Everything is done - the quilts are in place and West Barn and the artists from Contemporary Quilters West are ready to welcome the first visitors and it all looks fabulous. If you visit and have time, do also pop into the enormous 14th century Tithe Barn next door. The weather is set to be fair all week and there are beautiful walks along the river and Bradford on Avon is also a lovely town to visit too.

Just to whet your appetite, here are a few pictures of some the quilts in the exhibition.

I will be at the exhibition all day on Thursday - I hope I may see you there.

How to find the exhibition:

West Barn, Bradford On Avon,Wiltshire, BA15 1LF from Tuesday 30th September 2014 to Sunday October 5th, 10.30 to 5.00 with a late night 'til 8.30 on Thursday

and then after at;

West Country Quilt Show at UWE, Bristol, November 13th, 14th and 15th, 9:30 til 4pm daily.

This month's theme is words... a nice one for me as I often end up with words on my sketchbook pages. Sometimes I wonder whether I am being lazy by using words - shouldn't I be able to say what I want with images? 
I wonder what you think? I welcome your thoughts on this - so please let me know!


Here are two of the images I uploaded to the Sketchbook Challenge  flickr group this evening - two recently made pages.


Wine farms - one of my favourite subjects - part of a doublr page spread that might just get made into a quilt one day.
OAK - after sweeping up lots of fallen leaves I had a big pile that I made into some nice pages, and then made a little bonfire with the rest.

Words are figuring a lot in my work at the moment - I have just completed 3 quilts that are literally smothered in words. They will be on display at the Unfolding Stories exhibition in Bradford on Avon next week, along with 2 others made not too long ago. I will post some pictures next week once the exhibition is up and running. 

Unfolding Stories
 West Barn, Pound Lane, Bradford On Avon. BA15 1LF. 
Open daily from Tuesday 29th September till Sunday 5th October 2014, 10.30 to 5.00
Late night opening on Thursday 2nd October 10.30am to 8.30pm

An exhibition of Contemporary Art Quilts by members of Contemporary Quilt West, 
unfolding stories through the use of cloth.

Free entry
Accessible to All

Unfolding Stories is an exhibition of Contemporary Art Quilts by the members of Contemporary Quilters West. 
The exhibition is at the beautiful West Barn, part of the Tithe Barn complex in Bradforn on Avon. 
Open daily from Tuesday 30th September until Sunday 5th October 2014, 10.30 to 5.00 with late night opening on Thursday 2nd October 10.30am to 8.30pm.

This is a new quilt for my Destination Series of quilts, which will be at the exhibition in Bradford on Avon at the end of this month.  Here is a little insight into how it came to be.

Here are the cushions I made from the squares I dyed last week. I think they look quite good - would brighten up a dark corner for sure! I bought some 30cm square pillows from IKEA to go inside and finished off the back with 3 pretty button on each.

Next question was price.... 
Given that times are hard here in France I decided to put them at 10 euros each. They might sell at that price. Otherwise I will have a lot of pretty cushions on my sofa!

I don't have a lot in the expo in Gabarret this year - but here are a few of the quilts on show by other people in our group.

I used freezer stencils paper and the free software called 'Posterazor' to enlarge the my sketchbook drawing of Nelson Mandela walking to freedom.
I like this software very much - it is simple to use and such a useful tool. Here is a link so you can see what it can do and download it for yourself if you think it might be useful.

The quilt still needs a lot more quilting in the lower section, where I have so far quilted the opening words from the Freedom Charter, a powerful and important document adopted at the Congress of the people in Kliptown, South Africa on June 26th 1955. 


About the Freedom Charter
The Freedom Charter was the statement of core principles of the South African Congress Alliance, which consisted of the African National Congress and its allies the South African Indian Congress, the South African Congress of Democrats and the Coloured People's Congress. It is characterized by its opening demand; The People Shall Govern!

In 1955, the ANC sent out fifty thousand volunteers countrywide to collect 'freedom demands' from the people of South Africa. This system was designed to give all South Africans equal rights. Demands such as "Land to be given to all landless people", "Living wages and shorter hours of work", "Free and compulsory education, irrespective of colour, race or nationality" were synthesized into the final document by ANC leaders including Z.K. Mathews and Lionel 'Rusty' Bernstein.

The Charter was officially adopted on June 26, 1955 at a Congress of the People in Kliptown. The meeting was attended by roughly three thousand delegates but was broken up by police on the second day, although by then the charter had been read in full. The crowd had shouted its approval of each section with cries of 'Afrika!' and 'Mayibuye!'

The document is notable for its demand for and commitment to a non-racial South Africa, this remains the platform of the ANC. The charter also calls for democracy and human rights, land reform, labour rights, and nationalization. After the congress was denounced as treason by the South African government. The ANC was banned and 156 activists were arrested, including Nelson Mandela who was first imprisoned in 1962. However, the charter continued to circulate in the underground and inspired a generations of young militants.

On February 11 1990, Nelson Mandela was finally freed and the ANC came to power after the first democratic elections were held in South Africa in April 1994. The new Constitution of South Africa included in its text many of the demands called for in the Freedom Charter. Nearly all the enumerated concerns regarding equality of race and language were directly addressed in the constitution, although the document included nothing to the effect of the nationalization of industry or redistribution of land, both of which were specifically outlined in the charter.