fairislerona: Festival of Quilts

Had a wonderful weekend at the Festival of Quilts . You know when your heart beats faster with excitement: that's how I feel when I enter the show....there's loads of inspiration, you are surrounded by 'crafters' and feel at 'one' with your surroundings! Its also an opportunity for me to have a 'girly weekend' with like minded friends - one who lives close to me and another that travels up from Devon, we 'do' the show, take part in some workshops, stay in lovely accomodation in the Cotswolds and generally eat and drink well. This year did not disappoint on all counts, there was certainly less quilts than usual but because of this I think the whole thing felt manageable and I didn't have to race around like a looney trying to fit it all in: I felt pretty relaxed and therefore enjoyed it more. One of the highlights is the retail therapy and in particular the fabric choice and variety - as I feel so limited when it comes to fabric choice here in Yorkshire, its also a great venue to see new artists work and their take on textiles. So here are some of my highlights at the 'fest'....

These were some of the Miniature Quilts that were exhibited and these to me are usually the highlight of the show - bearing in mind that these works of art are about 6" x 8" and just amazing. I particularly liked the tree because I love stark colour contrasts against black and it really reminded me of a lino cut....

and so did this small quilt....

after miniature quilts my next favourite choice is traditional quilts and there was some fine examples at the show - more on these later...

I particularly loved the boldness of these quilts, they were on a stand showing 'Welsh and Amish Quilts', I picked up a leaflet on the Quilt Museum exhibiting these at Lampeter in Wales: have to get there sometime...

And this was the most joyous image of the show - this gorgeous dress displayed in front of this amazing quilt. Just how wonderful is this.....I ADORE the colours here...it was on the brilliant Cottonpatch stand which is one of the biggest stockists of Rowan fabric .

Kaffe Fasset was on the stand - spot his Starbucks coffee!

This quilt also used Rowan fabrics - love the circles

And this was my favourite quilt at the show, with a close-up below. This quilt is hand stitched: imagine the work involved in producing it.

I loved the next set of quilts, as I particularly like antique quilts. This stand was called 'Antique to Heirloom', these were original quilts - some over 100 years old - that had been reproduced in the present using jelly rolls. My pictures are the original and on some you can see their interpretation of the design hanging next to them.

I love the colour in this log cabin quilt below

And I thought this quilt was really effective way of using stripes:

This nifty little bag was produced at the 'Japanese Folded Hishi Bag' workshop that I attended which was taught by Sheilah Doughtree - it was an excellent workshop.