Quilt NSW – Quilt Show Eye Candy
September 24, 2025
Hi!
I hope you’ve had a great week. This week I had a bit of a treat – I went to Sydney’s (Australia) biggest quilt show – the Quilt NSW annual event, with over 350 quilts on display this year.
It’s always wonderful to go to these shows and look at the variety of quilts on display, and we were not disappointed this year, with the large number of quilts, and the quality of workmanship (and workwomanship!) of those that were in the Show.
I thought I’d share some of this quilty eye candy with you this week, so you could see a brief snippet of this show. Many of these are prize winning quilts, and many I just really liked. Some had their ribbons up, and others not quite yet, but all entrants should be proud of their achievements, as it was a really great show.
The 2025 Special Exhibition category was Log Cabin. Entrants were encouraged to use any technique or style and to explore all Log Cabin variations. Here’s some I liked –
This is “Optical Log Jam” by Louise Smith – it was beautifully hand quilted too.
This modern log cabin was “Democracy 2025” by Suzanne Laird.
This was “Springtime” by Marilyn O’Brien, using a collection of bright Alison Glass fabrics.
“Home on the Water: Sunset” by Sheila Beer was really interesting too, with the large log cabin ‘logs’ made from tiny strippy pieces.
I happened to catch Jennifer Stringer with her prize-winning “Lime Splice” quilt too, which again, used the single log cabin ‘block’ for the quilt, with modern improv pieced logs.
This “Cultural Cabins” quilt was made by Alan Tremain, and won first place in the Log Cabin Quilted by Self category (Professional). This one was worth a closer look, as Alan pieced it with vintage Indonesian fabrics to make shaded log cabin blocks with great effect.
Anita Brown’s “Logs Awry” quilt was also really interesting. She won both First in the Log Cabin Quilted by Self (Amateur) category, and also the Best Contemporary Quilt Award (Amateur). Anita used a limited palette of an African wax print and coordinating Grunge fabric, and pieced wonky log cabin blocks, with quite a different effect.
This year, there was also an exhibition from 9 quilters from the Japan Contemporary Quilt Association. Again, there were many amazing quilts, but I picked these couple to show you as their techniques were a little different, and REALLY effective.
This photo is a little blurry, and I don’t have the quilter’s name, but the applique was sewn onto a shibori dyed wholecloth background. All of the pale pink dots radiating out from the middle were dyed with this technique, which gave a really interesting design for the rest of the quilt.
And I couldn’t not share this one too. This is made from fabric – the red and white is all pieced, and I think the flower was appliqued.
And this is it in real size, next to the large quilt with the same design!! These “Kiriko Plate” quilts were both made by Noriko Shimano. The larger quilt is 260 x 195cm (104 x 78 inches), and the smaller one is only 24 inches square! Now go look at that tiny piecing again!!
Another quilt that caught my eye was Suzanne Mortensen’s “Japan”. This was needleturn appliqued, and features some sashiko stitching as well. It won the Entrant’s Quilt Top Quilted by Another (Amateur) category.
Wendy Williams’ “Going with the Flow” was a fun improv pieced quilt (and as my daughter loves fish, I had to take this photo to show her too).
Ingrid Kennewell’s “Little Pots” quilt was based on a design by Wendy Williams, and she won First place in the Applique Quilt (Amateur) category for her beautifully embroidered 52 pots of flowers.
I do love a well made art quilt too, and this smaller quilt called “Well Hello”, by Robyn Ellis came second in the Pictorial Quilt (Open) category. Her platypus was gorgeous, and the 3D leaves beautifully made and shaded with fabric.
This amazing quilt “Flora” by Bev Butler showed how layers can really made a design. Each block was made as a Drunkard’s Path background, and Bev drew and painted the Australian native flowers on each. The blocks were then free motion quilted with a variety of different designs, with a beautiful and award-winning result. Bev won First place for the Other Techniques (Amateur) category and also received an Excellence in Stationary Machine Quilting Award (Amateur) too.
I love an interestingly pieced modern quilt, and was delighted to see that this “Sunset over the Brindabellas” by Ann Richardson was the winner of the Modern Improvisational category. Our Online Quilt Magazine sponsored a category this year, and this was our assigned category and quilt winner!
One of our Online Quilt Magazine readers was an award winner too – Lynette Kelly was awarded the President’s Award for her “Australiana” quilt!
This quilt from Deborah Louie was fun! Called “Gardens Don’t Always Grow to Plan”, this was an applique quilt top that didn’t work as Deborah wanted. She took a big breath, and cut it up before re-piecing into this design. The applique was beautiful and really detailed, but worked really well in this revised design.
For those who do appreciate applique, I loved Nettie Sullivan’s “Botanica Australis” quilt too. Featuring beautiful designs of native Australian flora, and lovely quilting as well, this quilt took out second place in the Applique Quilt (amateur) category.
This “Wedded Bliss” quilt by Emma Kemmis was a pretty modern take on a classic, and I loved the colours and the quilting on this quilt. It was awarded fifth place in the Entrant’s Quilt Top Quilted by Another (Amateur) category.
And finally, Best of Show went to Susanne Cody for her beautiful appliqued “One Earth – One Chance” quilt.
I hope you enjoyed this brief look, and Congratulations to all winners, and indeed all entrants who had quilts hung, and well done to Quilt NSW for another very high standard quilt show.
Enjoy your week!
9 responses to “Quilt NSW – Quilt Show Eye Candy”
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Thanks for sharing all these beautiful quilts Jody! It’s such a joy to see the quilts clever people make!
Wonderful quilts, all of them!
What a wonderful quilt show. Very inspiring! Thank you so much for sharing.
Wow! What amazing quilts! Have to admit that the fish quilt is one of my favorites. So glad you shared all of the pictures. What a treat! Thank you.
HI, yes the quilts turn out more “modern” this days, but not bad at all ! Thanks for sharing
Jac.
Not to have a plane ticket to put us there in person , you showed us a wonderful experience in quilts of beauty and perfection! Thank you, Jody. This talent is awesome and inspiring!!
Danke für s teilen
Da geht ja einem das Herz auf
I enjoyed the ‘private showing’ of these quilts at home. They are creative, beautiful, and delightfully colorful. Thanks for sharing.
Stunning! Fish (yea), flowers, colorful, how about birds? Thanks.