I would love to keep it forever as it is a symbol of my passion.
Made at sewing class.
Student Textile Participation Award - Primary
Because I really like Cats.
Made at sewing class.
The teachers at Frangipani Fabrics cut the quilt and helped with techniques.
Design Source: Pen + Paper Patterns
Student Textile Participation Award - Secondary
I made this quilt for fun. The embroidered horses on the front are all horses I know or have known and ridden. The border quilting pattern is inspired by the patterns on silk scarves. The quilt also turned out to be reversible, although I plan to use it embroidered side up.
Student Textile Participation Award - Secondary
This quilt was completed as an assessment task, the theme of 'Journey'. London Memories represents our family holiday in 2018. We visited Big Ben, saw the Parliament and walked across Westminster Bridge. Red represent phone boxes, buses and the Union Jack. Daffodils began to bloom when there.
Student Textile Participation Award - Secondary
Made at sewing class to be part of Island Quilts.
Briony helped working out techniques.
