Festival of Quilts 2014

On Thursday I spent a nice day with family and friends at the Festival of Quilts.  It was first time that I have been to the first day of the show and I was amazed at the length of the queue to get in. The queue was so long that we had coffee until it had died down. Is the first day always like that?

As usual there were some amazing and inspiring quilts. How do the judges pick the winners? It must be very difficult.  Here is small selection of the photographs that I took....

I wasn't familiar with the work of Ann Johnston but really enjoyed seeing her gallery.

I was particularly impressed with this piece of fabric which was painted to resemble wood, unfortunately my photograph doesn't do it justice.

I recently joined this the Contemporary Quilt Group so I was particularly interested to see their exhibition. This piece was made by Judy Fairless and I love the colours in this one.

This piece was by Liz Smithbone, I really like the design of this piece and the limited colour palette.

This colourful quilt, in the Traditional Quilt category, caught my eye and was made by Tracy Aplin. I liked the design and of course cotton reels are close to my heart. Wouldn't it look great on the wall of a sewing room?

Gillian Theokritoff's 'David' was made up of lots of individual squares of fabric and was amazing. I can't imagine being able to design a piece like this.

This is a detail from a piece by Mags Ramsay and I particularly like how the hand stitching links the piece vertical elements of the piece together.

Dyeing and printing fabric is the foundation of my work but do I love work which is made of a single colour or has minimal changes of colour. This piece was made by Alicia Merrett

This year, as last year. I was very impressed with the miniature quilt section. How do they work so small? This exquisite piece was made by Andrea Stracke.

There was lots of young talent on show too and I loved this piece by Millie Ayers and I could relate to the title of the piece 'An unwelcome guest'. Cute though they are.

I've got loads more photographs of lovely quilts but by now you've probably seen enough and I'm running out of steam, so I'll end with a picture of me next to my quilt at the exhibition....

...and a picture of some of the fabric I bought. Spot a theme? I fancied making a simple top in some novelty fabric but it looks like I'll be making three!

So whilst I'm still feeling fresh and motivated by this year's show, I'd better start thinking about what I can do for 2015! Any ideas?