Quilt Festival, Birmingham, England

The Quilt Festival was great fun! There were a thousand quilts on display including a number of special collections. Lots of them were what I call "art quilts," but there were some incredible traditional ones as well. I took 146 pictures! Several ladies from the local guild were there, and I joined them for dinner both evenings. Jenny I already knew from the Monday group, but I also met Mary, Mante, Sheila, Desera (she has pink hair!) and Liz.

On the first day, my new friend Rona came up from King's Sutton to see the show with me. Rona is not a quilter but is an artist, and she added a lot to my understanding of some of those art quilts. I was delighted to have someone with me, as the quilts reflected so much creativity; I needed to talk about them!

On the second day, I found Liz Dieppe. I had written earlier about Liz, having met her via E-mail last fall while we were both doing an Internet search on a French quilting technique called Boutis Provencale. Liz was there helping her friend Sandie Lush, a quilt designer and one of the show's teachers. Sandie was among the hundreds of vendors at the show and had a booth where she did demonstrations and sold her patterns. While Liz took a break from the booth, we had tea and then looked at quilts for a while. She's a fun gal and seems to like the same kind of quilts that I do. (I think she's better at it than I am, so I look forward to getting back together with her once we return in the fall.)

Most of the vendors were selling fabrics and accessories that are available in the U.S. at half the local prices, so I looked more than bought. I did find one line of fabrics made in England that included some lovely William Morris prints, so I treated myself to a few fat quarters. I also bought a kit to make an appliqued wreath of roses, designed by an English woman. She had beautiful work displayed in her booth...lovely and graceful designs that I would call Victorian.

How lucky for me that our stay in England coincided with this show! I'm glad I found out about it in time; it would have been such a shame to miss it.