Winner of Fine Art Quilt Masters 2017

 I'm recovering from nearly a week up in Birmingham at the Festival of Quilts. I had a fabulous time   and  will write posts on the  ecoprint/natural dyeing course I did ( again!) with Brunhilde Scheidmeir and some wonderful quilts  I liked.  But after being rung on Wednesday evening to say I'd won Fine Art Quilt Masters ( and having to keep it quiet until the awards ceremony), I've been in a state of joyful disbelief ever since.

The various painting and drawing classes I've been doing at City Lit  have made  a big difference to my approach  to working and you can see some of my preliminary design work  in this blog post from February.  My statement for this piece ' Birchington Breakwaters' :
" The fragility of disintegrating sea defences rendered using the reverse and reassembled bindings of a threadbare antique log cabin coverlet , holes and tears revealing glimpses of underlying structures"

I was still stunned when this photo was taken ( don't look too closely at the  dark blue fingernails from  dyeing with logwood)  but was more relaxed by Saturday ( photo at the top) . The contents of the envelope: this certificate and a bank transfer form to fill in ( the prize is  £5000, thanks to generous sponsorship by Vlieseline). The icing on the cake for me was being chosen by Pauline Burbidge  and Diana Harrison, both artists whose work I've admired for a long, long time.

Thank you so much to everyone who congratulated me in person  with whoops of joy , generosity of spirit and lots of hugs  and to those of you who contacted me by email  and Facebook  with your good wishes, I'm overwhelmed.
What a way to celebrate 10 years of blogging, you can still leave a comment, I'll be drawing a name randomly next weekend.   and then I should probably be updating my website....
I was going to collect my quilt entry  tomorrow from Upper Street Events  but  the  winning quilts from the show, including mine, will be at the Knit and Stitch shows  in London , Harrogate and Dublin.  I might have recovered by then !