After lots of suggestions and debate by the Branch Committee ‘Shades of Summer’ – portrait 20 x 40 inches – won out as our branch exhibition team. We knew we had hit the jackpot when we saw two quilts entered by new members. Janet Egan’s beautiful quilt ‘Philomena’s Garden’ was her very first project and Ciara Brennan exhibited a gorgeous yellow ‘Sunflower Stars’ quilt.
We were delighted to acquire the Phoenix Park Visitor Centre as our venue for the month of July. It’s a beautiful setting for an exhibition and the staff in the Visitor Centre were extremely accommodating and helpful.
Ann Fleeton, renowned textile artist and Eastern Branch member, was our Guest of Honour. Ann gave a fabulous talk focusing on quilting through the generations, remembering some past members of Eastern Branch and the Irish Patchwork Society. She finished off her presentation by bringing it full circle with her memories of quilting with Catherine Duggan (1938-2023) whose daughter, Catherine Britton, exhibited a quilt entitled ‘West Cork, Summer 2018’ in memory of her mother.
Our members did not let us down either and a stunning array of quilts ranging from flowers, biodiversity, childhood memories, gardens, nature, seascapes, landscapes, and holiday themed art quilts started to flow in.
We were given a very generous donation by Christine Brennan (@theirishquilter) when she was a guest at one of our Branch meetings. We decided to use this for our exhibition as a viewers’ choice award. We had a voting box for visitors to the exhibition to cast a vote for their favourite quilt. We had over nine hundred votes and thousands of visitors to our exhibition. Our visitor’s book is filled with joyous comments from people from all over the world. Lena Pugachova’s quilt, ‘In the Shade’, was the winner of the viewers’ choice award. Lena received a Newbridge Silver Plate and a voucher for a day of long arm quilting at The Irish Quilter shop. Congratulations, Lena!
A huge thank you to all our exhibitors without whom this fabulous exhibition would not have happened. A big thank you goes out to Lena Pugachova for her help with the promotional work and digital catalogue for ‘Shades of Summer’; your invaluable knowledge and generosity with your time and beautiful photography of each quilt was very much appreciated. Finally, the committee deserve a big bualadh bos for their stellar work – as always – in making our Shades of Summer exhibition the huge success that it was. The colour, the vibrancy, the happy memories recalled, and the sheer oodles of talent displayed by our exhibitors put a smile on everyone’s face for a few moments in a very wet July.
Karen Monahan
