Collaboration Coat STIDOC

The coat is the result of a collaboration of all the Textile Organisations in the Netherlands.

There are woven, felted, needle-lace, crochet and quilted parts.

The original design is by artist Liesbeth van Loo.

Each organisation received a pattern part and a colour sample. The coat was assembled by a representative of the Dutch Costume association.

I was asked to make a part by the Dutch Quiltersguild. I made the yellow and green part.

My part is a part of the skirt, at first I didn't know where it would end up.

But luckily I was sent a picture with all the pattern pieces.

I was abler to figure out that it would be at the back.

I started to select scraps and fabrics from my stash in the compulsory colours.

It turned out I had a lot of purple scraps. I used those to make big 3D flowers.

I used a simple drawing of a poppy as inspiration. To make the flowers I used the crazy quilt Technique with lots of stitching. Some flowers have two layers of leaves.

For the background I used yellow and green fabrics, cotton and silk, in flowing rounded shapes. I added stems, stitched and painted. And some glitter with paintstiks and some beads.

The Crane Coat

Crane Hope Coat by Marijke van Welzen, Jim Smith and Andy Brunhammer

My fb friends Jim Smith and Andy Brunhammer are creating The Crane Hope project. 
It will be a series of many quilts with cranes.The project will be exhibited in 2019.

You can read all about it here

Crane Quilt by Jim Smith and Andy Brunhammer

One day Jim posted a photo on facebook of a quilt in progress.

I commented on the photo: This looks like a skirt to me. We talked about coats and kimonos and to make a long story short, I volunteered to make a Crane Coat.

They sent me a set of 25 colourful crane blocks and a bunch of white ones plus a load of white fabric.

As I had envisioned the skirt I decided to start there.

The skirt consists of 5 rows of colourful cranes in different shades of green, blue, purple, red and yellow and white. I saved the black and grey and some more white blocks for the top.

I decided to use the same cotton for the lining as well, all seams are covered. I also started quilting the skirt.

This was supposed to be a coat, so I had to decide on how to make the top.

The top is fitted with a kimono sleeve. I used the white fabric and the rest of the white blocks. I lined out the black and grey blocks on the back with the purple row in the skirt.

As the top was fitted and I wanted all the seams to be closed it wasn't easy to quilt. 

I delivered the coat in Florida myself this summer. Jim and Andy were delighted to receive it.

see Crane Hope Coat

International Quilt Festival Luxembourg

I was invited to exhibit my work in Wilwerwitz Luxembourg for the 8th International Quilt Festival Luxembourg May 10- 13 2018

On May 8th we drove to Luxembourg with a car full of my coats , quilts and all the exhibition materials. We arrived in Wilwerwitz in the afternoon and could set up my exhibition right away.

I had a nice big room for myself in the Centre Communal in Wilwerwitz. This is the starting point of the Quiltfestival . During 4 days there are about 20 different locations in 4 villages where you can see many different exhibitions of artists from all over the world. In churches, farmers' sheds and cafes. There is also a shopping tent for fabrics and notions. There are small shuttle buses to take the visitors to the different villages.

The opening reception was on Wednesday night which was very well-attended.

I was able to take a peek at the artwork of the other artists in the building, meet the Quilt Festival staff, many supporters, some of the other invited artists including Nancy Prince, Danny Amazonas, Denise Labadie and Wil Fritsma.

Here you see an overview of the second floor of the Centre Communal with the exhibitions of Wil Fritsma, Denise Labadie and Danny Amazonas.

The first day of the Quilt Festival was extremely busy with visitors from Germany, France , The Netherlands and of course Luxembourg. A constant change of speaking different languages. In the end I didn't know what language I was speaking anymore.

We even got a surprise visit of Xavier Bettel, the Prime Minister of Luxembourg. He took a lot of pictures himself and was very enthousiastic about the Quilts and the Festival.

He posted an album on his Facebook page and wrote:

Den 8. internationale Quiltfestival am Kiischpelt ass e Besuch wäert. Ech war haut op Visite a sin impressionéiert vun deenen immense Wierker déi ausgestallt sinn. Do verbënnt sech Kreativitéit, Kënnen, Gedold an Ausdauer mateneen a vill Léift fir den Detail. Ech wënschen den Organisateuren vill Succès! De Festival dauert nach bis den 13.05 an et ginn och Workshops offréiert, wou ee selwer kann déi Passioun kenneléieren.

On Friday we had a lot of visitors again. Everybody was extremely interested in my work and very appreciative. It' s amazing and deeply humbling to see how some of the visitors were overcome by emotions when looking at my work.

It was good to see so many men at a quilt show. When I remarked on this, a visitor said: they have to, they have to drive us between the villages. But still they came in too and were very interested.

Saturday and Sunday were less busy, but we still had quite a lot of visitors.

This also gave us the opportunity to visit with some of the other exhibitions ourselves.

Danny Amazonas was absolutely taken by my work. Here I am showing him around and we discussed techniques and construction together.

I had an incredible time at the Quilt Festival and want to thank the organizers for inviting me.