Quilting Gallery - Cori Dantini fabric quilt

At Quilting Gallery the voting for the Springtime Quilts in the Quilter's Show and Tell closed on Monday 8th April. I must have been sleeping when I read this because I thought you could carry on voting until midnight today, sigh! Sadly I have not been in time to ask you to vote for a stunning quilt I saw had been submitted (I voted for it!). All I can do now is invite you to go and have a look at "You are a seed" by Kris at her blog Sew Sunshine.

It's beautiful. I love it. The flowers pouring over the edge, the panel and the echo quilting. Really brilliant! I would also like to thank Kris for revealing to me Cori Dantini's work. I had no idea who she was until I saw this quilt. I bought some packets of fabric from the Filomania stand at Bergamo Creattiva last year because I thought they were beautiful and now I discover the fabric is designed by Cori Dantini.  

Her drawings are breathtaking!

Feedback

I am very pleased to see that Fuxia from Firenze, I spoke about in my second post dedicated Bergamo Creattiva, named my blog in their Facebook page. I see they have come up with some other very interesting novelties for Spring/Summer, an explosion of flowers:

A very creative group!

I have also received an interesting mail from Marsha at The Country Schoolhouse about their Twister templates, I spoke about in my pinwheels post. If you look on Google Images you'll find a lot of quilts made with these templates, with different effects. I'm looking forward to making my Pinwheel quilt! Marsha wrote to me that "the books that go along with it do help to answer some of the questions that come up and give you a lot more ideas on projects to do.  They go in a sequence where one book builds upon the skill of the previous one....so they increase in difficulty.  I did it that way so people could be more challenged as they go on if they want to be.  I also like to include ideas so people can work on doing their own patterns too."

Here's a photo of the template in case you've never seen one. It's very sturdy and... clever! They come in different sizes too. In my area Tessilesa sells them, even on-line.

Creattiva Bergamo and my favourite stands (Part 2)

Creattiva Bergamo is coming up in a few days time, so I better get a move on and tell you more about my favourite stands...

There's Fuxia di Morelli Pamela from Firenze (Pad. A n° 12, 14), who sell fantastic felties. The girls at the stand are really nice and they'll give you good ideas on how to use all the materials they sell. I fell in love with their lollipops and fairy cakes:

This is what I made with some of them: a Candy Mobile for my daughter Lucy to look at while I'm changing her nappy!

Filomania (Pad. A,Pad. B n° 69, 113, 115, 117, 119, 81, 83, 85, 87) are also extremely helpful, I had a lot of questions to ask them about laminated material and they took time to explain things to me even though there was a crowd at their stand. They even gave me for free a pattern for a bag they had on show there as an example and that I really liked. 

For kits I like To-do, they always have something interesting and easy to make. The Decoupatchwork kits are good and the patterns are original. Go and see their on-line catalogue. This is a felt kit - I adore a Matrioska (or Babushka)!

My latest find so far is DottyRose: don't miss them if you like Tilda, because they have a very wide selection of her fabric (new and old collections). 

They also have other fabric which at the moment I cannot find anywhere in my area such as Minky Dot Cuddle Dimple fabric. It's so soft you just want to cuddle it and make something for a baby out of it.

I hope I've given you some ideas and that now you really want to go and find your own favourite stands!

Creattiva Bergamo and my favourite stands (Part 1)

If you're going to Creattiva Bergamo for the first time (from the 15th to the 17th of February, see my previous post) or still haven't decided whether to go or not, then let me tell you about my favourite stands.

Let me see, where can I start? How about Savoir Faire "il salotto delle idee", which is also a shop in Bergamo (see this blog for some photos of the shop). A very nice and helpful group of people working there and I think it's a family run business. They stock Kaffe Fassett, which is really hard to find around here. In fact I still haven't found a shop selling this fabric and am always looking at what's on offer on Internet. Look at this lovely packet of fat quarters - Curio by Basic Grey for Moda - in a pretty little bundle...

You must not miss the fantastic stand of Manfred Gerhardt (from Germany - Pad. A n° 171, 173) with the most incredible selection of fancy trims and ribbons I have ever seen. His stand is self service (unbelievable!) which means you can hang around forever looking and looking again to your hearts content! Just remember not to get carried away!

I must mention Roberta de Marchi from Lecco (Pad. A n° 77, 79): the stand is beautiful to look at and the choice of linens is really good.

For good value in my continuous search for self cover buttons at a decent price I like Le Coccole di Maria Gio (Pad. B n° 186, 188). Well I won't show you a picture of those, we know what they look like. Instead I'll show you this:

You can make necklaces or bracelets with this jersey strip or... I haven't decided what yet but I'm sure one day I'll think of something and it will be just what I need!

2nd part of this post coming up soon!

Creattiva Bergamo, Quilt Italia: Kazuyo Horiuchi and Marta Olivieri

I've done all my chores and I think I deserve to relax a minute writing on my blog. Creattiva Bergamo is coming up soon: from the 15th to the 17th of Febuary. This time I won't be going though because, to be honest, I'm totally skint! I'm sorry not to go because this Craft Fair is really good! It's my favourite one up to now. There is so much to see, I've been twice but neither times did I manage to go round the whole fair! I probably stop at too many stands!!!

Last time I went to Creattiva Bergamo was in October 2012 and I absolutely have to show you this quilt that won first prize (in the traditional category) of the International competition organized by QuiltItalia with the Fiera di Bergamo: Kazuyo Horiuchi and her Tabidachi (The departure):

and here's a detail, absolutely beautiful (and so precise!!!) 

And here is another quilt that caught my eye (I couldn't photograph all of them, could I?!). It's called La forza del desiderio (the power of a wish ... oh dear it doesn't sound quite right translated like that) by Marta Olivieri:

Quilt Italia is going to have another exhibition this year too at Creattiva Bergamo and the stands are not just Italian ones, there is so much variety, so you really shouldn't miss it if you're anywhere near!