Last week I headed down to Birmingham for a two-day visit to
Festival of Quilts. I had come away from last year’s Festival of Quilts feeling unenthused
and was considering giving it a miss this year. When my
first choice workshops were sold out prior to general release, I was all set
not to go, but then I won a couple of tickets in a giveaway from
Vive Books. So,
I looked again at the workshops and there was still availability on a couple of
the one hour workshops that were of interest and soon I had my trip planned.
My first workshop was at 10.30 which meant joining the back
of a long (and growing) queue to wait for the doors to open at 10. Once the
doors were open, the queue moved quickly and I was in the halls with 15 minutes
to spare and just time to buy a few pieces of Liberty.
The workshop was for a Mini Mosaic Wedding
Rose 7” block and I was a bit surprised to see no sewing machines in the room
when the description mentioned machine piecing and it turned out that there was
no sewing involved at all. The tutor had put in a lot of work preparing
pre-sewn kits for us, but the only practical element to the class was cutting squares and fusing
freezer paper and interfacing.
It was an interesting technique to learn and I
bought some supplies from the tutor so I can try it at home, but I do wonder if
this could just as easily have been taught as a demo and not workshop.
After the workshop, I made my way to the Kaffe Fassett
gallery where some of his antique quilts were on display. The Festival of
Quilts website had advertised that Kaffe Fassett would be presenting short
tours of his quilts, but when I (and others) turned up at the advertised times,
there was no sign of any tours going ahead (not surprising, given that we could
see him doing book signings on a nearby stand).
The rest of my first day was spent wandering around the
stands trying to stick to my fairly short shopping list. I had hoped to get
some Aurifil 80wt thread as I had seen this was available in America, but there
was none to be found and unfortunately it is not due in Europe until later this year. I did manage to get the other items on my shopping
list: in addition to my earlier Liberty purchases, I bought some paper
pieces for the Ballet quilt from the second Millefiori book, a few Kaffe
Fassett scrap rolls, a dozen lace zips and some linen-look FQs (all at just £1
each) for a baby Bionic Gear Bag, and some FQs to fussy cut for a
pieced hexagonweekly sew-along (though this is more a catch-up-along as I am several weeks
behind).
My workshop on the second day wasn’t until lunchtime which
meant I had time to meet up with
@gillcrafty and to look at some quilts whilst trying to avoid any impulse
purchases. I wasn’t entirely successful at this, though my purchases were limited to just some Tulip needles and a bit more Kaffe Fassett
fabric. The Tulip needles were recommended to me by Gill and we were both delighted to discover that her needle of choice for EPP was now available in a large eye option.
Sewing looked more likely in my second workshop as there
were sewing machines on the tables. This workshop was for foundation piecing,
but without paper – instead a pre-printed fabric foundation was used.
Again the
tutor had put together comprehensive kits for us and there were Husqvarna helpers
on hand for those not familiar with the machines. I didn’t quite have time to
finish my block in the workshop, but I made good progress and only have the
four final triangles to add.
Although I hadn’t intended it, both workshops were for ways
of producing accurately pieced small blocks. However, when I saw some of the miniature
quilts in the show, my workshop blocks were gigantic in comparison. This is the
only quilt I took photos of and I was stunned by such sharp points on
such a small scale.
For a post about a quilt show, I seem to have omitted to
mention the quilts. As ever, there were many quilts on display which had been pieced and quilted using a variety of techniques, but as before I found many of the
quilts to challenge my idea of what is a “quilt” and to be so beyond my skill
set that I could not be motivated by them. However, this year there was a new
category of “Modern Quilts” and it was in this section that I found the quilts
that gave me most inspiration. Perhaps the reason this was that according to rules, it is for “quilts that are functional ...”.
Having to specify “functional” in the rules does make me wonder
"When is a quilt not a quilt?" and perhaps I would be less niggled by the show if it
were called “Festival of Quilted Wall Hangings and Shopping Opportunities”.
