McKenna Ryan visits Palmerston North!

This week McKenna Ryan spent a few days in New Zealand. Three quilt stores got together and paid for her to come to NZ and I was lucky enough that The Cloth Shop here in Palmerston North was one of them! For those of you who don't know who she is, she is from America and is well known for designing the stunning appliqued quilts. In fact you will probably remember the one I'm working on? (below)
Anyway, McKenna, pictured above wearing a pretty darn cool apron with her appliqued penguins on it, is answering questions. She gave a great talk on Tuesday night and then on Wednesday she gave a class.




She went through a large pile of quilts she bought out with her, telling us where she got her ideas from, and then they were all hung on the walls, there were lots of ohs and ahs. The small works on the wall, below, are on small canvases.


And then she got to this quilt! It was quite exciting and interesting to see it in person, and to know that she had actually made it herself rather than a machine or some unknown person. I am up the quilting stage with mine, so I was interested to see how she had quilted hers. It was also interesting to see what embellishments she had used, as I still have to add mine yet.


I took quite a few pics, lots for The Cloth Shop blog which I update each Friday for the girls there, (check out their blog on Friday afternoon for more pictures) and I took a couple for the NZ Quilter mag which should go in the April issue. And these ones for me. :)

Stunning! (quilts I mean! lol)

Carole :)