Three favourites at Festival of Quilts

Last Saturday I went to the Festival of Quilts at the NEC in Birmingham, which has fast become the place to go in the UK's quilting calendar. There's quite a big European presence there too as the exhibition centre is right next to the airport. Other blogs and websites will have had plenty to say about this so I'll keep my post short.

I took 169 photos of quilts and here are just 3 of my favourites from this show. The first one is this one by Helen Godden from Australia with this really gorgeous potter which started as black fabric but with bleach painting and free machine stitching produced this wonderful quilt.The next one was this bunch of fabric flowers. I love cut flowers and quite often have some in a vase and these would be just perfect - colourful and low mainentance! Seriously, the photo does not do these blooms justice they were just stunning.

The third was not one in the main exhibition, but in one of the galleries from the European Quit Association, this was "Excellence in Europe" and this lovely circular quilt with stained glass type detail was really eye catching. I know it is Hungarian and I think that the maker is Katalin Szekely and she calls it Cyclorama. It is so unusual.

I could show more photos there was so much to see and I was hard pushed to do it all in a day, but my purpose was to go there for the quilts, so came back with hardly any shopping to show for it.

It was also great to meet up with friends. Shirley and her husband in the morning when I arrived there and later in the afternoon with Chris and Lesley. I also met up with some of the ladies who belong to BQL which was nice to put faces to names that I see on the messages.

I think that next year will need some better planning and fortunately have the dates for next August. But I have another quilting and shopping opportunity coming up on 6 September as I'll be going to the Great Northern Quilt Show at Harrogate, just a bit closer to home.