World prize for Harvey quilt maker

Harvey artist Yvonne Chapman won the Best of Colour in the innovation category at the World Quilting Competition in the United States last week.

Quilters from all over the world submitted their works for the event in New Hampshire which ran from August 17 to 19, with a theme for entries this year of “tradition with a twist”.

“The twist was one of the horses was a real horse,” she said.

“I did it because I like the image, it has sentimental value to me.”

Ms Chapman has been working on her style of quilting for about seven years and describes it as similar to painting.

“That particular style to quilting, it’s very free form, it’s like painting with a brush but with stitching,” she said.

“It’s an extension of my art but in textile, not your traditional style of quilting at all.”

Ms Chapman won the Best of Australia award last year, in her first time entering, and said she was rapt to have won an international prize.

“I wasn’t expecting it to win anything at all, I was just expecting it to go on tour,” she said.

“I knew it was a nice quilt but I didn’t realise that it would be a prize-winning quilt.”

Ms Chapman took nearly 10 months to put the quilt together.

“I did a lot of research first, but to physically make it took about eight to nine months,” she said.

“Quite along time, but it was a good quilt to work on.”

Ms Chapman’s quilt will tour the United States for the next six months before returning home.

“I’ll then send it up to Vineyard 28 where it can go on show for a while and then I’ll probably just put it in my bedroom,” she said.