The Festival of Quilts

Today I went to Birmingham to the Festival of Quilts - 'the best quilt show in Europe' as I heard someone describe it! It's certainly a fabulous show, with the quilts (naturally), the shopping (of course) and exhibitions from lots of famous and talented quilters and groups from all around the world. Here are some of my favourite quilts from the show.

This Russian quilt was called something about honey, and had bees and fabulous stitching on it.

This gateway had been made nearly life-sized, to give the impression that you could step right through it. It certainly works for me.

The 'Tree of Life' with abundance surrounding it. Fabulous.

A contemporary quilt called 'Energy'. Amazing.

A French quilt where the workmanship was amazing. Not only was it hand appliqued, but it was heavily hand quilted too, mainly in stippling. A real labour of love.

The winner of the Young Quilter 12-16 age group. The theme was 'Pearls of the Orient' and the onion shaped domes of the Royal Pavilion suggest the opulence of the East. Pearly buttons complete the allusion.

I've just realised that nearly all the quilts I liked were appliqued! Here are two which aren't. This one is a sampler quilt made from patterns to be found here and inspired by a Jennifer Chaverini book 'The Master Quilter'.

There was a super exhibition of Ferret's work, including this wholecloth-on-acid! The black fabric has been heavily machine quilted with black and white thread, to stunning effect.

And as to the shopping, well I couldn't resist! A pack of '10 fat quarters for £10', some neutral fat quarters, a black design from 'Aussie Dreams' to be included in my next quilt as a memory of our play, four reels of thread, two notebooks to be embellished and two books. One is the Quilter's Guild new 'Quilt Studies' essays and the other 'Slice 'Em and Dice 'Em Quilts', showing how to make simple blocks and cut them up to make more complex ones. More of that later! If you would like to see how the group quilt which Ruth and organised fared in the exhibition, lok here, but be warned, it doesn't make for happy reading!

Quick quilt

While I was at the area day last week, Ferret showed a quilt which had taken her 6 hours to make, including the cutting! It was a double bed quilt and absolutely gorgeous. It was from the book 'Turning 20' and really caught a few people's eyes, as she sold a lot of copies of the pattern. DS had recently requested a quilt for his new pad in Leeds - he's got a few quilts, but no doubles, and nothing suitable for a young man about town! He decided that blue would be good, but didn't want any cream in it, as he has eczema, and often gets blood on his bedding. I have been collecting blue batiks for this quilt, and decided to use this pattern to make it.

I decided to time myself with this one and here is the one hour fifteen minutes progress. (Unfortunately I forgot to time myself cutting, but I don't think it was an hour.) I'm hoping to have a bit of sewing time tonight as DH is away on business, so watch the progress!

Regional Day

Things here have been pretty busy. DD has gone off to Brighton to start her MA course (means : washing, ironing, packing, cajoling, jollying, driving to and from Brighton, unloading, unpacking, feeding etc ) and nearer to home I have been front of house manager for the local production of 'Whose Life Is It Anyway?' (means : rushing home from work to be at the venue for 6.30, staying all evening to look after the audience and then on the final night host the after-show party and drink till 3 am.) Tough week! Luckily, both events went off very successfully, so now I can relax and maybe do a little sewing!

I did find time to sneak off to the Quilters Guild of the British Isles Regional Day for Northamptonshire with Ruth. It's the first time I've been to a Region 7 day, and it was very friendly and enjoyable. Apart from the delights of the delicious array of home-made cakes, they had two speakers! In the morning was Ferret and after lunch was Katherine Guerrier.


I had seen Ferret's fantastic quilt 'Herd Mentality' at the NEC, but apart from a rumour that she made quilts featuring nudes, knew no more. She was delightful. Modest, young, down to earth and very inspirational, she showed a wide variety of different techniques and ideas. Her journey as a quilter (from using polycotton and bedsheets and binding her quilts with satin ribbon) was much like many of ours, but the range of her work and colour sense was uniquely her own.

Here you can see her with several of her quilts in the background. Apparently her nudes cannot be exhibited in some shows (she named Paducah) but I didn't think they were disturbing myself.

After lunch, I don't think I was the only one who struggled to keep awake during Katherine Guerrier's talk. It wasn't that her talk or quilts weren't good, but more the fact of lunch (and home-made cake) weighing me down. Katherine is the archetypal scrap quilter, and to see how her quilts developed into the wonderful kaleidoscopes of colours that they are today, was fabulous. I tried to get a photo of her, but the numbers of people wanting to look at her quilts,

and buy her books was too great.

You can just see her at the back in a white blouse and blue scarf.

I took the opportunity to seek advice about the old hexagon quilt. Margaret Armstrong, from the Quilter's Guild was kind enough to look at 3 hexagon quilts that people had brought along. The other two were silk and one in particular (which had been bought in a junk shop for £20) was a poor shape. Margaret felt that none of the quilts were museum quality, and said that it would be fine to replace the missing and damaged parts of mine with reproduction fabrics and thereby realise its original maker's intentions. I have emailed the Quilter's Guild twice to see if they would like it, but have so far not had a response. I'll hang fire for a while and see if I can get another opinion, but I think Margaret is probably right.