Festival of Quilts 2022

It’s time for my annual report about Festival of Quilts. This year I spent two days there (Thursday and Friday) as there were two lectures I wanted to hear on the Friday afternoon and I thought just half a day would not be sufficient to see the quilts and do some shopping.

Train strikes were planned on the Thursday and Saturday which affected many people’s plans. I had to travel to Birmingham a day early, but had no problems getting trains to/from Birmingham New Street and Birmingham International on the Thursday. It was difficult to judge the crowds, but Friday was busier than Thursday, probably due to the train strike. As with last year, the show was spread over 4 halls which makes comparison with pre-Covid years tricky but I got the impression it was still not back to pre-COVID numbers, however, it was nice to hear some international voices again.

This year the workshops, galleries and VIP lounge were in Hall 6, the traders were in Halls 7 and 8, and the quilts were displayed in part of Hall 9. There were more traders than last year and the space between the stalls was maintained at last year’s level. Some of the bigger names returned this year, but there were still a few notable absences which is perhaps why there was plenty of seating scattered around the halls.

I was quite focussed with my shopping* and even though I was unlucky in my quest to get some background fabric for the Cats in Space quilt, I did get some metallic fabrics for the space suits and helmets and some suitable fabric for ginger cats. I picked up some useful things at the Project Linus stand including a couple of fabric marking pens, some vintage Sylko reels for display and an odd shaped remnant of a low volume fabric which is the equivalent to 3 FQs and I think it is Moda Grunge. I also picked up a few bits as prizes in the Quilts for Care Leavers raffle – a magnetic telescopic pick up stick, a FQ and a bobbin keeper. My best bargains were two packs of Warm & Natural twin sized quilt wadding which were £5 each on the P&Q magazine stand which I think must have been subscription gifts at some point. Even allowing for the 59p large carrier bag I had to get to carry them home in, it is still a saving of ~£20 per pack! I also picked up a few pieces of red and cream fabrics with a hint of Christmas from there and it was quite sad to see all the clearance items and back issues on the stand and everyone was saying that the magazine will be missed. I didn’t buy any Liberty fabric this year, but I did get some free quilt patterns from the Liberty stand which may help me use my stash.

 

The display of the quilts was a bit more irregular than previously with the wooden display frames arranged in short zig-zag formations at various angles which, for me, made it more difficult to view them in a methodical manner. All of the quilts can be viewed on the FoQ website and you have until Friday 9^th September to vote for the Visitors’ Choice. As the quilts can be viewed online, rather than include lots of photos of quilts in this post, I will show a few of the competition quilts caught my eye and gave me ideas that I might like to try.

MD41, Sampling Modernity, Linda Chevell

 

TD33, Japanese Log Cabin, Chris Harvey

 

MD22, Airspace, Kathleen Anderson

 

The two lectures were both excellent - one was about the Liberty archive by Anna Buruma, Head Archivist at Liberty and the other was about the shoddy trade and was by Jo Andrews of Haptic and Hue. Another excellent attraction was the gallery of quilts by Sarah Hibbert (@quiltscornerstone on Instagram). I liked her use of neutral linen fabrics and as I have quite a lot of "linen type" fabric I got from Abakhan's ages ago I might be tempted to use more of it.

 

Unlike many previous years, I came away from this year’s trip with some inspiration and some ideas to try. I’m still not tempted to make a show quilt and a story to go with it, and instead will stick to making quilts for family, friends and charity.

* All purchases had to pass feline inspection while I was trying to take a photo.

 

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A magical birthday quilt

About four weeks before the event, I realised a friend’s significant birthday was approaching and I needed to make something special for it. Fortunately, this coincided with her telling me of a recent Harry Potter themed weekend away and me buying some Harry Potter FQs in a supermarket with a view to making a quilt for Project Linus. The FQs were repurposed, some more Harry Potter fabrics bought, a few days taken off work and I managed to get a quilt made in time for the big day.

The feature fabrics are framed in churn dashes and I left plenty of negative space for two types of quilting. The main quilting is straight-line quilting inside the churn dashes and free motion “stars and squiggles” meandering around the churn dashes. For the largest churn dashes, a few stars were added to keep the layers together.

In the negative spaces I quilted Harry Potter associated words by printing the words onto thin paper and stitching through the paper around each letter. To make the word stand out a little, I used Aurifil 28wt thread whereas the “stars and squiggles” used Aurifil 40wt thread.

I even put a label of sorts on the back of the quilt, though the quilt police would probably tell me off for not including my name.

Now this has been handed over to a very happy Harry Potter fan, I can go back to my original plan of making a Project Linus quilt as there is plenty of fabric remaining.

* This was not an entirely solo effort - I did receive the usual feline assistance.

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Switching to 5/8” seams

There has been rather a lot of football occupying the TV this month and so I decided to use the time to sew some ⅝” seams on clothes to make a change from the usual ¼” seams on patchwork. I managed to complete a wearable toile of McCalls 7922, but progress on a fleece gillet has been hindered by feline assistance.

 

I made view D of M7922 with quite a few modifications. I straighten the hem across the longest point, omitted the zip, back darts and front band, and I also added a wide neckband to raise the neckline by ~1.5” as without this it would have been lower than I liked. The twist front went together fairly easily, but it was a bit unclear which seam allowances needed neatening and when was best to do it.

As I wasn’t too sure how this would go together and look, I used a bargain fabric from stash but I can see myself making more versions in “proper” fabrics in my stash.

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Heart Strings Quilt

This month’s sewing was made as an online Valentine challenge and is a smallish (40” square) quilt for Project Linus. 

 

With feline assistance, I gathered my fabrics and starting sewing during the weekend of Valentine’s day.

 

The quilt is made from 16 string-pieced squares, some a single colour and some two-coloured. Squares and HST were made using string piecing on to a paper backing, a technique I’d not tried before. The strings were cut from FQs of Liberty quilting cotton and the cream background is from low volume fabrics that I have been adding to my stash over several months. I didn’t get my calculations quite right when working out what size strings to cut so I had to insert narrow strings to get full coverage.

 

I quilted it with a free motion meander with heart shaped motifs. The pink thread I used for the heart was too good a match for some of the strings and I struggled to see the quilting in places.

 

The backing and binding fabrics were from stash and the binding is machine stitched as I think it is more suitable for a quilt that hopefully will get lots of use and washing.

 

I’m quite pleased to have used some more of my Liberty rather than having it sit unused in my Stash.

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Finishes and Festivities

I mentioned last month that I was nearly at the end of a Quilt Along – I’m pleased to say that I managed to finish it in time and it is now quilted and bound. The front is made from Liberty quilting cottons and the backing is Liberty tana lawn that I had in my stash.

 As usual there was lots of feline help at every stage of the making of this quilt.

My other finishes this month have been slightly festive and not necessarily sewing-related. I planted up a pot of winter flowers for one set of neighbours and made a quilted holder for the pot. My non-sewing project was a couple of small Christmas cakes for friends, though I did cheat and buy ready made marzipan and icing for these.

In other news, unless things change in the next week, I have actually managed to have a month without making any face masks!

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Cats (and other creatures) on a quilt

After making the Covid quilt for Zoom meetings last month, it was nice to make a quilt for more traditional purposes. This quilt is heading to my great niece who is now about 3 months old. 

There are lots of cats on it, along with many other creatures so hopefully when she is a bit older she will enjoy spotting them all.

I think this is my favourite square in it – cats, sheep, knitting and combinations of all three!

It is backed with fleece and was quilted in straight lines in the sashing. The binding was machine stitched so it would withstand lots of use and washing.

As usual, there was some feline assistance in the making of this quilt.

Just in case you were thinking I had managed a mask free month, I made this one for Halloween.

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August - a mask-free month?

I thought I was going to manage a month without having to make any masks, but it was not to be - four more masks to be sent off to family.

There has been some quilt sewing, but unfortunately this was delayed by cat, so finishing will have to wait until next month.

 

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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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Take Two Patterns

I’ve been spurred into clothes making action. Although the shops have opened in England, it seems that trying on clothes is not possible or is discouraged, so I decided it would be easier to make a few additions to my working from home wardrobe.

First on the list were some cropped trousers in navy, stone, and grey stretch bengaline using the legging pattern from Simplicity 8097. I shortened the pattern to mid-calf and raised the centre back by 1” but no other alterations were needed. These are quick to make and I’ve enough fabric left to make full length versions in navy and grey for winter.

Next on the list was a wearable toile from McCall’s 7800 which I hope to make in Liberty jersey once I’ve tweaked the pattern. I started with view D (the main picture), but unlike with the trousers, a few alterations were required for this pattern. I shortened it to tunic length and used only the upper part of the sleeve pattern, but lengthened it to just past the elbow (all with some feline “help”).

I made the neckline as on the pattern, but after wearing the tunic for a day, I decided that a V neck would be more suitable and so took the “corners” off the neck and closed the split with a few buttons as it was a little too low cut for Zoom calls with work colleagues.

Seeing as the toile is wearable and mask wearing is likely to be required for the foreseeable future, I’ve decided masks might as well be part of my wardrobe too and made a matching one to go with the tunic.

 

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The Queasy Quilt

Well, another month spent in this weird time of not going out, working from home, and only being able to get the sewing machine out at weekends. However, I think having limited sewing time does help me plan how best to use it. I’ve been wanting to make a smaller version of the “Scrap Vomit” quilt for a while and so it made an ideal project for this month.

 

The first weekend was spent going though my stash and cutting enough squares from enough fabrics to get a fairly scrappy effect (with some “help” from Now-our-Cat). I decided I couldn’t do the fully scrappy effect and so mine is one colour scrappy.

 

The second weekend was spend sewing and I managed to get the quilt top finished and was delighted to find a piece of fleece in my stash that was the ideal colour and size for the backing.

The third weekend was very productive. I basted the quilt on the Friday evening so it was ready to quilt during our virtual Leeds MQG meeting. For basting quilts, I have a large piece of MDF that I put on the top of the kitchen table and this time I used furniture risers to increase the height of the table which meant no aching back.

I finished the quilting during Saturday’s meeting and the binding was added on Sunday. Quilting was a diagonal cross hatch with some straight-line quilting in the contrast diamonds. I used one of the scrappy fabrics for the binding which resulted in an unintentional perfect piece of pattern matching!

 

The fourth weekend was bright and sunny and was ideal for taking the quilt into the garden and artistically draping it over the bench for some photos.

The quilt finishes at 54” square and will be destined for Project Linus when collections resumed. If you’re wondering about the name of the quilt – this was suggested during the guild meeting seeing as it is a smaller/lesser version of the Scrap Vomit quilt.

I’m not sure what May’s sewing will be – it might be a log cabin quilt or it might be making face masks.

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