Malvern Quilt Show - by Jackie S

As some of you may know, I now live in Northampton so I travelled by coach to Malvern with members of my groups - Hamtune Quilters and Parklands Patchers. We left the local Morrisons car park at 8.00 am and travelled to Malvern via several motorways and lots of country lanes in Worcestershire, which were very pretty, and arrived at the Three Counties Showground about 10.30 am. 

Group tickets were already purchased so entry was quick and immediately we were faced with, and tempted by, all the usual and familiar traders. The quilts were tucked away from the main halls and were spaced out quite nicely but considering there were nine competition categories and three feature displays the number of quilts shown was relatively small.

The majority of quilts were traditional in style, but my favourite was a lap sized modern quilt in pink and black and white taken from a design by the Modern Quilt Studio. All the quilts were very well made and the exhibition, as always, was very colourful overall.



I particularly liked, and admired, a display of large bed-sized appliqué quilts in the Baltimore style designed and made by Sandy Lush before she started to make whole cloth quilts. The display was called Roses are Red, as all the quilts had stylised red roses in them. All hand appliquéd and hand quilted in traditional style. She calls these quilts her “secret life” and the earliest I noted was from 2003. Beautiful and so perfect!

There were other feature displays by Pastures New Students, a group interpreting Edyta Sitar’s Alaska, which was very interesting, and also a post-lockdown block of the month display by White Cottage Country Crafts, showing how diversely one pattern can be interpreted.

After a sunny and very windy lunch outside sitting facing the Malvern Hills, it was back to the Halls to do some shopping; I had a small list which, amazingly, I stuck to (well almost, I couldn’t leave without purchasing a few fat quarters from Fabrics Galore). By this time it was very crowded in the traders areas but everyone seemed to be spending well. After a coffee in the cafe area mid-afternoon it was time to make our way back to the coach, departing at 4.00 pm and arriving back home about 7.00 pm. A long day but enjoyable, as always, if a bit tiring. 

It was my first quilt exhibition since before Covid so it was nice to be amongst like-minded quilters again and to get back into some sort of “normality”.