Festival of Quilts 2013

On 10th August I went to the Festival of Quilts with my family at the NEC in Birmingham. I have a fondness of quilts, purely through the fascination of memory quilts and for sentimental reasons; one that used to be on my bed at Grandad’s house. This is one craft I would not be any good at. Following a strict pattern and everything needing to be just-so, my techniques are more organic and I prefer to just dabble and go with the flow as opposed to be regimental with my methods.

The amount of work that went into these gorgeous pieces was astounding and the creativity truly brilliant. It wasn’t all hexagons and bowties either. People experimented greatly with different mediums, painting, embroidering words and taking modern approaches to a traditional craft.

I imagined a chocolate box image of women working at their little Singer sewing machines on an evening, listening to the radio and nibbling on biscuits whilst muttering distastefully at the sex scenes on The Archers…but oh how times have changed! I was gobsmacked to see huge embroidery machines that could work on a king size quilt and embroider swirls and feather designs with ease. This somehow put a dampener on my view of the quilts as I expected them all to be worked on differently to this, but I supposed with the size of these things it would have taken many more years to complete without such tools.

Here are some photos I snapped on my phone before the battery died. Impressive works indeed!

Swirl quilt made from tiny hexagonal pieces

Bee quilt!

One of my favourites. Beautiful flower like circles with beading, buttons and great colours!

Poppy quilt with a wonderful burst of sunshine.

How incredible is this? Can you imagine drafting this as a pattern?!

Great use of patterned fabrics in this sea life quilt.

A modern interpretation of quilting and a very effective one too!

A quilt made entirely of neckties!

A stunning landscape, I cannot stop looking at this one