Summer reading, viewing, puzzle links

Textile Talk: Victoria Findlay Wolfe interviewed by Teresa Duryea Wong

Victoria Findlay Wolfe talked to Teresa Duryea Wong about Victoria’s new book, “The Quilting Experience: A Celebration of Community and Patchwork,” and exhibition, “Option Expedition.” …  Quilt Alliance, 14  May 2025

The Quilt Show: online Puzzles!

Summer entertainment for quilters.

A long list of online jigsaw puzzles of quilts - no table space taken up, no pieces to lose, or to pack up!

And a long luster of memory matching puzzles, where each ‘card’ is a quilt block. 

One Hundred Stitches, One Hundred Villages: The Beauty of Patchwork from Rural China

In rural Chinese villages today, women are creating dynamic patchwork textiles, as their mothers and grandmothers did before them … Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 

Exhibition book:
Chinese Patchwork: Ancient Origins, New Expressions
Nancy Berliner with photographs by Lois Conner, MFA Boston  

ISBN: 978-0-87846-907-9

Sensing Place – Student Exhibition 2025: Outer Sensing, Inner Seeing

The artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham believed that her perception of nature involved ‘outer sensing and inner seeing’. This is a way of observing the outside world that involves using all of the senses, assimilating the information in the mind, and then evoking a response using imaginative creativity.

For this exhibition, each of you has taken a walk in your environment and has sensed, selected, and documented what the writer Steven Feld described as your ‘tingling resonances and bodily reverberations’. In the brief, I asked that the response to your observations should express the essence of your experience and should involve a joyful and playful use of colour, texture, and materials. I encouraged you to use your imagination and creativity to develop something unique and extraordinary … Fibre Arts Take Two, December 2025

The Fibre Arts Take Two home page also includes links to past student exhibitions, and  Friday Fibre Artists podcasts.

Award winners’ galleries - Australian State and Territory Quilt Shows 2025

Bernina Australia Best of Show Awards 2025

Each year Bernina Australia sponsors  ‘Best of Show’ awards at each State and Territory quilt show. 2025 Best of Show winners:

Sue de Vanny: Winner at the Victorian Quilters Showcase 2025 for her quilt "Eve of Destruction".
Lynda Sturm: Winner at QuiltWest 2025 for her quilt "Cassandra's Quilt".
Susanne Cody: Winner at the QuiltNSW Exhibition 2025 for her quilt "One Earth-One Chance".
Christine Garrett: Winner at the Territory Quilts Exhibition 2025 for her quilt "City Scape".
Tracey McConnon: Winner at Island Quilts 2025 for her quilt "Day's End".
Glenys Cheng: Winner at the Queensland Quilters Inc. Quilt Show 2025 for her quilt "Reds"
Tara Sneidze: Winner at the South Australian Quilters Festival of Quilts 2025 for her quilt “Lily Rosenberry Revisited”
Lyn Keogh: Winner at Canberra Quilters 2025 Exhibition for her quilt “My Imaginary Garden”

 

Online galleries of the award winners of 2025 State and Territory shows are available at the following links:

Quilt NSW 2025 Sydney Quilt Show - to download a .pdf of all the awards made at the Sydney Quilt Show. click on the link on the home page:

The photographs of the award winning quilts follow the list of  certificates of recognition and the list of show sponsors and thanks to volunteers. The Best of Show and Viewers’ Choice quilts are at the end of the document - it is well worth scrolling through the whole listing.

 QuiltWest 2025 , West Australian Quilters

 2025 Member's Exhibition - Canberra Quilters Inc

 2025 Island Quilts, Tasmanian Quilting Guild

 Festival of Quilts 2025, South Australian Quilters

 Queensland Quilters 2025 Quilt Show

A little online reading, listening, viewing

We have a long weekend here in NSW on the first weekend in October -more time for quilting perhaps, or watching the NRL Grand Final, adjusting to the start of daylight saving, enjoy the beautiful spring weather … or to catch up on some listening, viewing or reading about quilts and quilting. Here are a few links to get started:

A film about men quilting in a Missouri prison has 'overwhelmed' the system with donations

A Netflix documentary about men quilting in a Missouri prison has prompted an outpouring of fabric and yarn donations, to the point that the state Department of Corrections is asking people to slow down and think about giving money instead … Torryionna Miller, Columbia Missourian, 11 June 2025

If you haven’t seen it yet ‘The Quilters’ is streaming on Netflix in Australia.

Interview with Jenifer McShane - ‘The Quilters’ film maker

The Quilter on Fire podcast 4 December 2024. 1 hr 52m

Reviving Rocking Stitch and Saving Wholecloth Quilting
… Hand quilting in a frame is being placed on the Red List of Endangered Crafts by the Heritage Crafts Council as the number of elderly practitioners of this skill, mainly in Wales, Northern England and the Scottish Borders continues to dwindle and quilting frames disappear.

But here we talk to two quilters who are seeking to reverse that by recognising, protecting, and reviving whole cloth quilting, and the tools needed to carry it out … Haptic and Hue podcast, 3 July 2025

The Witches of Scotland: How a New Tartan Became a Living Memorial
… The Witches of Scotland Tartan sold out long before it went into production after its registration was spotted by an eagle-eyed American, testament to the fact that the tragedy of the witchcraft trials spread to America with the colonists of the 1600s. It also speaks volumes for the power of textiles that the two determined women, who have been campaigning for a pardon for all those accused of witchcraft in Scotland, have chosen a fabric that can be worn by all as a living memorial to those who lost their lives, rather than a statue or a fixed monument … Haptic and Hue podcast, 11 June 2025

 

Quilt Conservation – National Quilt Museum

The National Quilt Museum’s Collection comprises nearly 700 quilts. In this video, Laura Hendrickson, Director of Collections and Registrar, illustrates how quilts are cared for at the museum. For more tips on quilt conservation, see the article below by Gerald E. Roy of the Pilgrim Roy Collection.

Let's Talk Quilts

So, you've poured your heart and soul into piecing a beautiful quilt top. Congratulations! Now comes the exciting part – envisioning how it will look after being longarm quilted. As longarm quilters, we're just as excited as you are to bring your vision to life. However, sometimes, before we load your masterpiece onto our machines, we might spot a few little quirks in the piecing that are worth a quick chat about. Think of it as a pre-quilting pep talk to ensure the best possible outcome for your treasured project! …

Tracey Browning Constantin Quilts

Book Review: Improv Quilting by Irene Roderick

… while quilting has long balanced on that fine line between tradition and innovation, Improv Quilting steps proudly into the realm of improvisation. These are quilts that are made without any specific intention, breaking the boundaries of tradition while allowing the freedom to explore and experiment.

For some, quilting is a world of carefully measured patterns, precise piecing and historical techniques, but here, it’s a playground of possibility and opportunity … Cathy Jack Coupland, Stitch Safari, September 2025

 

Reading, listening, viewing …

Need something other than actual sewing to watch, listen to, or read during the lazy days of summer? Here are a few links that might interest you. 

 

How a new play is leading the push to return an historic convict-sewn quilt back to Tasmania

In a backroom of the National Gallery of Australia, an historically significant quilt is in storage. It is adorned with flowers, birds and other shapes sewn/embroidered into the yellow-faded quilt.

Sewn in 1841 by convict women on Her Majesty's ship Rajah as it made its way to then-Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), the quilt was presented to the governor's wife, Lady Jane Franklin, upon the ship's arrival.

It's had its own journey since then and was lost for almost 150 years, before it reappeared in an attic in Scotland in 1987. While the quilt is now at the NGA in Canberra, there are calls to bring it back to Tasmania.  Selina Ross and Isabella Podwinski, ABC News, 24 November 2023

ABC Conversations - Lucy Godoroja

Lucy Godoroja was unexpectedly introduced to the fascinating world of buttons in the late 1980s, in Amsterdam's old canal district.

She got hooked on these tiny treasures, buying an entire warehouse of buttons, sight unseen, from a button merchant's daughter in Milan.

Lucy managed to get this precious stash of buttons to Australia, where she's been running her own button shop in Sydney's inner west for 30 years now.

All Buttons Great and Small: A compelling history of the button, from the Stone Age to today is published by Exisle publishing.

 Conversation with Sarah Kanowski, ABC Radio Sydney, 23/11/2023

* Also available as a podcast on the ABC Listen app, or the podcasting service of your choice.

ABC Conversations - Catherine Martin

… the sequins and feathers of Strictly Ballroom, to Leo Di Caprio's Hawaiian shirt in Romeo and Juliet, and Nicole Kidman's red gown in Moulin Rouge, Catherine's designs are emblems of glamour and memory. Recently she's immersed herself in the story of Elvis Presley for her and Baz's (Lurhman) latest film.

Her work on the screen brings to technicolour life the entire world of Elvis, from the blues joints of Beale street, to the peacock stained glass windows of Graceland with its six metre sofa, and the iconic costumes of the King himself.

Catherine has won four Oscars for her costume and production design. 

Conversation with Richard Fidler, ABC Radio Sydney, 17/11/2023

* Also available as a podcast on the ABC Listen app, or the podcasting service of your choice.

The 300-year-old Japanese method of upcycling

Sashiko is easy, practical and beautiful – and gaining fans around the world. Bel Jacobs speaks to practitioners to find out more … Bel Jacobs, BBC, 14 October 2023
(includes video of Atsushi Futatsuya of Upcycle Stitches one of a new generation of Japanese practitioners (see video)

My quilt story

In my novel ‘The Crimson Thread’, my heroine Alenka embroiders messages in secret code on her wedding quilt to smuggle clandestine information to the Greek resistance.

I had to learn how to embroider in order to make sure that I described it properly in my novel. I had never sewn anything more ambitious than a loose button, so I was not at all sure how to go about it …  Slowly, stitch by stitch, square by square, my story quilt is growing – made with hand and heart.  Kate Forsyth, 2023

A secret to threading a needle

A short video of two handy tips for hand sewing. Threads Sewing 2016

10 Ways to Make a Quilt Back II

So here are some of the many ways I create quilt backs. It’s rarely my favorite part of the quilting process, but a necessary one nonetheless. And it's definitely good to have options, right?  Debbie Jesse, A Quilter’s Table, 2019

Quilts on Antiques Roadshow (BBC TV)

Antiques Roadshow Series 44 Episode 14 held at Woodhorn Museum, now on ABC iView: at 27m 45 sec - 33m 18 sec there is a segment on 3 antique quilts from The North East of England.