Festival of Quilts: Jo's top 3 from the open exhibition

If you saw Ang's post last week, you'll know she and I were given a monumental (I’d call it ‘unreasonable’) mission by Jo Wright, Creative Director at Take Two. Should we choose to accept it (no choice given here), we were to wander the Festival of Quilts open exhibition and determine three ‘top picks’ each. Just three! Three – out of a hall stacked floor to ceiling with genius, determination and inspirational stories. 

Mission: impossible, you suggest? Yes.

Could we do our very best? Also yes.

I whittled my list down to three. Next week they’d be three different choices, and the week after that they’d be different again. I could make this post last a year.

1. Space Oddity, by Esther Tronchoni and Peter Hayward

I love this for so many reasons, not least its super smarts and cheeky reference points including:

• Bowie, of course,
• Big Corporations and Big Space,
• Governmental/global priorities,
• Economics and status and privilege,
• Wisdom and folly,
• Isolation,
• Human and planetary health,

but also for how adorable this intrepid explorer is. I mean, LOOK AT HER. Owls have those big eyes humans love and see as wise, soulful and intelligent, and yet in real true life they're silent and deadly and skilled and swiftly murderous - they're entirely magnificent. Put one in a space suit and give her a cola, and BAM! You've got a winner winner, chicken dinner.

The applique, the felting, the miniscule 0.5 cm square pieces creating galaxies and stars and planets as a background – it's superb, in all its glorious surrealism. Owls don't even have hands.

2. Popping Marbles, by Masako Nishimura

I could gaze upon this masterpiece every day for a lifetime.

This quilt is the reason why we have eyeballs.

A photograph simply does not do it justice, as with many – or most – quilts. Seeing it in person gifts you a delicious double take when you walk up close to it and realise that the reason all the tiny elements are so exquisitely toned and textured is because they're bits and precious pieces from silk kimonos.

The scale of this quilt is off the charts - it is simply enormous. Each little block is like a cell containing the atoms that create the sum of its parts. I can imagine curling myself up into the middle of it like a nucleus, staying there for an entire winter, and emerging only for tea and fresh books.

Thank you, Masako, for this stunning modern take on an ancient and revered traditional dress fabric, bringing wonderment and awe in spades.

Divine.

3. Moving On, by Pachy Sarmiento M, illustration by Ray Dak Lam

Any artwork with a close-up reveal is fun, and when you park yourself in everyone else's way to examine 'Moving On' up super close and personal, specs on tight, head tilted back to gain traction on the multifocals, you find pure delight in the miniscule stitches that seamlessly blend these perfectly placed colour blocks into each other. So much so that you might even make involuntary out-loud noises of appreciation and awe. You might make some strange audible noises by accident, and then surreptitiously look around to see if anyone heard your strange noises.

Love the title, love the colour choices, love the simplicity of the shapes but the complexity of the cohesion and composition.

I spent a lot of time both in front of and behind this quilt, and I don’t regret a second of it. Absolutely stunning work, in my profoundly humble opinion.

An owl in a spacesuit, kimono silks in atomic finery, and so much colour magic in a quilt that it made me float gently above the floor for a solid four(ish) minutes. Mission accomplished, Jo Wright, Creative Director (and quilter extraordinaire!). I present my three top picks. Mission: possible!

Huge thanks, as always, to every maker who so generously and courageously allowed us to peer at their stitches and their stories up close and then at a distance and then up reeeeaaal close again, and also to everyone who stopped Ang and me for a chat along the aisles. It was so nice to share quilt-love with you.

Despite the completely unreasonable mission we were sent on, it was a thrill and pure joy to be at the 2026 Festival of Quilts. What a privilege!

Until the next show,

Jo

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