Another quilt show

This time in England.

We got home from the US on Friday afternoon, I can't believe it took longer to drive from Heathrow than it did to fly from Boston! Nose to tail with cars all the way down from Bristol. I saw quite a few cars pulled in on the hard shoulder with bonnets flung open, so I'm guessing lots over heated in the queues. We picked up the children from Exeter on the Sunday. I was really excited to see them after our break away, but that only lasted about as long as it took to load the washing machine with the first of many laundry loads.

The following weekend, August 22nd, it was the Plym Piecemakers' trip to the Festival of Quilts at Birmingham. We had to be at the carpark for the coach leaving at 6am. EEK!! I was still jet lagged, and I never sleep well if I've got an early start...fear of over sleeping means I wake every hour. We got there on time and a quick 4 1/2 hour journey and we'd arrived.

I decided to take Mike's approach for viewing the quilts and Pat, Margaret and I all dutifully trooped up and down the first section of the exhibition. We managed to view this side in about 2 hours, and I was confident we'd seen all the work on the left hand side of the entrance hall by the time we split up and started heading fot the vendors!! I had a budget, but once again it was a very generous one. Of course, I'd not really planned anything to buy, but had a few ideas of what I fancied.



So here we have some vegetable FQs, a couple of yards of gingko fabric for the corners of the Japanese snowball quilt, a 6 yard piece of dark brown and blue for backings, a couple of half yard pieces of kimono fabric, a new rotary cutter, bobbins, a stitch in the ditch foot and fancy threads bobbin case and a double DVD from Patsy Thompson about free motion quilting.

I feel that I've been in a bit of a rut with my quilting recently but haven't known how to break out of it. I'm not finding as many challenges as I used to in my work, and so I was looking to the FoQ to inspire me anew. I let my photographs dictate what I wanted to buy for future projects...looks like it's art quilts on a smaller scale rather than bed quilts. Having decided that, I bought a couple of books as well.



I'm looking forward to trying some of the landscapes, the author has broken down the technique into manageable steps, and it seems quite do-able. As for the Art Quilts book, I've flicked through it a couple of times, but really need to spend more with some fabric and the machine and work through some of the things they suggest. I'm also thinking of reserving Quilting Arts magazine for more inspiration.

Now behind the stash pictures and the books, can you see what else I bought? It's a portable design wall! The first time I put it up, it took less than 10 minutes and there were no problems at all. It's made from a flannel fabric so my blocks just stick onto it with no pinning!! It's great!!

Only a couple more posts to go and I'll be all up to date. I've got quite a few photos of what I've been working on since returning from Birmingham...naturally lots started but nothing completed yet!