At the beginning of the month I had my annual visit to Festival of Quilts at the NEC in Birmingham.  I’ve been attending the Festival each year for the best part of the past twenty years.  

It was always a quick day trip to Festival of Quilts on the train, but for the last few years, it has been full immersion!  All four days, with a hotel stay – and you know, I am still not convinced I saw everything!

Festival Workshops

This year, I also took advantage of some of the Quick & Easy workshops on offer at Festival of Quilts.  These are great value, and all materials were included.  The first was a Gelli Plate printing workshop with Gillian Cooper.  I have been taking classes with Gillian online and I just wanted to take an in-person workshop with her.   The second workshop was Wild Wire Weaving with Alysn Midgelow-Marsden.  I brought home some wire and beads.  I also have a variety of beads at home so I am looking forward to completing this sample.

The inspiration

My sample – not bad for an hour!

I had a grand time meeting up with friends and colleagues.  Often, these are people I wouldn’t have seen since the previous year’s Festival of Quilts!  I also saw students past and present – always a joy.

I met up with some fellow students from the online Sketchbook course I have been doing with Gillian Cooper – lovely to meet people in person that you normally only see online; and to my great joy I met up with some of my fellow students from my C&G Diploma, and had such a fun meal with them.  We completed our Diploma just before Covid hit, so our original plans to continue meeting up fell apart a bit!

Festival Galleries

Carolina Oneto

There were some brilliant galleries.  It was wonderful to see Carolina Oneto’s gallery and to see the breadth of styles together with such incredible skill.  I do love seeing Carolina’s work, and being able to see it in person was such a luxury.  Rather than take photos, I purchased a copy of her catalogue and it is wonderful to have such excellent photos together with a commentary on the pieces, and you can get a taste of the gallery here.  

By Design

One gallery that took me completely by surprise was “Through the Lens”.  By Design is a group of eleven leading textile artists from the south of England, brought together to form an impressive exhibition group.  All the members are well known artists in their own right, who work individually to create their own pieces of quilt art.  For this gallery each member shared a photograph.  That photograph generated a starter textile and that then led to the creation of two small quilts – one made by a single member of the group (the person who created the starter textile), and the other made as a form of Round Robin, being added to by three different members in turn. 

For previous exhibitions the group has produced a printed catalogue, but for this one they are sharing a powerpoint presentation – I am looking forward to seeing it (and hope the email arrives soon – I am impatient!).  I was so totally absorbed by the exhibition that I didn’t take any photographs – or even ask if photography was allowed!  Fortunately, one of the group, Mary, took the time to explain the process in detail to me and this enabled me to really understand the exhibits and to appreciate them more fully.  I do hope that they will be taking this exhibition to a few other venues – if you get chance to see it, I really recommend it.  Although I failed to take photos, you can see a few on the FoQ website here 

Modern Quilt Gallery

Modern Special Interest Group

As I am sure you know, the Quilters’ Guild has a number of special interest groups.  The Modern group was 10 this year and so they were able to have a gallery. 

The title was Past, Present and Future.   It showed quilts from some of the founding members and entries from some of the challenges that they have run.  There was also this year’s “Tin for Ten” challenge, and for the future, a preview of the 2025 challenge “Quarters” together with work of some of the group’s Young Quilter members.  The gallery was very well attended and and gave visitors so much to look at.

Here’s some photos from the gallery.  Just click on a thumbnail to view a larger image –

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No trip to Festival would be complete without a shopping spree.  However, I have to admit that no fabric or threads came home with me!  I didn’t even buy any books!  I did buy some new machine needles and bobbins for my Bernina.  One of the things that I love about Barnyarns is that you can trust that the items they sell are the genuine article.  Someone asked them for a generic foot for their machine whilst I was waiting to pay and they were so clear – don’t waste money on generic, buy what’s right for your machine and avoid service/maintenance issues.  I have been worried in the past as their Bernina bobbins aren’t in Bernina packaging but I was reassured by his obvious passion.  As well as those necessities, I also bought some gelli plates and brayers (from Gillian Cooper).  And of course I had to have a good look around just in case there was something that I couldn’t live without!

Competition Quilts

Eventually I got time to have a look around the competition quilts, and there were some real gems amongst them.  Here’s some of my favourites from Festival of Quilts 2024.

Connections by GillyMac Zoom Group
Group Quilts

Different Stripes by Rachel Tyndall
Modern Quilts

Ode to Nancy by Judith Lyons
Modern Quilts

Evolution by Heike Heidberg-Koeltgen
Traditional Quilts

Groups, rings and fields by Susan Sheath
Modern Quilts

Necessity is the mother of invention by Lynne Hanson
Modern Quilts

The chaos of loss by Jennifer Stokes
Art Quilts

Keys to the Past by Amanda Jane Ogden
Miniature quilts

Bridal Bed Throw by Sheena Norquay
Contemporary Quilts

There’s loads more so I am putting the into a gallery here.  The gallery does not allow me to add information but you will see that I have always taken a photo of the FoQ card which shows the name of the quilt and the maker and the category.  There are also lots of close ups too.

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As blogs go, this is not a short one!  And I really have only scratched the surface!  There were so many more galleries – and (of course) I didn’t take my own photos, but that may well be a blog for another day!

If you have stuck with me this long, give yourself a pat on the back, a gold star or a stiff drink (or all three!) and thanks for reading.

See you soon

Sheena x