Festival of Quilts 2026

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Festival of Quilts this year was spread across the end of July and the beginning of August and I was there for the first two days. After a couple of years with no train problems, I had hoped that the uncertainty of getting there (and back) due to possible train strikes had passed, but industrial action was announced less than two weeks before I was due to travel. Fortunately, this was cancelled in time for normal timetables to be reinstated and my journeys went as planned.

I had four “quick and easy” workshops/talks booked and unlike last year, none of them required an early start. First was an interactive hands-on session on exploring patchwork and quilting history in which we learnt about some of the quilts in the Quilters Guild collection. Some of these were over 200 years old and the session gave us the opportunity to view them close up. Next was an informative and entertaining talk on Sylko threads, which looked at the stories behind some of the names used by Sylko to describe their thread colours. My last two workshops were both practical sessions learning new-to-me techniques - quilt as you go and hand quilting. I thoroughly enjoyed all the workshops and I managed to spread them across the days which gave me breaks from shopping and looking at the quilts.

Given the number of quilts entered into the show, I’ve learnt now to focus my attention on certain categories rather than trying to see everything. I did get a sense of déjà vu at times when seeing quilts that had been entered into other shows and seeing familiar names from previous years in the winners’ gallery. My shopping was completed on the first day and I kept pretty much to my list. The Project Linus stand was again a source of some bargains - wooden cotton reels and scissors this year! I took advantage of a service offered by some stand holders to order items for collection at the show and it worked very well with me being able to get a book that was not available at the show. I’ll certainly consider it again, especially if there is something specific I need.

I’ve been going to Festival of Quilts for over 10 years now and now know what works best for me. I no longer plan to arrive for when the doors open and I don’t feel I have to see all the quilts. Time-wise and money-wise the “quick and easy” workshops are better for me than half-day or full-day academy classes. Shopping is less of a necessity than it used to be and I think the duration of future visits will be driven by the workshops available when booking opens to the general public. I won’t go as far as saying I won’t attend if there are no workshops of interest, but it would make it harder to justify the ticket and travel costs.

More teeny hexagons, sofa sewing station and preparing for Festival of Quilts

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This month has been quite productive for making teeny hexagons. After trying various options to use as a stamp, I found a thimble that was just the right size and have been using this to stamp the circles for the hexagons. It is much quicker and easier than trying to draw round a coin.

One problem with hexagons this small is that they are very easy to lose on the sofa. Fortunately I found a child’s lap tray reduced in the supermarket that could become an ideal sofa sewing station. Unlike some adult lap trays, this did not have a rim around the edge making it easier to repurpose it.

I removed the plastic insert by sliding a craft knife under the edge and removed some of the stuffing to make it more squishy. I then glued a layer of quilting batting to the top so that the original design wouldn’t show through the top fabric which I stitched to the cushion in a similar way binding is hand stitched to a quilt. Finally , I made some modular accessories for the plastic insert - a small tray for threads, two spool pins made from screws set in a foam block and covered with unshrunk heat-shrink tubing, and a small pin cushion with an elongated edge for fabric clips. I also added a fixed needle minder beneath the pin cushion.

Preparations for my trip to Festival of Quilts have also included some teeny hexagons with me making a pair of earrings using some scraps of Liberty lawn.

Something that will probably be more useful for Festival of Quilts is the new app launched this year and available for Apple and Android devices. Features include a list of exhibitors, timetable of workshops/talks (including ticket availability) and perhaps most useful for me - a floor plan.

I’ll be there for Thursday and Friday and have three workshops/talks booked for Thursday and one for Friday, but should still have plenty of time for admiring the quilts and shopping. If you spot the earrings, do say hello.

An upcycling project and famous last words

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 Last year at Festival of Quilts, I attended a talk about Sylko threads and since then I have been on the look out for the wooden reels. The original shop cabinets can be quite expensive and so I've been searching for something that would be a bit nicer than the current cardboard boxes in which my reels are currently stored, but more affordable than the vintage cabinets.

I spotted a wooden box in charity shop for only £2 that had potential. It had a logo and some paint stains, but these could be removed by sanding. I found an image of the Sylko logo online which I was able to adapt to make it a suitable size and colour for the box. Adding a £1 bottle of glue, a £1.50 can of spray varnish and a couple of hours of my time resulted in a more stylish storage solution for at least some of my Sylko reels.

I said last month that I had finished all the machine pieced blocks for my Wonderland sampler quilt and only had to applique the EPP shapes onto the background square - this turned out not to be the case. After completing the applique, I went to layout the blocks and realised I was four short for my on point layout.

I was originally planning a 8x8 square layout and so had chosen 64 blocks to make from the book. However, I changed my mind and decided to set the blocks on point which required 68 blocks, but I had not updated my notes. After looking through the book for inspiration, I made 2 extra machine pieced blocks and 2 extra EPP blocks. One bonus of not being able to count, was that I was able to include some hidden cats in one of the extra blocks.

The next stage is to decide on a layout and check my calculations for the triangles at the ends of each row.

A productive start to the year

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This month started with the arrival of a vintage sewing mystery box. Last year I bought a mystery box from Barnyarns, the contents of which were not exactly to my taste or needs. This year I spotted a charity listing on Ebay for a vintage sewing basket and contents which was half the price of last year’s box. The photos gave a hint of what was inside and I decided it was worth a go as if there was nothing of use, I could regard it as a donation to charity.

The basket arrived and it was full of a mix of sewing and knitting items. The contents included a darning mushroom, 2 rag rug hooks, 7 tape measures, 2 containers of pin, 5 thimbles, a bodkin, 10 packets of needles, various hotel sewing kits, 2 needle threader, 45 reels of thread, 1 pair of pinking shears, 10 pairs of scissors, 19 pairs of knitting needles, 2 sets of double pointed knitting needles, 8 crochets hooks, 2 knitting gauges, 3 row counters and 1 stitch holder.

It appears that the original owner was also a patch-worker as there was handmade half square triangle work bag and an EPP pin cushion, as well as two embroidered needle books.

The basket interior has seen better days, but I think it will make a good renovation project.

I was very pleased with this purchase, though the combination of a talk on Sylko threads at last year’s Festival of Quilts and several vintage reels of Sylko in the basket has started me exploring other related vintage sewing items and no doubt there will be more to report on that.

The next sewing related activity was my first trip to Waterloo Quilters of the year. This was a charity sewing day and we were making potato chip blocks for Project Linus quilts. It’s a great block to make as a group activity as there are no seams to match and it doesn’t matter which way the seams are pressed so you have plenty of opportunity for chatting and swapping of our pre-cut pieces to ensure no repeats in each block.

I’ve also made some more progress on my Wonderland sampler quilt. I’m not making all the blocks in the book and am making some changes to ones that are not quite to my liking. The last of the EPP blocks from the book have been completed and I included a mini Patchwork of the Crosses block in my selection of EPP blocks.

Sewing has also started on the machine pieced blocks. I didn’t like the very first block and have changed this to a courthouse steps block; similarly, I introduced more white fabric into the log cabin block.

The next style of blocks to make are based on half square triangles, which I cut using my Sizzix dies, so it will be interesting to see how they go together.

Sewing has finally started on the Wonderland Sampler quilt

After many weeks (or even months) of preparation, I’ve finally started sewing blocks for the Wonderland Sampler quilt!

At the start of this month, I went along to one of Alice Caroline’s pop-up shops and topped up my Liberty stash with a few fabrics for the Wonderland Sampler quilt and some small pieces of plain lawn. There were no Liberty bargains, but I did find some other bargains - 1.5m of sage green chambray with a printing fault for £10, Aurifil thread with a 25% discount, a Merchant & Mills point turner for £1 and a pack of Tulip needles for £1.

 

This month’s Waterloo Quilters meeting was a free sewing session and I took along some of the English paper piecing (EPP) blocks from the Wonderland Sampler quilt to stitch. I managed to complete three blocks during the meeting and the rest of the EPP blocks are all now tacked to the papers ready to stitch together.

As you can see, for two of the blocks although the fabrics are different I have kept to the book’s designs, but for the other block, I decided to omit the outer diamonds to reduce the number of hexagon shaped blocks.

It’s been a while since I last did any EPP, but I’m hoping I can get into the habit of doing a little stitching each evening now that the clocks have gone back.

 

 

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If it’s August, it must be Festival of Quilts

This month started with a trip to Festival of Quilts in Birmingham. Unlike last year when none of the workshops or talks appealed to me, this year I booked two quick and easy workshops (one at 8.30 am!) and one talk which meant a two day trip and an overnight stay in Birmingham.

My first workshop was a no-sew introduction to Bargello in which double-sided fusible stabilizer was used to create strip set and arrange them into a panel. Making a Bargello quilt is on my wish list and this was a great way of understanding the process and seeing how the patterns can develop.

The second workshop was early morning which meant an early departure from the hotel in central Birmingham, but had the advantage of being able to go straight from the workshop to the exhibition halls for the start of the show. This workshop was for making earrings from Dorset buttons and we were able to complete one earring during the workshop. I now need to make another earring while I can remember how.

My final activity was a talk on the history of Sylko threads and how they now have collectable status. This was interesting and amusing (how many shades of pink can there be?) and, after hearing how much some of the rarer colours can fetch, I should really check my few Sylko reels to see if any could fund next year’s trip!

I get the feeling I only took in a fraction of the quilts on display. After many years of going, I still find the quantity of quilts overwhelming, though one quilt in the 5-9 age group in particular did make me smile. The theme was “My Hero” and from a distance it made sense, but then I saw the title - the hero is not Godzilla!

Fortunately someone with a show guide was able to share the description which explains the link between Godzilla and Grandma.

As usual, I didn’t come away empty handed and my purchases this year saw bargains from the Project Linus stand (including So Fine Thread for just £1 per reel); 3m of interfacing to give a tana lawn quilt some oomph if needed (from Lady Sew and Sew) and some rings for Dorset buttons; an ombré remnant and a cat panel from Allison’s craft emporium; a free bag and some other goodies from Aurifil.

The rest of the August had been mostly sorting and preparing fabrics for my Wonderland Sampler quilt, though sewing has yet to start on it. I did manage a bit of sewing at Waterloo Quilters where we tried the Accuquilt Qube system to make some 12”blocks. It was great for cutting half square triangles as no trimming was required, though cutting squares is probably just as easy with a ruler and rotary cutter.

Trying the Accuquilt system reminded me to check my Sizzix dies and it looks as though I have the correct size dies for half square triangles and quarter square triangles that might be suitable for a few of the blocks in the Wonderland Sampler. Hopefully this weekend will see the last of the preparation and next month sewing can start.

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Barnyarns "Mystery Box"

Last month I received an email from Barnyarns stating that their mystery box was “back and better than ever”. Always on the look out for a bargain, I ordered one and was keen to see what it would include.

My expectations were somewhat managed when the box arrived as by its size I could tell there would be no cutting mat, wadding or thread boxes inside. (To be fair, it is clearly stated that the image is for illustration purposes only.)

The box contained a variety of items covering a range of crafts, some of which will be useful but many of the items duplicate what I already have.

Cutting mat not part of mystery box

I think previous mystery boxes may have had specific themes (perhaps quilting, dressmaking, embroidery) and these may have been a better option for me than a general box such as this.

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In preparation for sewing

The only sewing this month has been shortening a pair of mens trousers, which although it involved an overlocker, a sewing machine and hand sewing is not very interesting to photograph.

Instead here’s a photo of ~2 kg of quilting cottons from Abakhan which were added to my stash for less than £5 per metre.

I’ve a specific plan for most of these and so hopefully there will some sewing to report next month.

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Finishing the tiny sewing and visiting Festival of Quilts

All my sewing and sewing-related activity seems to have taken place at the beginning of this month.

The tiny sewing has been completed, but as this is for a secret project that won’t be revealed until October, all I can show you for now is the back of the completed block before the FPP papers were removed.

My sewing-related activity for this month was a two-day visit to Festival of Quilts. To be accurate, it was two one-day trips to Festival of Quilts as this year I didn’t stay over, but returned home each day. By the time I was sure the trains would not be affected by strikes, it was cheaper to book two return train tickets than one return ticket and a hotel. This did mean I only had ~4 hours at the show each day, but it was long enough and it was quite nice to have time at home to reset and recharge after the first day.

As usual, even though I thought I had looked at the quilts in a logical order, there were still ones appearing on social media that I have no recollection of seeing. I took photos of only quilt and it was because it made me stop and take a closer look to see how the colour graduation had been done.

CT-04, Seaweed Sunset, Daisy Dodge

On very close inspection, it turns out the quilt is combination of squares and nine-patch blocks set on point.

It wouldn’t be Festival of Quilts without a bit of shopping and I think what I bought could be describe as “a bit”. From Crafty Quilter, I got a quilt pattern and some ombre fabric for it. The Millefiori book was from Kaleidoscope Books and doesn’t really count as it has been squirrelled away to reappear at Christmas as a present from my husband. From Lisa at Modern Quilt Club, I got some Flatter pressing spray and a selection of Aurifil 28wt thread. A couple of reels of Invisifil 100wt thread was purchased from Wonderfil and some bargains were found on the Project Linus stand – a pattern notching punch for 50p and two books at a £1 each.

After two years of my trips to Festival of Quilts being disrupted/governed by train strikes, it would be nice to hope that that things could be resolved in time for next year’s show.

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Remakes and Repeats

July’s makes have a sense of familiarity about them. First up are yet more masks – four for ourselves and four for friends.

There has also been another tunic from the McCall 7800 pattern – this time in a Liberty jersey I got from eBay. As I knew this would be v neck from the start, I decided to learn a new technique and used an overlap v neckband by following instructions from alinadesignco.com. This went well and I can see myself using this technique on other patterns. As is becoming the norm, I also made a matching facemask from the offcuts.

In a move back to days of normality, a few bargains have been found this month. I went to the silk sale at Adamley Textiles a few weeks ago and came back with a bag of silk remnants which will be useful for mask making. There has also been the chance to look round charity shops again and I found four part-used cones of overlocker thread in colours that I needed at £1 for the four.

Finally, because this month’s sewing was done without the aid of Now-our-cat, here’s a photo of him contemplating what to do about a hedgehog.

He decided to ignore it.

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