This year its a family affair, all four of us are having a go!

The title this year is Magic, Mystery and Legend

Since 2011 Midsomer Quilting on the Mendips in Somerset have held their own 12 x 12 challenge for their customers.  This fundraising event has raised thousands of pounds for Dorothy House Hospice.  You can read more about the challenge here and on a earlier blog post of mine from 2012 here.

Not surprisingly my entry is bird related, though in a very different style to my usual work – it had to be a Phoenix.  I had great fun playing with such a different design and used some metallic threads.

Chris at MQ has always said that it fascinates him the number of their quilting customers who have engineering partners – I am no exception and Murray this year decided to also take up the challenge but in metal.  The idea was based on the Dragon Smaug from J.R.R Tolkien’s ‘The Hobbit’  – in his under ground lair full of treasure.  He’s enjoyed creating the piece below in  his ‘Man-Cave’, using an array of welding equipment.  Its sharper than the average 12×12 though!

Below, the finished product – it may need to be displayed on an easel as its very heavy!

Lucy and I recently went on a two part course with Claire Passmore at MQ  called Claire’s Techniques and Further Techniques.  We had a brilliant time playing and experimenting.  One of her favourite techniques was using lino printing.  Her piece, based on Glastonbury Tor is made using the techniques Claire taught us.

Lucy Knapp

We live very close to Glastonbury Tor, I love Lucy’s simplified image, especially the winding path.

The course has been a great introduction to the techniques out there as she started a GCSE course in Art Textiles this September.  Claire is a fabulous teacher, so many great ideas, really enthusiastic and supportive.  We both thoroughly recommend going on one of her workshops.

Below, printing in progress.

Megan our youngest, loves creating, whether it baking or sewing.  She’s dabbled with Free-machine embroidery before and I have written about what she has made in an earlier blog post you can read here.

Her idea was to make a ‘Superstition Dragon’, who would be breathing out lots of well known sayings and superstitions.

All pieced and ready for stitching – next weekends challenge as homework to finish…

Lots of this has been done in a day!  Good job we had the extra hour…..