I saw so may quilts, the good, the bad and the ugly, at the recent Festival of Quilts in Birmingham, that I have been at a loss to know what to write and how to show all the wonderful things on show and for sale. So to start at the beginning I am simply posting the quilts that I felt jealous of not having made myself. First off is the quilt above, no names on the general exhibits and I didn’t get many titles either – so treat this as a visual feast.

But wow, this is how to use all those purpose designed and brilliantly coloured quilting fabrics – just go for it. I recognised many of these fabrics as Kaffe Fasset designs so I was delighted to see a design that was as exhuberant and playful as the original fabrics themselves.

The Kaffe Fassett fabrics were included in many other exhibits, this amazing quilt made me dizzy standing next to it, I felt I was falling over as the twist of the star design was very strong close up.

I now realise how little I know of the names of the patchwork designs – however I often give them names myself,  this is Dizzy Windmill.

What I did discover is that the quilts that I enjoyed the most used good quality fabrics in a strong traditional design, which is a bit boring of me really! But you can spend ages, close up and personal enjoying the variety of fabric.

the detail here shows all sorts of small prints that are hand stitched and quilted together then tied with thread in the centres – I do like ties in quilts.

How about this for perfect use of stripes and geometrics – how fantastic is this? the glowing centre and the striped border makes this a quilt seem to be imploding.

Brilliant use of striped fabrics for traditional hexagon patchwork.

Striped fabrics have also been used for this quilt below, quieter and very desirable, this I the one quilt that I really wanted to take home to bed.

the detail shows how the simple contrasting fabrics used to such stunning effect. although I recognised several fabrics in this quilt as being newly bought it did look more like a quilt made of recycled fabrics, I do prefer the idea of using recycled fabrics …..just a thought.

At the entrance of the show there was a ‘Winners’ Wall’ of quilts and 2 quilts were constantly being scrutinised and photographed, there were constant queues to view them…one was a 2 person quilt – pieced by one person and quilted by another, the overall effect was rich, muted and sumptuous.

The quilting was by machine and was an undulating design of feathers that perfectly contrasted with the star and diamond geometric patchwork.

The other  quilt, which was next to this was entirely different, it was in fact an applique, it looked like a glowing flowering silk carpet.

Here are hand stitched applied flowers in traditional designs, very beautifully controlled and as playful as they are elegant. It is reminiscent of 17th century embroidered bed covers.

There were so many quilts that were beautiful that I got exhausted trying to photograph them to make a post out of them, the exhibition was really too big for 1 day’s visit but I want to show a few more that worked on pure colour  – a very simple silk folded piece.

And a very glamorous and modern haphazard piece that must have been inspired in some way by the Gees Bend quilts ?

At the end of the day my head and eyes were hurting – not to say my feet; it is such an amazing festival if a tad too large and unedited. The one area of calm I found was this stand of Turkey red and white quilts from the Quilt Museum and Gallery of York. I shouldn’t have taken this picture but I just had to show a stunning striking space – as empty as you needed it to be after an exhausting day  – and I haven’t mentioned the sales area yet have I?