Festival of Quilts ~ my summary

What a busy weekend!!  I spent two full days at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham - it was my first time attending this festival.  There was a huge selection of modern, traditional and art quilts to see, plus a load of mini-minis and big-minis on display, and of course lots of shopping to do!  I met up with a few of the London Modern Quilt Guild members and bumped in to quite few people I met at the Fat Quarterly Retreat a couple of months ago so it felt like a 'quilty' reunion!!  And of course I managed to buy a few bits and pieces... just a few - honest!  Here is [most] of what I came away with:

A variety of fq's to go into the stash, some notions, hardware and Steam A Seam stuff!

Prestige Textiles home dec weight - mushrooms and Santa-like gnomes
[hey Kelly - you like??!!], and the red wool mix felt used for Zakka bear.

The fabric pictured next, well, my family will understand why I bought it!  They will know that this wizard fabric is totally 'me'.  You see, I went through a Merlin phase as a teenager when I read all of the Mary Stewart books about Merlin and Arthur (I still love those books) so when I saw this fabric I had to buy it!  I plan to make a pillow out of it and add homemade piping around the edge.  I know it was a totally frivolous purchase but I smiled all day thinking about making it! 

Prestige Textiles wizard home dec weight fabric bought from Fabrics Galore.

Now on to the show....

There were hundreds of quilts to see and all sorts of other quilty things on display - I even saw some quilted ball gowns!  Some of my favourite quilts were found in the 'mini' quilt section because they were regular sized quilts but made in miniature - not just a quilted 12" block if you know what I mean.  There were some extraordinary skills on display but not as much 'modern' as I had hoped to see.  Here are a few of my favourites from the show:

This colourful modern mini is by Lucie Summers - I know this much!



Itty-bitty pieces and then teenie-tiny applique on the border - wow!



How clever is this one!!?  A Union jack in landscape.  Mr Crafty Shenanigans loves this one too!

These squares are about 1 to 2 inches each - wow!  Impressive.

So there you have it - just a few photos from my weekend at the Festival of Quilts.  Next year I will be sure to pre-book onto the workshops and classes as I was too late this year and they were all sold out.  Did you attend this year?  

Be sure to stop by my blog on Friday for TGIFF and on Saturday for my giveaway!!  Happy sewing!