Festival of Quilts - The Quilts

I went to the Festival of Quilts at the NEC in Birmingham on the 20th August. My mum paid for my ticket and gave me some spending money as my birthday present (the big 30 is in three weeks). I had a fantastic day out. This post is about the quilts, I will write another post about my shopping.

There were so many quilts to look at I didn't really know where to start or what to look for, other than inspiration. I found it a little lonely looking at them by myself, it would have been more fun to look at them with someone else. I really liked the quilts that used a mixture of black and bright colours such as this one made up of tiny hexagons.

The amount of work that has gone into them all was amazing. I loved the miniature quilts, they were so detailed and really look like someone had srunk a normal sized quilt.

I was impressed by all the other items on display such as these flowers and there were some other amazing creations.

I loved these thin panels, there were lots of them, some in sets that all had a matching theme or colour scheme.

I especially liked this one with all these gorgeous flowers

This was my favourite of all the quilts I saw, I love the shape and the black outlines.

I came home feeling inspired to finish my purple patchwork quilt that I started eight years ago and to try to some new patchwork and embroidery techniques. I know I am capable of doing some more complicated projects, I just like doing easy things and finishing them quickly!

Craft Weekend

Mum and I managed to make lots of things this weekend, we had fun shopping for supplies in charity shops and at a boot fair. This picture shows all of our creations.



We had a small embroidery frame each for some creative embroidery, this is what I came up with.



I had my first go at machine quilting with my new sewing machine foot. It was really good fun. I have made a small patchwork mat with a quilted wiggly pattern to stand my sewing machine on.

I made us a tiny doll each, our first project of the weekend was to given them hair, faces and to dress them. This is mine, she is called Strawberry. I am hoping to work on this idea for my Folksy shop. I need to find a better way of doing the hair and slightly alter the body shape to make them easier to dress.

We each had a piece of 100% recycled wrapping paper that we found when we went for lunch at Ryton Organic Gardens. Mum covered a box to make a pretty seed packet storage box. I raided the recycling for cardboard to make a photo frame. I am really pleased with the results.

We had a wonderful weekend and really enjoyed all the things we got up to.