More about Amish Bars

I have tried to take pictures of "Amish Bars", but the expanse of black has pretty much defeated me. The colours of the bars seem fade as the camera adjusts for the black, and getting any view of the texture is pretty much impossible.





The quilting on the green shows up better than on any of the other colours. Each of the coloured bars has different styles of freehand feathers quilted on them.

This shot shows a little of the feathering (if you really use your imagination) and some of the quilting on the black.

The black has blocks of freehand machine quilting. Each 6.5 inch square uses a different quilting design, mainly sourced from Dijanne Cevaal's "72 Ways not to Stipple or Meander" and "72 More Ways not to Stipple or Meander".

A few came from or were inspired by some of Leah Day's designs, and some were my own designs, especially in the odd shapes at the side.

The 6.5 inch squares are set diagonally, with unquilted "grouting" between the "tiles".

The quilting shows up better on the back, though the dalmation print still makes it difficult to photograph.

The Whittlesea show. Lots of quilts on display, hanging along the walls above the display cabinets and from the rafters. The "Hearts and Flowers' quilt that I entered in the name of Southern Cross Quilters is fourth from left in this photo, and won second prize in the section for quilts made by a group.
Well done to Kate Jones and her elderly friend, Sue, who paper pieced the hearts that are the foundation for this quilt.

Here's some more of the quilts hanging from the rafters over the cookery entries. The gorgeous New York Beauty was the worthy window of the pieced/patchwork quilt section. On its left is my "Amish Bars circa 2010", which won second prize in that same section - an unexpected surprise for me. I suspect the judge likes free-motion quilting. This quilt has feathers in the coloured sections and nearly 50 different free hand filler designs arranged in diagonal tiles in the black areas, most from Dijanne Cevaal's '72 ways not to Stipple or Meander', and '72 more ways not to Stipple or Meander'

And the last two entries' prizes were less of a surprise - the two journal covers were the only two entries in the free hand machine embroidery section, so it wasn't a big surprise when they won first and second prizes.

The blue one has several different filler designs, some more from Dijanne's books, but also some of my own design, and the "JOURNAL" text.

The black and white one has a big pink daisy with 3D petals, only attached to the cover by the central vein, and an orange centre. But they chose to display the back (I guess so they could show the prize card, or because I had pinned the section card to the back??) These items were all under glass, so there's quite a bit of reflection.