Festival of Quilts 2013

I had a great couple of days in Birmingham at the Festival of Quilts. I really love this show as I get see see many interesting textile artists that are not so well known in Australia but brilliantly talented.

 I always come away inspired and enthused.

Beneath the Southern Skies was also on show so I did have one quilt hanging in the show. That is mine second from the left.

I love the Galleries which always have the most interesting exhibitions -especially the European ones.

SAQA had it's Metaphors on Aging Exhibition 

This year I taught two new classes .

Opulent Overlays -where we used traditional Italian Tiles designs to create an overlay onto fabric with a combination of stitch and paint. I really loved how some of them turned out. This was Jackie's

   

  

Also -Building Block Quilt Design where each student designed their own blocks from scratch which I hope will then form the basis of original quilts. In he two day version of this workshop which I am teaching next week in Luxembourg - the students will be making their quilts too. It is such a great feeling watching students take their first tentative steps to doing their own designs using this method. Of course if you can't do the workshop you can always buy my book -Beautiful Bluiding Block Quilts which shows you how to do it too.

   

   

I am teaching these two classes in Houston too if you are interested.

Some of the quilts that took my fancy were

 

 Mary Ann Vaca-Lambert's Passsion Flower. All 3d and very tactile although of course I didn't touch it.

Kumiko Frydl won the Minature Category with another of her exquisite pieces Rose of Versailles

 

The winner of the Quilters Guild Challenge was Sylvia Hammond with Transported

   

Winner of the Contemporary Category was Tuula Makinen with Celebration II

  

We stayed in our one of our favourite pubs where the food was great and the rooms comfortable. So hard to believe it has been there since 1603

Only two days at the Festival this year as we had to return to Edinburgh for our son's wedding. Very kind of him to schedule it during Festival of Quilts and Edinburgh Festival so no shortage of things to do.