1st Pictorial – Open
BERNINA Best of Show
Quilter by Katherine Jones
Based on a section of a self portrait painted in 2021, which was itself based on a photograph of me working on my longarm, this quilt depicts me looking down in concentration on what I am making.
The original painting was executed in the style of Chuck Close’s later portraits, where an on-point grid of squares is used to turn one big overwhelming problem – of painting a portrait – into thousands of little more solvable problems, with each square being a small abstract composition.
This method of creating a face from individual squares naturally lends itself to quilt making. After lightly hand dying commercial cottons to tone down their brightness each block was hand appliqued to mimic the corresponding abstract square in my original painting.
To further tone down the colours dense quilting was completed in heavy contrasting thread resulting in shadow of the face being visible on the back of the quilt.
1st Other Techniques – Open
BERNINA Amateur Encouragement Award
Why White? by Judy Pearl
This whole cloth quilt uses FMQ, corded and embellished trapunto…hand embroidery enhances the flower centres.
The cloth is white satin and the FMQ has been worked by me on a domestic machine.
The binding has been stippled as I felt this needed to continue the theme and enclose the quilting within but not take centre stage with a solid colour.
The little shisha mirror, if you notice in the lower part of the quilt, is for me to reflect on why I ever chose white!
I live with dogs, cats and horses, consequently I spent 8 months in a clean apron and gloves when working on this piece…even my husband hesitated to approach me when I was near “ THAT white cloth”! This is how it got its name.
1st Student Textiles – Primary/Secondary
BERNINA Student Award
Mt Wellington by Zoe Ford
My quilt, Mt Wellington, is inspired by the beautiful sunrises on Mt Wellington which I see on the school bus early every morning.
My hope was to capture the natural beauty I have become so familiar with in recent times, I look forward to reflecting upon my quilt in future years and being reminded of this chapter of my life. When constructing my quilt I used a variety of different techniques including machine applique, free motion quilting and free motion sketching.
I worked on my quilt both at home and at my sewing classes which are at Frangipani Fabrics.
1st Pieced – Amateur
Argyle by Angela Holden
I found this amazing bargello quilt pattern while flicking through a good friends book collection.
I said to myself WOW this would be so cool in black, white and red. So i set about finding the best colours to make it POP!
Making a master sheet with all 20 different colours was definitely the easiest way to keep track of all colours and keep them in order. Sewing all the strips together, then cutting and unpicking then sewing them all back together was a massive challenge for me.
This being my second quilt I have ever made, I really think I’ve executed it well.
3rd Pieced – Amateur
Midnight Mischief by Mandy Dodd
Midnight Mischief’ began as a sampler quilt to bring together all my new found skills learned in quilt class.
Watching on my computer with interest, the Moda Quilt-alongs, ‘Midnight Moon’ QAL appeared on my screen made with the beautiful ‘Midnight Magic’ fabric created by April Rosendal with high contrasting orange, white, black and grey – it caught my eye! The QAL was based on the book ‘Summer Moon’ by ‘It’s Sew Emma’.
While I managed to get some of the ‘Midnight Magic’ fabric, I already had in my stash the colours needed using up lots of great scraps! Most of all, tucked away, I had a metre of Alexander Henry’s ‘Sebastian Ghastlie’ – black cats which features in the centre of most of the blocks. This quilt resonates so much because I have rescued mischievous black cats and who knows what their backgrounds may have been.
I have to admit, it was quite the challenge to achieve but was determined not to give up!
2nd Pieced – Amateur
Studio Lockdown by Robyn Thomas
When COVID first came to our home, I had to isolate from my family in my sewing studio – what a shame!!
I started just creating with the colours I loved, making random blocks.
I have brought them all together in this quilt, in memory of my Studio Lockdown time.
1st Antarctic Challenge
Black Ice by Barbara Mellor
Black ice, snow melts , lines of ice , rising sea levels, Antarctica in the future.
2nd Antarctic Challenge
The Whale Tale by Pip Scholten
The Whale/The King of the Southern Sea By Joseph Edwards Carpenter (1813-1885)
Oh! the whale is free of the boundless sea, He lives for a thousand years; He sinks to rest in the billow’s breast, Nor the roughest tempest fears: The howling blast as it hurries past, Is music to lull him to sleep, And he scatters the spray in his boisterous play, As he dashes the king of the deep. Oh! the rare old whale, ‘mid storm and gale, In his ocean home shall be, A giant in might, where might is right, And king of the boundless sea!
3rd Antarctic Challenge
Wandering Albatross by Robyn Thomas
The most magnificent animals surround Antarctica and the Black-browed Albatross must be one of the most stunning.
They are so efficient in the air that their heart rate barely rises above resting.
Photograph by Pete Harmsen
Highly Commended – Antarctic Challenge
Nuyina by Helen Dalgleish
I have worked at sea and was in Hobart when the Nuyina arrived from Europe. It is a relatively small vessel with such a powerful role in Antarctica. I used applique techniques to achieve the image.
Best Use of Colour
Connected by Johanna Williamson
In 2023 the Tamanian Modern Quilt Group organised a Mystery Quilt over 6 months.
You could pick your own colours and you received the instructions by email. It was amazing to see how different all these quilts looked after completion. The hand quilting with the different colours was an impulse that I would certainly use again.
1st Pieced – Advanced/Professional
Boo by Ann Wiggins
I had lots of purple and green scraps, then I decided to add the orange to make it pop. Hand sewn, English Paper Pieced, including facing.
Best Moveable Machine Quilting
2nd Pieced – Advanced/Professional
Sixty Degrees of Separation by Helen Wadsley
I fell in love with the original in Quiltmania. Also with a large stash of hexagon papers, I’m hooked on hexagons.
So easy to play with special scraps and create something pretty and useful. Naming it was the hardest task. In sixty degrees are all sides really equal? Made as my younger daughter’s 50th birthday gift.
Design Source: Shirley Loddington “Romance” Quiltmania #156
Retaining the Tradition
Pieces of Strong too Small to Use by Helen Wadsley
With a large stash of long hexagons from past projects, I started grouping them with no clear idea how they would all come together.
Quilt named after one of those reminiscing conversations with fellow quilters, ” things our grandmothers did”. The little bits come from that bottomless scraps basket and miss-cut pieces orphaned from other projects.
This is my attempt to create some order in my world and work. Scraps stash no smaller on completion!
3rd Pieced – Advanced/Professional
Dearest by Helen Wadsley
Made for 50th Birthday of Caroline Sharpen 0AM, long time music friend of my elder daughter who shared a 50th birthday celebration.
Although the design source presumes a single fabric, I had not enough yardage of any one print to work with, so several different lots were required. Colours were selected to tone perfectly with a special painting in the destined room.
There were many hours of play, pinning, photographing, dismissing, replacing, stitching, ripping and re-stitching…always with my printout of that special painting in hand to guide choices.
Design Source: Adapted from One Fabric Wonders by Maxine Rosenthal
1st Applique – Small – Amateur
Love Birds by Tracey McConnon
This quilt hangs on our loungeroom wall.
After 35 years married, I guess it is a good thing to be able to call a quilt by this name!
It is my own design, put together from blocks from the book 101 Applique Blocks, by Nancy Brenan Daniel.
Judge’s Commendation – Linda Steele
Tasmanian Sea Glass by Joanna Green
Batik fabric background with fused fabric, raw edge appliqued Sea Glass pieces.
I moved from the UK to Tasmania in 2018 and immediately fell in love with the incredible colours of the sea around our beautiful island. Sea glass is a rare treasure these days on any beach, and sadly, more often than not, I find plastic and rubbish, even in our remote part of the world.
As a quilter through, I made my own sea glass pieces from beautiful fabric and brought them to life in this art quilt which graces my home in southern Tasmania.
Design Source: Allie McCathren (@exhaustedoctopus)
Best Hand Quilting
Mallow Yallow by Jeanette Leek
The yellow fabric was hand dyed by me. All applique was hand sewn and the quilting was hand worked. The applique patterns came from a book called 200 blocks from Quilter Magazine.
1st Applique – Small – Advanced/Professional
East meets West #3
Another quilt in the ongoing struggle to use up the oriental fabric stash!
The small applique blocks are well travelled as a hand sewing project on “planes, trains and automobiles” as well as when watching (or is that listening?) to the television in the evening.
The quilt uses a mixture of Japanese made fabrics (the background and some leaves) and American Oriental prints (the leaves).
Highly Commended – Combined Piecing & Applique – Open
Wisteria by Marita Crombie
This quilt has been quite a few years in the making: it’s suffered from procrastination and indecision; it’s been put down and picked up again; it’s been put away and refound; it’s travelled to Quilting Retreats and Quilting Friendship Days over time. It began as the garden trellis traditional setting, making use of the very pretty lavender and blue fabric and then, following indecision and procrastination, grew to include the appliqued wisteria and, once again following neglect and being put away, grew again to include the pieced border using Fibonacci number sequencing for the strip widths. Quilting decisions were made as the quilting progressed. i love 3/4 inch cross-hatching. But what to do in the Fibonacci border?
Judge’s Commendation – Janelle Howell
Memories of Japan by Fran Bowden
I saw this quilt advertised and as I had previously made a block of the day quilt by the same designer, I decided to make this one as well.
I have travelled to Japan several times, and this quilt pattern brought back memories of those visits. All the fabrics came from my stash and are mostly batiks.
I used fusible webbing and raw edge applique, and facial features etc were done with Pigma pens. I quilted around each image and used the quilt as you go method of joining the quilt together.
Designed by Susan Claire.
The name of the quilt is Bento Block a Day Quilt, it came in weekly instalments of 7 applique blocks.
Best Stationary Machine Quilting 1st Combined Piecing & Applique – Open
Maaoupe Road by Helen Stubbings
Maaoupe Road is a row by row style quilt featuring English Paper Piecing and turned edge applique. Each row features a different floral design with hexagon blocks bringing them all together.
The applique has been turned over HNK Applique paper then basted to the background strips before stitching by hand and machine. The hexagons have all been pieced by hand over iron-on leave in papers. The stems are hand embroidered using Cosmo threads. The quilt is quilted using a Quilt as you go method with small peeper strips being used to delineate and give depth to the rows – to look like the flowers are growing out of the ground!
I quilted it on a domestic Bernina, first outlining all applique, then background filling densely to make the applique pop.
This is an original row by row design using Tilda Creating Memories Summer and Ocean Blues collection.
2nd Combined Piecing & Applique – Open
Cinnamon by Pip Scholten
A pattern saved since 2006 in the hope of finally using it and a stash of reproduction fabrics finally came together in 2024 and produced “Cinnamon”.
The pattern, “Winfred & Cloves”, is by Carolyn Konig and was in an APQ magazine from 2006; the fabric has been collected over a number of years!
Design Source: Carolyn Konig, Wilfred and Cloves, APQ Vol 14 No 3 April 2006
Best Use of Mixed Media
Seasons by Svetla Gula
The idea for my Seasons Bedrunner started as a Christmas challenge with the same name in our quilting group and slowly evolved to include fabric painting, customised two step machine quilting, couching and hand quilting.
Judge’s Commendation – Rita Summers
Impressions by Svetla Gula
The middle section of the bed runner was made of fabrics created in a workshop at my shop in January 2024. The methods used were sun printing with Solar Fast Film, fabric dye, modge podge, Transfer Art Paper, salt, leaves and other impressions. Flirtation range fabrics complete the impressions idea.
Best Beginner (1st, 2nd or 3rd Quilt)
Circle of Life by Angela Holden
This quilt was certainly different using Foundation Paper Piecing, but so colourful and vibrant I just had to give it a go.
Some of the techniques used were quite challenging.
It took a considerable amount of hours/days to complete it but well worth it at the end. I just love the bright colours and the silver star background I used.
Design Source: Jacqueline De Jonge
Quilted by Michelle de Groot
1st Commercially Quilted – Open
Glenbrook Star by Wendy Wilton
I made this quilt using reproduction fabric and a mixture of cream scrap pieces of material. I used foundation piecing and applique techniques to achieve the flower and foliage designs throughout this quilt.
Design Source: Rhonda Pearce
Quilted by: Michelle de Groot
3rd Commercially Quilted – Open
Val’s Quilt by Susan Friend
Val’s Quilt, a form of traditional Quilt, is made from cotton of various ‘William Morris’ patterns, which I purchased at the 2022 Tasmanian Quilt Guild Island Quilt Exhibition and which I found in Quilt shops here in Hobart and in Canada when I visited my Sisters in Canada. They too are avid quilters!
I had been searching for a pattern to use which was appropriate for the fabric and this was it. I found the ‘Peacock’ fabric in Hobart, loved it and used it for the centre squares. The extra blocks were used to surround the ‘Peacock” fabric on the back.
Design Source: Katrina Hadjimichael Quilt Designs, “Holiday Stars”
Quilted by: Jess Dobson
1st Group/Collaborative Quilt
Australian Animals by Betty Braithwaite
2nd Commercially Quilted – Open
Floral
I wanted to use Australian fabric for the native animals.
Design Source: Monica Poole Designs
Quilted by: Danelle Griffin
Highly Commended – Group/Collaborative Quilt
Faces by Break O’Day Stitchers
1st Modern – Amateur
Staggered by Eiluned Wright
This quilt is a rainbow of colours, front and back. It contains in excess or 2,500 pieces and required many hours of stitching spread over several months.
I stitched it with much love for my favourite rainbow couple. It was a wedding gift to my youngest daughter and her wife, for their marriage in November, 2023. I machine pieced it and domestic machine quilted it.
All fabrics are one hundred percent cotton. It was designed by Kent Williams of Kent Williams Designs.
1st Modern – Advanced/Professional
Opal Essence by Michelle Vince
This quilt was started in a class taught by the very talented Lorena Uriarte! It’s taken me quite a few years to finish it and finally work up the nerve to custom quilt it myself.
2nd Modern – Advanced/Professional
Curves 2 – Wild & Orange by Belinda Betts
An exercise in combining plaids, black and white, and busy bits to create a zippered look with order surrounding the chaos in the centre. Original design, machine pieced and quilted. Cotton fabrics and wadding.
2nd Pictorial – Open
Deep in the Forest by Barbara Mellor
In this Tasmanian forest scene, the importance of trees is recognised in helping fight climate change but also reveals a well kept secret.
Locals know that the Tasmanian tiger or Thylacine still exists, they just don’t tell.
3rd Pictorial – Open
Of Cabbages & Kings by Lynne Hargreaves
Dad was a working man.
With a large garden and three daughters to feed the veggie patch combined necessity with a welcome escape from a house full of growing women. Competitions were entered and prizes won.
The portrait, a reworked family photograph framed by rows of improv-pieced veggies, celebrates these endeavours. A contemporary medallion quilt. Thread painting is paired with improv-piecing representing the rows of veggies.
Free-motion and hand stitching pulls the two together. Patterns are worked in different scales to marry the two techniques.
1st Art Quilt – Advanced/Professional
Winter Weeping with Moon by Barbara Mellor
I wanted to portray the feeling of sadness in this empty frozen landscape. The loose threads as ˜weeping˜ tears fall from the trees as the ice melts perhaps signifying the end of winter. The negative space also gives mystery to the viewer. What else is out there?
1st Tiny Quilt – Open
Feathers or Leaves? by Faye Harding
I bought this pattern from Jenny Hunter and it has been on my “to do” list.
The feathers/leaves are ironed on using fusible webbing and it is matchstick quilted.
Design Source: Jenny Hunter, Plume Art + Stitch – design is called “Fabulous Feathers”
2nd Tiny Quilt – Open
Alaskan Icons by Judy Peel
Made from fabrics collected on a fabulous trip to Alaska I have incorporated iconic Alaskan themes.
Apart from the obvious fussy cut pieces the reverse applique trapunto represents the mounds of frozen permafrost, called “pingos” which appear in the summer when the snow melts. The wavy binding gives the feeling of snow drifts, and the FMQ enhances the northern lights, snow, spring melt, rivers and summer grasses.
The little shisha mirror represents the North Star which is a sign of direction and guidance… something I rely on in my quilting journey.
Highly Commended – Student Textiles – Primary/Secondary
Audrey Rocks by Audrey Vance
I am making the quilt for me. I first got the idea from river rocks that I saw on the internet. But I changed the colours because I wanted it to be more colourful. A friend helped me choose the final colours.
2nd Student Textiles – Primary/Secondary
By the Seaside by Grace Prior
I enjoy sewing.
2nd Student Textiles – College
Lost in my Thoughts by Charlotte A
I made this quilt in my Textiles class. The woman in the foreground of the quilt is Beverely from the horror movie IT.
I chose her as the main part of the quilt because she is one of my favorite movie characters. Bev, throughout the movie, shows her past to do with her family and traumas behind it. In the school she had rumours made about her which made everyone not like her and treat her unfairly through the movie, until she met her group of friends.
This brought a very meaningful message to the piece which is why I chose her. The flowers over her head and chest are representing her traumas and past caught up within her body always coming back to her in any way possible, representing the fact that no matter what happens, good or bad, she will always be stuck with them for the rest of her life. I used fabric paint to paint the woman and used free motion embroidery for the flowers to create the free kind of look to the piece.
The colours in the background are from an outfit she wears in the film when things start to turn around for her in the film. She finds someone who she really loves and found a friend group that actually cares about her. This related to me because this year my life has turned around and I have finally gotten the person who I have wanted to be with and a friend group that treats me the way I want to be treated.
This piece has been a really good experience and has made me be able to find new passions that I love.
Highly Commended – Student Textiles – College
The Mind of an Artist by Anthony M
I made this for a school project in my Textiles class. The quilt’s primary material consists of a golden fabric and a dark blue fabric, with other fabrics fused on top of them. A grey fabric, a crimson fabric, a blue fabric, and a silver dotted fabric.
Each of those second fabrics has a unique pattern or shape on it. I didn’t have a specific design in mind when I was planning the quilt, I just went with my gut.
1st Student Textiles – College
Spirit in the Mirror by Haylee R
I wanted the reflection in the mirror to represent a spirit animal, that there is more than just a face/body in the mirror, there’s more meaning. I also just wanted to push myself and see how far I can go with my embroidery skills.