500 Art Quilts

There are few greater pleasures in life than that of seeing someone find a source of inspiration and witnessing their excitement. For the last week Catherine has been telling me everyday that one of our new books has her name on it .... "500 Art Quilts". Having excitedly taken it home last night, she got through the first 20 pages while sitting in a traffic jam in the airport tunnel on the M5 in Sydney - is there a better way to be patient in Sydney traffic! This morning she presented to me the same book with the pages now littered with post-it tags, marking all the quilts that inspired her. Catherine's quote: "This book is like going to a quilt show, but you don't have to spend all day on your feet". This is the first year Catherine has submitted quilts for the NSW Quilter's Guild Quilt show at Darling Harbour. One of the two is a wall hanging 'art quilt' and she was amused to find one quilt in the 500 Art Quilts book with striking similarity to hers. Even more amusing was that her raw edge applique was listed along with other techniques as being 'avante garde'.

It truly is a remarkable expose of what is possible. Every quilt featured has been photographed in such a way that it is possible to see the detail and techniques used. Many have close up photos showing minute detail and every quilt has a brief list of the materials/techniques used. A detailed index shows the country of origin of all featured artists, proudly revealing Australians Dianne Firth, Beth Miller, Brenda Gael Smith, Margery Goodall and Alison Muir. Sandra.