With all the bloghop excitement, and making Stepping Stones from Sue's book (have spent an hour and a half this afternoon burying thread ends - Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz), I have quite forgotten to post about my visit to the Festival of Quilts.
I'm fortunate to live close to the NEC where the event is held, so a £4.95 train ticket, two local trains and three quarters of an hour after stepping out my own front door, I was striding into the Show.
About half the space is taken up with showing quilts - every last one of them was absolutely stunning (if not all to my taste). I started round this area, just appreciating the skill involved. Difficult to chose a favourite, but maybe it was this one.
Being rather mean in the purse department I didn't fork out for a guide book, but I was pleased to find myself loosely following a couple of ladies who had not only bought the guide book, but one of whom was not wearing her reading glasses so needed her friend to read out pertinent bits about each quilt. Splendid!
They had more stamina than me, so I peeled off for a cup of tea when I'd seen enough, before heading to the trade stands where stallholders were selling any and every kind of item you could possibly ever want in connection with your quilting hobby.
Anything from the 'essential' (fabric, cutters, threads) through to the 'nice-to-haves' ('designer' fabrics, sewing machines, Accuquilt Go!); to the 'you're-going-to-have-to-make-your-living-at-this-to-justify-the-spend' (computerised long arm quilting systems - think same cost as decent second-hand runaround).
I bought some thread and allowed myself a couple of metres of cat-pattern print, and paid a pound in the Quilters' Guild tombola which won me a pin cushion, but managed not to spend more than that.
And in amongst all that lot, I met up with Trudi on the Machine Quilting stand - which was just brilliant, and I had a go on a quilting machine whilst talking with her about our common other hobby.
My eyes remained saucer-like for the entire time - what a fabulous day!
Glad you had such a good time, very easy to become completely overwhelmed at FoQ - there is just SO much going on.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like it's a wonderful quilt show. I love sampler quilts, so the one with the cat border is very interesting to me. Nice picture of Trudi and you.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you had such a great day. Isn't it wonderful when you can meet for real someone you've got to know when blogging?
ReplyDeleteSounds like an amazing time. Congrats on winning the pin cushion. I thought they were odd at first thinking my magnet thing was better but I was so wrong. I love my pin cushion now. Good for you keeping the bank budget in line as well.
ReplyDeleteI love the following the ladies part, that is just to precious, though how in the world did they have more stamina than you? All those sore muscles from FMQ?