Thursday 28 June 2007

All of over the world and June Barnes' work

Yesterday I had been blogging for 4 weeks. I put a site meter up on the 5th of June and this morning found I had over 1,000 visits already. This is lovely, it means I'm not talking to myself (I'm sure all you long term bloggers know this feeling).

I've had visits from the expected quilting countries, the USA, UK, Canada, Australia and NZ. I've been delighted to find visitors from such diverse countries as the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Iceland (I'm particularly delighted with this as Iceland is such a small country), Japan, Kuwait, Dubai, Iran (yes Iran!), Italy, Austria, Denmark, Switzerland, Norway, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, Spain, France, Greece (yasou!) and Russia.

June Barnes is the best machine quilter here in the UK. I remember first seeing her work at Quilt 199? (don't remember which year) at the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace. The quilting blew me away. The quilt, if memory serves me well, was irregular spiked yellow and oranges on a white background. The background quilting was a marvelous 'doodle' of little suns and stars, some with little smiling faces. She'd had so much fun. Then I saw more of her work at various National Patchwork Championships, Baroquen Dreams and If it ain't Baroque, don't fix it (I hope I have these names right). June now works in a totally different style, working with getting different textures by shrinking the work deliberately after quilting and in distortions. On her blog she has put forward a case for not having competition in Quilt Shows. I'm not sure I agree but it is very well thought out.
You can see her work here and if my linking skills haven't worked copy and paste this url
http://cjunebarnes.co.uk/Gallery%20Index.html open each gallery and click on the thumbnails to see the whole works and some have details. (June if you read this, I would love to see more detailed close ups).

1 comment:

Felicity Grace said...

Sally, I've only just discovered you have a blog! That's super! I'll visit when I'm back in geneva too so you can add Switzerland to your list! ;)