Festival of Quilts (II)

Even now, some two weeks later, my head is still spinning with all I have seen at the Festival of Quilts.

After my rather randomly chosen quilts that caught my eye there in my previous blogpost I would now like to share with you two exhibitions that impressed me.

So I was pleasantly surprised when I walked into this exhibition Paisley Parade by Sandie Lush, a series of handquilted Welsh cot quilts using the paisley quilt pattern.

All small quilts, lovingly and beautifully handquilted:-

As demure and modest as the little quilts in this exhibition were, the large quilts in the next one were spectacular!

The Baltimore Album Quilts from the International Quilt Study Center & Museum exhibition!

I went back to this one so many times during my days at the Festival of Quilts, let me show you why:-

For me the star of this exhibition if not the whole show was this one, so many details, so many techniques, so beautiful:-

So much inspiration, don't you think? 

I hope you enjoyed this second blogpost of the Festival of Quilts, one more to follow…. please join me again next time.

Phyllis

Festival of Quilts 2019 (I)

When I wrote in my last blogpost that I would not desert this blog I meant it. Writing that I knew that there would soon be an opportunity for an extensive blogpost, because the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham was just around the corner.

So on Thursday morning last week, having spent the night in Leiden (closer to the airport than where I live), the alarm clock went off at 4 am, I walked through a quiet and dark town to the train station to find myself at Schiphol (Amsterdam) Airport and through customs (having only hand luggage helps!) with a Red Eye coffee and ‘koffiebroodje’ already by 6 am.

Plenty of time to relax for my 8.15 flight and because of the hour time difference, I arrived around the same time in Birmingham, walked straight to the Convention Center, left my luggage in storage for the day and even had time for a coffee again before the show opened at 10 am!

Once in, there was so much to see!

Here are some of the quilts that caught my eye, in random order, but with a lot of these, modern or more traditional, it was (also) very much the quilting and the texture that I liked:

There were exhibitions and competitions for young quilters too, as a dog lover I fell for this one, as a quilter I think this girl did a great job using various techniques:-

There were quilts by Dutch quilters too, like Hilde’s spectacular quilt, for more on this quilt please (click) to a previous blogpost:-

and a smaller, very cute one by Dorry from Quilt It and Dotty (click)

Soooo, after a very busy first day and miles and miles of walking (25 mins to the trainstation very early in the morning, throught two airports and at a quilt show, all in one day, I do not have a Fitbit but if I did, it would have been proud of me 😊  ) I treated myself to a pint of ice cold beer and a great plate of fish and chips, yummmmm!

So that was day 1, blogpost 1 of this show, hope you enjoyed these pictures. More in a next blogpost….. or maybe two…., hope you’ll join me again.

Phyllis