2018 Festival of Quilts
Festival of Quilts - by Claire
Finally Recovered!
The Festival of Quilts, what can only be described as the best quilt show in the UK. Not only the largest but is Europe's leading patchwork and quilting event attracting 24,000 quilters from all over the world. The show is a celebration of quilting in all its forms, with over 300 exhibitors offering essential supplies, professionally curated galleries of quilts from leading international makers, 350 workshops, talks and demos plus a magnificent display of over 700 competition quilts. It is the ultimate patchwork and quilting experience.
Yes, I admit I have pinched that off the official website, but it's true, it's amazing. I'm very lucky in that I have lots of friends in the quilting industry that I can always get free entry, but even if this wasn't the case this I would still go. It's the highlight on my calendar every year and I love it more and more each time I go. It's also helped that I have amazing friends to go with and we make a weekend out of it and have an amazing time.
This year we drove but thankfully the weather couldn't dampen our spirits, we eventually arrived early on the Friday afternoon and we headed straight to our favourite shop, The Quilt Room, after chatting for some time we decided to follow our usual pattern and started shopping. Not long into this I had to relieve Craig on the Marbling4fun stand as I had promised this in turn for a ticket, a brief comfort break for him and a demo to customers from me I was then on my way again. Chatting to the traders as I went meant that I did on some occasions get split from Lisa and Nicola but thankfully I found them again. It was lovely to see Andy and Jo at Crafty UK again and he was still talking about the wonderful night he had with us in July. We shopped till the very last minute of the first day and headed to our hotel for a much needed rest, that and also to look at our purchases, we weren't the only ones, the hotel bar was full of quilters eyeing up everyone's new found stash. We also to plan what we needed to do the next day, we still hadn't seen any quilts and after all it is a quilt show.
Saturday, up bright and early for a lovely breakfast to set us up for the day ahead. The previous days goodies in the car so as not to weigh us down and we were set for another day of shopping and hopefully to see some quilts. More chatting to traders, buying fabric we really needed, stopping for refreshments to keep us going and eventually making it to the quilts. Such a fantastic display of quilts from people of all ages and experience, it really does inspire you. By the end of the day, it was time to go home, we still hadn't seen everything but that's life, next year maybe three days, already counting down.
On the journey home we went through all of our WIPs, just a few. Let’s just say that I'm sure we'll still have some of them on the list this time next year. Still we have plenty to start/finish for our very own quilt show in October.
Better get back to it....