Friday 20 August 2010

"View from the park"

This is one of the quilts I shipped off to the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham UK earlier this summer. I have blogged about parts of the process with a few little sneak peeks here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

For those of you that are not that familiar with the Festival of Quilts – it is the biggest European quilt festival with around 1000 entries and 30000 visitors. There are 9 different open competitions, from Art Quilts to School Competition.

“View from the park” (104cm * 96cm) is my contribution to this year’s Quilters’ Guild Challenge with the theme “Summer in the city”. Artist’s statement (always a challenge to sum up your artistic vision in 20-30 words…): View from the park – flowers, skyline, blue skies; my favorite memories from visiting a big city in the summer.
The quilt is super simple and heavily quilted with straight lines in different colours. I had lots of ideas for the houses, and was planning to add window shapes in some way, but decided to drop them. I am very glad I did as I’m very pleased with the result. And guess what; so were the judges. I actually won an award! Me! A real monetary award! At the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham!

All the awards were presented at the gala dinner last night, and as I’m right here and not in Birmingham, the international representative of our national quilt association (NQF) called and said she would accept it on my behalf. Now I have people accepting awards on my behalf.

The fun thing is that when I first noticed I had missed a call from UK on Wednesday night I thought Oh no; my quilt is stolen/ruined/did not make it there on time, but then I listened to the lovely lady on my voice mail congratulating me (4 times; listening, not congratulating me) and I exhaled. I was way too excited to get much sleep that first night as an award winning quilter though, and waited anxiously to call her back the next morning.

I definitely want to thank the Big & Strong Program that made it possible for me to jump up and down and run around for quite a while. Happy day indeed.

I was planning to post more pictures, but my photo editing software license expired 12 minutes ago so I have to get a new one. I hope to have it installed in time to show the award when it arrives.-)
Have a fantastic Friday!

30 comments:

  1. Congratulations!!! :-))
    (I also have a quilt at the FOQ, but not for a challenge: http://lapis-lazuli-q.blogspot.com/2010/07/goodbye-green-genie.html )

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  2. Congratulations!!!!!
    I love the quilt! It's beautiful!! So glad the jury liked it too!!!

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  3. Congratulations!!!! This quilt is fabulous, and I can definitely see why it won an award!!! I love your city buildings and glad you did not go back and add the windows....it is perfect as is. Your quilting lines really add lovely dimension.

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  4. CONGRATULATIONS!!!!! So totally deserved.

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  5. Oh I just love it. The colours, the quilting, the layout. It's so lovely.
    CONGRATULATIONS!!! It is well deserved.

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  6. Congratulations--this is really a fabulous, deserving quilt!

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  7. Congratulations from Germany!
    I´m just a silent reader!
    Happy quilting Bea

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  8. Oh this is great, the colors and the trees. Quilts shows in UK are such a big deal. I would love to be able to see that show, wow. xox Corrine

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  9. As soon as I saw this quilt I knew it was an Award winning quilt. Congratulations. I'm so very happy for you. Amazing quilt. Just wish I could have gone to this show and see it up close. Wouldn't it be fun to go together? Maybe someday.

    SewCalGal
    www.sewcalgal.blogspot.com

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  10. Congratulations, well deserved. I love your fresh approach to quilting, which results in these fantastic quilts!

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  11. AMAZING!!! I'm friends with a prize-winning quilter!!! Congratulations, your quilt is so fantastic...do we get to see the other one? I'm super excited for you, Nina-Lise.

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  12. Congratulations!!!
    Well, of course we all know you are super talented. It's about time they found out in B'ham, too. Wonderful news.

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  13. I loved seeing your quilt "for real" at FoQ yesterday, it's wonderful and you are so deserving of your award, well done.

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  14. Amazing! Another beautiful quilt and another blog of laughter. I really enjoy your sense of humor.....rallee dahling(said with a very regal accent). I'm glad you didn't add doors and windows. So many fantastic ideas floating around in that head of yours.

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  15. Congratulations! I love your quilt. So simple but beautiful!

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  16. Woohoo, good for you :) Love the simplicity of your design, very pretty.

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  17. Congratulations! You certainly deserve to win. Your quilt is creative and beautiful.

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  18. Waahoo! Congratulations. I love how this turned out, it really is beautiful. It's got such great dimension and texture. So happy for you, I wish I could go see it in person!

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  19. Lovely. Such an inviting skyline, you can almost hear the traffic!

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  20. Congratulations!! It's a wonderful quilt!

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  21. How EXCITING! Congratulations Nina Lise!!

    ; )

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  22. Congrats! The quilt is amazing...award well deserved!

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  23. Gratulerer - så artig at du vant en pris. Flott er den quilten din så du har all grunn til å være stolt. Takk for at du deler hele historien med oss også.

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  24. GRATTIS!!! Den är så flott! Var stolt och fortsätta hoppa :o)
    kram PJ

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  25. Congratulations!!! I'm sorry to say I missed this quilt at the show as I ran out of time. Well done on your win :)

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  26. Gratulerer så mye. Stilrent og lekkert :-) Du fortjener det.

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  27. Grattis!!! En värdig vinnare!

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  28. This is just amazing!

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  29. How did I miss this? Congratulations!

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