Harrogate Show: Inspiration and Shopping!

 Yesterday I visited the opening day of the great Northern Quilt Show in Harrogate an had a wonderful time! I saw inspirational quilts, met up with friends, and bought supplies - a perfect day! I took so many photos that I'll have to share them with you over several days. I'm starting with a solo exhibition by Clare Kingslake. She specialises in applique and her quilts are beautifull! Here's her bio:

The detail on her quilts fascinated me as I can't even begin to imagine having the patience to stitch these lovely designs

  Clare embroidered detail on this quilt.

 This design, Rose Bush, was reverse appliqued:

 I was drawn to this quilt called 'Autumn Leaves' and discovered Clare had scanned real leaves then used transfer paper to apply them on the quilt - lovely!

 You can buy Clare's patterns from her website: www.clarespatterns.co.uk

I'll show you more quilts from the show later. Now what about the shopping? There were lots of fabulous retailer stalls with so much choice! I had to remember I am supposed to be reducing my stash so made fabric choices carefully.

 First some cream on cream and beige fabrics for my snowball block and other things too. Next some lovely batiks very reasonably priced at £7 per metre fro Doughty's:

Special hand dyed treats from Olive Twists - silk velvet, felt, scrim, chenille thread and a little bag of offcuts. I can't wait to use these for my college samples on a landscape theme. Lastly I treated myself to a book:

This book is wonderful! Gloria Loughman not only shares her techniques for creating abstract quilts but also explains in a very straightforward way how to set about designing a unique quilt. I've only browsed through it briefly so far but I'll have to find a quiet time to read it more thoroughly.

That it for now - come back soon to see more lovely quilts from the show! Have a great weekend!