Festival of Quilts - by Lisa

When we pulled up in the car park we were immediately struck by exactly how empty it was & it was really empty, but on the plus side, plenty of close parking for us. We bumped into the lovely long arm quilter & sewist Trudy Wood, whom we've met on several retreats, & headed towards the halls while chatting about all things Festival & quilting.

Upon arriving outside the halls we had to show our card to prove we've had our double vaccine. We had timed arrival on our tickets & were well within our time slot although I'm not sure it would've made a difference as there was no queue & at that point we were the only people entering.

We literally started shopping straight away, well, browsing for future purchases as Nic believes she'd lost the ability to shop at Festival, having had last year away from it!!! Don't worry though, we soon got our shopping mojo back. We took full advantage of the lack of people to thoroughly browse all of the trading stands, fully masked up of course.

The show itself was spread over 4 halls this year rather than the usual 3. The aisles were super wide & there was so much seating everywhere. No queues for the bathrooms, or for lunch & plenty of choice too.

After lunch we continued with our shopping, by this time we were well into it. We spent quite a bit of time at one of our favourite sellers, Purple Stitches, Viv is always lovely to deal with & knows us so well. I was able to assist Nic in the choosing of MANY fabrics :)

Last up was a visit to the quilts on display, starting with the award winning quilts. As always, some really beautiful & stunning quilts. Some very worthy winners & luckily, no one standing in the way when trying to take pictures!! There were some lovely group quilts which got us wondering, has Shirley Quilters ever entered a group quilt into Festival? Should we??

All in all, it was a lovely day. The lack of people made it a very enjoyable & relaxed experience. Obviously there was a lack of traders as well as visitors & our thoughts are with those traders & shops who will be struggling at this time. I can honestly day we did our bit & spent as much as we could to help :)

We're already looking forward to next year.