Festival of Quilts

This year's Festival turned out to be the best ever for me. I was so busy and hardly got a chance to escape from stand G41 until Sunday! I didn't see as many of the quilts as I would have liked and will be relying on a few photo slideshows from friends to experience the whole show 'virtually' (Janet has already posted a few pics of some winners on A Quilter's Journal blog). Really, it was so busy, I forgot to even get a photo of my own stand! Suffice to say there was a fair bit of leftover space in the cars when we packed up.

On Sunday, I managed to do a little bit of shopping - there are some traders who I only see at FoQ, and I had a little shopping list. Goodies included fabric from Heide Stoll-Webber (take a look at Feather on a Wire, Sally Bramald's blog - she has done quite a few pieces using Heidi's gorgeously jewel-like sateens). These pieces just GLOW. I pinned the 140 x 150 cm panel up between the curtains in the hotel and was rewarded with my own stained glass window lighting up the room on Sunday morning.

Debbie spotted some mulberry bark on stand F2 (will have to check back for company name), which immediately suggested a panel based on the sea. She's going to experiment and do some dyeing/painting on her panel, but I think I'll keep mine natural and applique onto some hand dyed fabric. Somewhere I have one of the Oliver Twists 'Thirty Bob Treat' packs (i.e. £1.50 in metric) from several years ago, with lots of sea greens in it, so that may end up combined. Anita's Beads had some strings of very natural tiny 'rocks', chips like gravel on a seashore, which will end up on the same piece - they are tumbled, so they look shiny and wet.

Stef Francis had hand dyed silk ribbons that I hadn't seen before, which will be going into another project for next year's FoQ. A friend and I decided to enter the two person quilt category and finally make a piece which has been on the back burner since 2000. The ribbons may be used on that, but will see if it really needs them or not. They will go with the theme though.

Speaking of that piece, we got one of those amazing cotton lengths from the Rosenbergs. This family business sells the most incredible, unique fabrics. If you are into kaleidoscope effects, they are an essential place to check out (as far as I know, they don't do mail order business at all, but they are at most of the big shows, including the Great Northern Quilt show in a few week's time and the Knitting and Stitching Show). The yardage panel I got has a fascinating 'crystal' motif in the print (repeated 6 times along the length - we need 5 repeats) on a very intense black background.

Other goodies include the Aurifil Thread Basics Collection in neutrals from New Threads (it was on a show special, but was already on my shopping list, as it is great value even at full price and beautiful threads too) and Empress Mills tacking thread (fine, breaks easily and is the best IMHO - only I could think of tacking thread as a 'goodie').

Several friends won awards, so I will try to do a roundup of links to their winning quilts later.

Now to catch up with everything at home!