Hello everyone, hope that you have had a nice weekend. We have had a wonderful trip to this year’s Festival of Quilts, Sharon, Helen, Emily and I from knitting group enjoyed a very lovely girl’s day out, it was their first trip to this show and my second.

The quilts, as always, were amazing and I took so many pictures I have split them into two posts.

I love traditional quilts and there were some exceptional examples on show. This was the first one that we saw when we went in and I love the unusual appliqued blocks.

This is, ‘Stonefields’, by Coriene de Has and Kay Bell.

It has given me some ideas for other things to do with hexis – love this hexi in a square in a square idea.

I also really liked this hexi quilt – called, ‘The Joy of Hex!’, by Penny Chattey. As well as some brilliant quilting there were three panels at the bottom explaining the technique.

Some fabulous examples of wholecloth quilting as well, this first one by Ximo Navarro from Spain, entitled, ‘This is not a Dream, this quilt is real’.

And this from Sandy Chandler, ‘Juno’, this is just the centre of a double bed sized quilt, a beautiful piece which must have taken hours to do.

My favourite quilt in the whole show was this one by Liz Jones, ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’. I love the combination of the Elizabethan style design with modern fabrics and the machine applique is perfect.

I have been looking at some of her other work, this is her Pinterest page where I found this earlier Tudor Rose quilt.

The other thing I like about quilt shows is the range of work as well, there are quilts from all levels of skills including some lovely quilts by children, including school groups.

This one was really nice from the, ‘First Quilt Category’, ‘Everything she does is Magic’, by Lucy Currie. I really like the colours and the wonky Sudoku blog.

This looks like my level of quilting and is similar to the Stained Glass Window pattern  I used some years ago for my Christmas throw and cushions.

There were also some historic quilts from the Quilt Museum in York, a quilt pieced from printed handkerchiefs and a bible quotes quilt.

There was also some retail therapy of course 😉 I had been reading some statistics about visitors from the Festival web site and it said that the average age of visitors was 57, (so we brought that down a bit as our average age is in the early forties), and the average spend was £197!

I am pleased to say that we were very restrained despite all the temptations and it was nowhere near that much.We did go and say hello to Lisa and Justine from our local quilt shop Simply Solids, here they are with Helen.

I will post pictures of my new stuff once I have stopped admiring it and stroking the large pile of Liberty scraps I now have 🙂

Take care and thanks for visiting.