Festival of Quilts 2013

I was lucky enough to be offered a place on a coach to go to the Festival of Quilts at the NEC in Birmingham on Friday. I amazed myself at buying nothing but a few postcards, but I did come back with lots of ideas and inspiration. I hope some of you were lucky enough to have seen the show for yourselves.

The highlights for me were:

Seeing in the ‘flesh’ one of Dorothy Caldwell’s quilts; her piece ‘How Do We Know When It’s Night’ won the new juried exhibition called' Fine Art Quilt Masters’.  It is difficult to take photographs quickly there due to the lighting but I took a few at the start as a record for myself. This is the large quilt, and I took lot of photos of the small details which are so clever and so simple at the same time.

I always enjoy the working studio and this time Alice Fox was there showing some of her rusting techniques and also her fascinating sketchbook; you can follow the link on my sidebar if you have not seen her work. She often combines rust marks with print and stitch.

Overall I think one of the lasting memories will be of the artists’ sketchbooks which they shared, including those of Laura and Linda Kemshall, which I have seen on-line but which were interesting to see in real life.Their work was included in the 'Through our Hands' exhibition, in which there was also a mock up of a working studio bench which was fun.

I also met up with Chris Gray another ardent blogger whom I have met on line but never had the pleasure of a real hug from before!

Dianne Firth ' Red Stones 2'

'Evidence of Bodies' Terri Hitchcock and Sue Chapman

It really was such a big show this year that there was no time to even try and see everything in a few hours; in fact I know some people never even found the second large exhibition hall.