Get to know The Guild better by meeting our talented members! Every year we are so proud to have so many Guild Members who are winners at Festival of Quilts. We reached out to our talented member winners and asked them to share with us their quilting life, why they entered the competition, what their winning quilt means to them and where they get their inspiration. Read on and be inspired! Are you entering a quilt this year?

Meet Guild member Annalize Littlefair who was the winner in the Traditional Quilts Category.

What are you working on now?

I have recently completed a 1/2” hexagon quilt with over 13,000 pieces in which I have hand pieced. I am currently quilting this on my longarm machine and hope to have it completed in time for entry into the FoQ 2108.

I am enrolled in The Quilters’ Guild judging course so working on assignments for that and will hopefully qualify later this year.  I have also enrolled in a course on sewing and quilting on leather and will be qualified to teach this in a few months.

I have just finished Spectrum of spring which is an original design whole cloth, my aim is to complete a miniature version of this later this year.

What does your winning quilt mean to you?

My inspiration came from a discussion my family had over dinner one evening. We had a disagreement about what colour a car is when the colour is described as ‘hot magenta’.  I asked every one to write on a piece of paper what colour they thought it was. I then tried to use all the colours mentioned in the quilt. The quilting design is my own original design and is stitched on Radiance silk/cotton using Filtec and Wonderful threads as well as Kimono silk threads. It took longer to stitch out the background of the outside border than what it did to stitch out the centre section, the whole quilt took around three months from start to finish, working on it most days. I intended to enter it into FoQ in 2016, but circumstances meant that I could not enter until 2017.

The making of this quilt was during a time of great personal tragedy so when I found out that I had won, it felt like a great personal triumph over adversity. It is one of my all time favourite quilts.

Detail of my winning quilt:

Who are your quilting heroes?

It is difficult to name just one person. I have been helped and inspired by so many quilters in the sixteen years since I first started making quilts. Quilting for me has always been an escape and my therapy. Some of my heroes are Philippa Naylor, who first inspired me to take the step to aiming for perfection, Margaret Solomon Gunn, who first inspired my longarm quilting and then Bethanne Nemesh, who showed me that you do not need to conform to rules or follow patterns and that being individual and creating your own style is so much more rewarding than copying anyone else’s style or work.

Can you recommend a good quilting read?

As a traditional quilter, my favourite books are by Margaret Solomon Gunn, but having had to experiment with techniques I am not familiar with for the quilt judging course, I now love all manner of books, particularly those by Kim Thittitchai, Alice Fox and Margaret Beal.

What do you love about The Guild?

Through The Guild I have made so many friendships, I am in Region 6 which includes Oxfordshire and Berkshire and am lucky enough to live halfway between the two local hubs, so can pop in to both group’s meetings. I love belonging to a community where we can share, discuss and show our work and work together on projects. Being a quilter can be quite a lonely and isolated experience, so belonging in the group means that you can get out and meet other like minded individuals, there is never the need to feel lonely.

We are asking Members to tell us a bit about their sewing life using five simple questions. At the end of the interview each member suggests another to interview. This way we hope to bring you a wide range of makers from all corners of The Guild over the next weeks and months. If you know an inspiring quilter who we should feature, get in touch digital@quiltersguild.org.uk and we’ll send out a copy of our questionnaire.