Quilts UK, Malvern - by Jackie S

It was a bright morning when members of the Parklands Patchers, and some friends, met at Morrison’s car park at 7.45 am in Northampton to pick up our coach to take us to Quilts UK Malvern 2023. We headed off on the two hours plus journey and arrived at the Three Counties Show Ground about 10.15 am. The car park was already quite full and a large queue of (mainly) grey-haired women were patiently and slowly moving towards the entrance to the exhibition buildings, by-passing the ice cream van that came into its own later in the day when the weather was very sunny and hot.

Once inside we were confronted with almost a hundred traders selling every and anything a quilter could desire. I decided I would look at the exhibition quilts first and then search for the items to purchase on my list.

There were nine competition quilt categories and several displays of work by individual quilters. The Bed Quilts category had the most entries and there was an eclectic mix of traditional, contemporary and modern designs. Another interesting, and new to me, category was Charity Fund Raising Quilts which had lots of children’s themes - all making a colourful display. The whole exhibition was very enjoyable with some extraordinary pieces of work and tales to go with the making of it. I didn’t count, and there wasn’t a catalogue, but there must have been several hundred quilts of varying sizes altogether.

When I was looking at the quilts I got into conversation with an Australian woman who was on a trip here with her group. They were on their way to visit Cowslip Workshops in Cornwall where there is an exhibition of the work of Di Ford-Hall, a well-known and prolific Australian quilter who passed away a couple of years ago. Di was a friend and member of the group and her husband had arranged for her quilts to be exhibited at Cowslips. Check her out on Google - her quilts are fantastic and her fabrics can be purchased in the UK.

After the quilts, the shopping! Not a lot of fabric - needles, glue pen, marking pen, threads, Heat and Bond, etc with a few fat quarters from Fabrics Galore and wadding from Lady Sew & Sew. It was good to see Fabrics Galore and Doughty’s back at Shows. Then, I bumped into Jill H so we had a chat about SQ and it brought back memories of my many happy years being involved in the group.

After a long but enjoyable day, and having lunch outside in the sun looking at the wonderful Malvern Hills, we dragged ourselves back onto the coach and arrived home about 6.30 pm.

Here is a photo of the Champion Quilt by Frieda Oxenham. Not my thing, but it was colourful with LOTS of machine quilting and fiddly stuff!