Quiltfest 2012
Magie Relph
A Bucketful of Fabric

Say Africa
 - Magie Relph

78cm x  66cm
The title comes from a song by South African musician Vusi Mahlasela, who sings these beautiful words:

I may be walking in the streets of a city called London ,

But the dust on my boots and the rhythm of my feet and my heartbeat Say Africa .

Magie Relph

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Vitambara
- Alison Farmer

120cm x 80cm
Inspired by mud painted strip cloth, joined with a patchwork of African fabrics and embellished with goodies from Nairobi market. My husband Graham said, ‘All I can see is strips’ – hence the name, which in Swahili means ‘strips of cloth’.

Alison Farmer

I met Alison many years ago, when I judged her quilt as the winner in an ‘African Challenge’ at a Quilters’ Guild Regional Day. We next connected in Nairobi when the Kenya Quilt Guild invited me there to teach. Alison and I both seem to have Africa and quilting in our blood, which is probably why we’re such good friends.

Magie Relph

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African Odyssey 1
- Janice Gunner

132cm x 102cm
This quilt marks the beginning of my journey of discovery using African textiles. I feel particularly challenged and inspired by wax print: how can I use the bold designs and colours and integrate them into my own artistic style?

Janice Gunner

There may never have been an African Fabric Shop, if it hadn’t been for Janice’s support and encouragement. She insisted that I bring my suit case full of African fabric scraps along to Marsh Quilters and the African Fabric Shop was born. Janice always looks forward to staying over because she gets to sleep in the African Fabric Shop.

Magie Relph

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Magie
- Dorita Smith

110cm x 110cm
It shouldn’t be hard to guess who I was thinking about when I made this new piece using – what else? – African wax print.

A foundation pieced string quilt based on a traditional technique where I could use up small scraps of fabric – 8 ounces in total.

Dorita Smith

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Beryl
- Dorita Smith

37cm x 137cm
Inspiration came from hexagon wall tiles in the V&A cafe and the gem room at the Natural History museum – hence the name Beryl after the semi-precious stone. Made for my niece, so lots of the fabrics have meaning for her: the pen and paper fabric, as she is a journalist, M is her initial and, of course, shoes! Hand stitched over approximately six months as the final piece for my C&G certificate.

Dorita Smith

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Agatha
- Dorita Smith

145cm x 145cm
I designed this piece as a ‘mystery quilt’ project for some of my students. The idea is that you can keep adding to it or stop at any stage and still have a finished piece of work. I’ve used one of my favourite methods for selecting fabrics – just throw the stash at it!

Dorita Smith

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Feather and Stripes
- Isobel Holland

122cm x 55cm
I started this quilt in a Janice Gunner workshop – just having fun playing around with the fabrics.

Isobel Holland

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African Odyssy V
- Janice Gunner

115cm x 37cm
African wax print inspired me so much that one quilt led inevitably to another, and another and another...

Janice Gunner

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Malaria Dreams
- Isobel Holland

130cm x 75cm
The theme ‘African Dreams’ for a quilt show made me ponder the dream of eradicating malaria in Africa . The quilting and the buttons represent the anti-malaria tablets that are still mostly for tourists, not Africans.

Isobel Holland 

I met Isobel at a Quilters’ Guild Regional Day, only to discover that she lives in the next village! Since then, we’ve become good friends. She’s helped me at shows and pitched in to ‘man the shop’ while we’re in Africa . She came to quilting via embroidery and was not one for patterned or printed fabrics, but I soon converted her to African fabrics!

 Magie Relph

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African Stems
- Magie Relph

125cm x 110cm
Patchwork, for me, is all about working with the fabrics: cutting them up and puzzling them back together again.

That’s Flower Stems: take the same African wax print fabric in four colourways, cut up and reassemble – then quilt!

Magie Relph

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Indigo Road
- Alison Farmer

113cm x 113cm
Indigo Road is from a pattern called ‘Drunken Nine Patch’ by Lynne Edwards.

I thought it would look good using my collection of indigo wax prints.

Alison Farmer

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Silver Moon
- Janice Gunner

50cm x 25cm
Created to accompany the British Museum ’s
Fabric Of A Nation exhibition when it toured to
the Luton Museum .

Inspired by the wonderful design on this indigo
wax print – a perfect case of ‘less is more’.
I machine quilted using metallic thread, then applied the contrast fabric.

Janice Gunner

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Leaving the Accra Quilt Show
- Helen Conway

56cm x 112cm
Inspired by the queues for the shuttle buses leaving the Festival of Quilts: ladies of all descriptions – tall, short, fat, thin, able-bodied and health-impaired – all revelling in the delights of fabric shopping!

Techniques and materials as for Grasslands.

Helen Conway

Helen amazes me, constantly juggling her busy work life with an even busier creative life. The inspiration she finds in the fabrics is – well, inspiring. And so are her quilts.

Magie Relph

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Grasslands
- Helen Conway

Pieced and fused, machine and hand quilted. Materials include hand-dyed cottons, abacca tissue, beads, wire, mulberry paper, laminated paper, garden cane, acrylic paint, beads, Perle threads and – of course! – the wax print scraps left over from Leaving The Accra Quilt Show.

Helen Conway

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The Peg Challenge

What happens when you mix quilters, their husbands, a wacky African wax print and a couple of bottle of wine?
Answer: “The Peg Challenge”
Born out of Janice’s desire to have a piece of one of Magie’s latest wax print finds, one that was supposedly going into her collection. Janice was heard to say “That would make a great fabric for a challenge!”
Somehow the men got involved. Peg titles were thought of and put in a hat – we each picked one out. 

And here we are...

Pegmalian
- Janice Gunner

130cm x 100cm
This quilt brings back the childhood memory of going to the cinema with my grandparents to see Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady.
Eliza Doolittle’s flowers became my theme, so as Eliza said, ‘I’m a good girl, I am.’
In other words, I got the quilt finished on time!

Janice Gunner

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Pegged Out
- Bob Irwin

74cm x 61cm
Inspired by the time I pegged my trousers out to dry on an electric  fence.
Burned those trousers up real good!

Bob Irwin

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Square Peg in a Roundish Hole
- David Gunner

75cm x 75cm
This is my first quilt. Before I retired, I spent my working life in science, so I thought it would be a fitting challenge to make a quilt shaped like a Mobius Loop.
Here it is: the world’s first never ending quilt!

David Gunner

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Pegs Might Fly
- Ann Mayner

103cm x 71cm
I always said ‘pegs would fly’  before I ever did a Sunbonnet Sue quilt.
Well, here she is: the one and only black African Sunbonnet Sue, surrounded, of course, by flying geese – what else?

Ann Mayner

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J Peg
- Magie Relph

102cm x 43cm
J-pegs are digital images, which got me thinking about how photographs used to be created in the darkroom – after developing they were pegged up to dry. These pictures document some interesting moments in the history of
The African Fabric Shop.

Magie Relph

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