Festival of Quilts I

I should have posted already about my visit to the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham in August, but things got in the way. Hope I can make it up to you with this long (picture overloaded!) blogpost :-) :

 The fun started with a half empty plane on the way over, plenty of space to relax a stitch, yes!

As you will probably be most interested in pictures I will keep my writing down to a minimum. Let me just say that I found the quilts at the exhibition of a high quality and the booths great! Enjoy!

One thing I would like to mention: I was surprised to see practically all quilts machine quilted even the very special, beautiful (3D) applique ones: 

Showstoppers!

As a dog lover/owner this one made me smile… so many, many funny details, I can only show you a few :-) 

Petra Prins’ booth never disappoints and was busy as usual

And Karen Styles' booth was exquisite, hi Karen, lovely to have met you!

The town of Birmingham was something special, our hotel was right in the middle of the city centre… what we did not know is that the city centre is going through enormous  - 20 year!! -   revitalisation project which makes the most of the city centre one big building site….

Impossible for cars, roads just end somewhere in one of the building sites, this poor guy got stuck right underneath our hotel, he sat just stood there in his car for minutes, not knowing where to go..

This is not nice at the moment (and will not be for quite some time), but the parts of the city that are already finished show that they have done a great job combining the old with the new.

The new Bullring shopping centre next to an old church

The area with the old canals has been revamped

Great for a dinner on a terrace, so we did

We had fun trying out the selfie-stick I brought and chatted until after dark, it was wonderful to see Emma again, so much to talk about when you are both passionate quilters, were first practically neighbours and now (after Emma’s move to France) you haven’t seen eachother in a year

A walk through town the next day : a finished square with the new library building next to the war memorial

I know what you are thinking when you see the new library building, my thoughts exactly… a quilting pattern!

This is what is looks like from the inside

There was more quilty inspiration in the tiles of the coffee place we had our breakfast each morning

At the Festival of Quilts the old met the new as well. I showed you some of the newer quilts in this blogpost, I’ll show you some of the older quilts in the next one.

Until then,

Phyllis

Reunions and gifts

While I am sorting through my pictures of the superduper Birmingham Festival of Quilts earlier this month I thought I’d catch up with a few pictures on this blog.

Earlier this summer Melissa and her family visited our house for a meal, to make sure they could find our house we hung the American flag from our house.

Melissa runs the very successful Polkadot Chair blog and is a Riley Blake designer, we met before when she, her husband and eldest daughter visited my hometown The Hague a few years ago, this now was a great opportunity to meet the rest of the family.

It was a lovely evening, like last time way too short, so many things to talk about so I do hope we can do this again some time. Her husband Jeff spent two years in The Netherlands in the past and we were amazed at his language skills, he still speaks Dutch! Apparantly he has regular Dutch speaking days back home… admirable! 

Melissa came bearing many gifts, which of course was a lovely surprise and so kind of her. I especially love the fabrics, from her own lines, I had been looking for them over here, but had not been able to find them (yet), so thank you so much Melissa, I love them!

And another wonderful gift came my way…. A few weeks ago I visited the Festival of Quilts with my friend Emma, which was also a lovely reunion since we had not seen each other for a long time. Again I was spoiled with gifts. She brought me one very special gift… a wooden bobbin holder made by her son Nathan. This summer he has been doing woodwork with his granddad, isn’t that special? Such wonderful memories must have been made. This is the first bobbin holder he made and he asked his mum to give it to me, isn’t that just the sweetest? I am really touched, so say the least. 

It is beautiful, very handy and I use it constantly as it takes pride of place on the dining table where I do most of my quilt work.
The fun little gnome you see in the background is the pincushion that Emma gave me, he makes me smile. Together with the bobbin holder they are great helpers with my quilt work and lovely reminders of people I do miss a lot.

Speaking of quilting…. this one got sandwiched!

Next blogpost I will show you some of the things Emma and I saw at the Festival of Quilts, promise.

Phyllis