Festival of Quilts 2019

If everything had kept to the usual schedule, I would be at Festival of Quilts now, but it was moved forward a week this year and so I was at Festival of Quilts last week. This also meant that it coincided with the Ashes cricket at Edgbaston and so it was more “spot the cricket fan” in Birmingham than the usual “spot the quilter” (but the less said about the cricket the better).

My trip this year was spread over two days with the usual mix of workshops, shopping and looking at quilts. I had two workshops booked – a full day on the Thursday and a 90 minute twilight one on the Friday evening. After making sure the essentials were packed (rulers, mat, etc for the workshop and supplies for the hotel room), I travelled to Birmingham on the Wednesday afternoon to minimise the chance of train delays and cancelations preventing me getting to the workshop on Thursday. In the first workshop (Precision Piecing with Philippa Naylor) we got to sew on a Bernina machine (which I was surprised to find retails at ~£1000!) while learning how not to lose points on HSTs and flying geese. There also just about enough time to have a go at a mitred border sample, something I’ve not tried before. The second workshop was Designing Grid Quilting with Carolyn Gibbs which I chose to give me more ideas for straight line quilting. This was a low tech workshop (pencils, rulers and tracing paper) but nevertheless I came away with a much better understanding of how to plan quilting patterns rather than my usual way of starting to stitch and hoping it works out.

I didn’t have a shopping list as such this year and though I had wondered about finding some novelty prints for Project Linus quilts, I wasn’t really in the mood to browse given the overwhelming choice and number of stands. I picked up some finer machine needles than I usually use as these were recommended in the first workshop and I had ordered some Flatter for collection, which will also come in useful as in the first workshop we were advised to press with steam or a spritz of water. I also noticed in the first workshop that my cutting mat had lost its self-healing properties and crumbs of it were sticking to my rotary cutter, so it was the ideal time to buy a new mat. My other purchases were a silver marking pencil, a needle threader with thread cutter, an embroidery kit, a couple of back issues of magazines chosen for their free gifts, and a box of acrylic EPP templates. As you can see, all these had to be inspected and then ignored by “Not-Our-Cat”.

When it came to looking at the quilts, I was disappointed to find that the modern quilt section had been banished to the furthest corner away from the main entrance. I don’t know if the layout of the show is planned by the Quilters Guild or Twisted Thread, but perhaps they should consider what message it sends by always having the same quilt categories in the prime spots. Anyway, once I found the modern section, I was delighted to spot several quilts by people I know either in real life or via social media. I didn’t take many photos of quilts, just a few of ones that inspired me with their piecing and/or quilting, or ones that used blocks I’d like to try. If I had to pick one quilt as favourite I think it would be Red Light by Anette Sundberg (E108 in the guide). I loved the use of different sizes of the same block, the colour paletteand fabrics, and the black background.

Red Light by Anette Sundberg (Festival of Quilts 2019, E108)

As usual, after looking at Instagram posts back at home, I realised that there were sections that I had not found and not had time to see. Perhaps next year I should go on the last day when I have had chance to see what everyone else has spotted.

(For 2019, I am trialling a version of this website on WordPress to see if it is more mobile-friendly  for commenting and posting. The WordPress version of this post is available here.)