Last month I had a brief visit to the Quilt and Stitch Village show at Uttoxeter racecourse, this time travelling alone by train (last year’s visit was a coach trip with Waterloo Quilters). Uttoxeter station is next to the racecourse and a gate from one of the platforms gives direct access to the racecourse - train to entrance turnstile was only a ~350m walk. I was quite amused to see that tickets bought on the day were issued as race meeting tickets. I’d not bought in advance in case there was a problem with the trains and the price difference between advance (£11 + £1 booking fee) and on-the-day (£15) individual tickets was half the 40% saving headlined in social media posts which is based on group tickets.
The first thing I did was a quick look around the stalls to get an idea of who was there and what was on offer. I wasn’t planning on getting anything at this stage, though I did get a few things that were limited stock, such as a particular colour of a magnetic needle case from Oakapple Haberdashery and one-off bargains from Project Linus.
I then headed up to see the quilts as like last year, I had entered a quilt, though not a full sized one this time. My quilt was based on the moquette used on Merseyrail class 507/508 trains at the time of their withdrawal from service in 2024, with a pieced backing representing the moquette currently in use on the new class 777 trains. Continuing with the train theme, the quilting depicted a map of the parts of the Merseyrail network on which the trains run.
The quilt is very true to what it represents in term of design and colours, but this probably didn’t work in its favour in terms of being a show quilt, especially when displayed on a black background. The comments from the judges were fair and I was very surprised to see a tick in the excellent column from one them. I can’t really take credit for the “bold colour choices” as these were chosen by the railway company!
I was quite disappointed to see all the miniature quilts squashed together on a single rail at the closed end of a display bay. These quilts, though small in size, are not small in effort and it would be nice for them to have been given a bit more space as the work involved needs to be seen close up- even having them on two rails would have been better. Quilt entries in all classes (except miniatures) were down on last year’s entries which would have suggested more space available for display this year.
After seeing the quilts, it was time for lunch and the weather was, like last year, ideal for a picnic by the parade ring.
After lunch, I headed back to the stalls, this time for a proper look around. I found some ideal red fabrics for Project Linus quilts from Carole’s Crafts (along with some turquoise fabrics to add to the stash to take advantage of the 5 metres for £40 offer) and a mini Morris magnetic needle case from Elephas to add to my earlier purchases of a larger magnetic needle case from Oakapple Haberdashery and the bag of Sylko threads and pattern from Project Linus.
(I later discovered at home that the larger needle case is big enough to hold a small pair of scissors which hopefully will stop me losing them and needles when sewing on the sofa.)
With the trains home being only every hour, I then had the difficult decision of whether to look at the embroidery entries and have quite a bit of time to wait for the next train, or head to the station for a train that would get me home before the Friday afternoon school rush. This was the only downside to visiting by train and I decided to miss the embroidery and head home.
I wasn’t too sure how this year’s visit would work out, but the direct access from the platform to the racecourse made using the train easier than it could have been and the only disadvantage was the hourly timing of my trains. Entering a miniature quilt was much easier logistically than entering a full sized quilt - quicker to remove all the cat hairs and cheaper to post! I’ve been planning to make a quilt based on Merseyrail seats for some time, and now I can tick it off my list. I’ll be sticking with miniature for any future quilt show entries, but will let the judges’ comments and potential display area guide the colours, design and quilting.
