I’m sharing some more quilts from this year’s Newark Quilt Show and the first few really did make me go wow - and it’s unusual for me to be so taken by the quilting alone, but it really is a work of art.
These whole cloth quilts really are beautiful, and the skill level really is in the quilting rather than the piecing, and then the quilting as the other quilts I’ve shared have been. What I also noticed is that the colour really does make a difference to its impact. By far my favourite was this mustard version, but I’ve also included a green quilt and a grey one - which are equally as detailed, and taking nothing away from them, but for me the impact is less. Take a look and let me know what you think.
But first let me share a little more about the maker, Hopkin Rees who says that craftmanship has been central to their upbringing, and that in their eighty-four years they have had several incarnations of which quilting is the latest.
They’ve been an English teacher specialising in children’s literature, a night school instructor in cabinet-making, a librarian, a marquetarian and a dressmaker. Which is quite a mix!
MUSTARD SCALLOPED NORTHUMBRIAN, HOPKIN REES
They had been expected to go to art college whilst at school, but their father was not in favour, instead preferring going to university with their art being something they could do ‘on the side’, so that’s what happened.
It wasn’t until they married, when they were encouraged by their seamstress mother-in-law who taught them sewing when they expressed an interest, and the happy couple received a sewing machine as a wedding present with ‘which I made clothes for my wife and the children’.
MID-GREEN WELSH WHOLECLOTH, HOPKIN REES
In the show notes they said they couldn’t explain where their urge for quilting came from, but once it started they became addicted and learnt from YouTube and books. In the last ten years they have produced over two hundred quilt items, and latterly have ‘finally been able to express [their] early interest in art and design’ producing amongst other items these traditional wholecloth Welsh and Durham quilts.
GREY SCALLOPED DURHAM, HOPKIN REES
The whole cloth colour totally changes the feel (or vibe if you will) of the quilt - you may not be able to tell from the photo above, but it’s not a plain grey cloth, it’s covered with small white polka dots.
And if you pick up on the fact that the green quilt above has feathers and is also Welsh then the maker says that they’ve included feathers because they love them, even though traditional Welsh quilts rare feature them, if at all. And I think that’s fair enough, your quilt - your rules!
I’ve also included two colourways of the Dahlia quilt, which I think are more my normal go to quilt designs, but even these aren’t straight forward as they had to work out how to extend the Dahlia design to make this into a rectangular quilt by enlarging and echoing the out petals of the template, taking the well known method of ‘hit and miss’ until they got it right - and isn’t it wonderful that they did?
RED DAHLIA, HOPKIN REES
BLUE DAHLIA, HOPKIN REES
The blue dahlia was made first, and blue was chosen as blue dahlias do not exist in nature - I’m sure that if they did, they’d look just as good as this one, and it was great to get the opportunity to view these quilts from a very talented, and versatile maker.