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