I am still buzzing with excitement from being surrounded by incredible textiles and amazingly creative people for four whole days at the NEC. I had been working for Coats and Cotton Patch and am now calm enough to tell you about some of the amazing people i have met and the fabulous quilts i have seen.
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| Two of Kaffe Fassett's stunning quilts |
If you have never been, then i strongly suggest that you go next year. This is my third year and each year surpasses the previous years. I am also beginning to remember faces and names of women that i have only ever met at the Festival, some are German, there are Danish, French, Portugese in fact from all over the world - well it is an international festival!! These wonderful, creative ladies come every year to exhibit their work and visit the show, some are there every day, for four days. One particularly lovely german lady, wore a different skirt and had a matching bag from two of Kaffe's fabrics on the first two days of the show. She looked amazing!!
On the Friday evening we attended the Designers Dinner and were delighted as Kaffe Fassett and Brandon Mably introduced all the designers and entertained us with stories about there quilts, fabric designs and photography locations, later on Kaffe was obviously delighted to answer questions from the audience.
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| The very lovely Nel Whatmore
I first met Nel three years ago at the Festival of Quilts and also meet up with her at the Knitting and Stitching show at Ally Pally and Harrogate. What a lovely calm and amazingly talented designer.
Nel uses pastels on sand paper to achieve a unique velevty finish to her work, which she uses as inspiration for her textile designs
She has had three collections now for Westminster fibres - Happy Go Lucky, Sleeping Beauty and Katharines Wheel. I love her latest collection, fantastic colourways and a beautiful mix of small and large prints.
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| Amy Butlers's beautiful collections Which ever collection of Amy's you are looking at, it is always very difficult to choose a favourite as they are all delightful! Her collection of bag designs are great! Smart, very functional projects to make yourself. There were quilts of every type, shape , construction but the ones that took my breath away were those of pauline Burbige, a textile artist, Designer and Maker from the north of England. Incredible stitching by hand and machine, then on some areas she had coloured the fabric. So many different techniques, all perfect in every way! |
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| The Fabulous Tula Pink! Maybe i have left the best to last! Tula you are an absolute inspiration and very enjoyable company! We all enjoyed talking and laughing with you. Your fabrics are incredible and your quilts even more amazing!! Please come back next year!!! Why not try making a small Hand Patchwork project yourself at the Rowantree Workshop on the Thursday the 13 September for a first taster of Patchwork and Quilting! Look on our website for details of this and all our other workshops and classes.  |
