Festival of Quits - by Jackie S

I travelled to the NEC on Friday (1st August) with my quilt group in Jeff’s minibus. We arrived early, and already had our tickets so we avoided long queues to enter and were off!

 It is always a bit overwhelming going into the massive three halls of the NEC and takes a while to work out what is where, so a Show Guide is essential.

After visiting the Quilters’ Guild stands to purchase a year badge and look at the amazing challenge quilts by the Traditional and Modern groups I wandered through the traders sections. I had a small shopping list and more or less stuck to it, picking up a couple of fat quarters for Linus quilts and a few metres each of both plain black and white fabric. A friend asked me to look for a beading needle, which is semi-circular in shape and very fine. This was a bit of a challenge but I eventually came across a haberdashery stall that had them - success. I could now concentrate on the competition quilts and galleries that were showing mini-exhibitions of various quilters’ work.

I met a friend for lunch and then, refreshed, went off to enjoy the rest of the Show.

The gallery I liked the most was Siddi Quilts made by women in India. The quilts are pieced and quilted together by hand from the outside towards the middle, sewing the back and front at the same time. The quilts are very colourful with fabric randomly put together, and those hung made a wonderful display.

I also liked Jo Avery’s gallery, very colourful in a very different way. Jo’s work is very precise and accurate and her designs are very clever. Another gallery of interest was “A Stitch in Time” which displayed work to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. It was difficult to understand how some of the items had been made, including silk dressing gowns, given the difficult circumstances.

Then to the quilts, over 700, plus 30 quilt creations (clothing, random items all patchworked and/or quilted) - amazing work. As you can imagine, it is impossible to list all the quilts I liked but the one that impressed me, was called “Bridgid Brings the Spring” by Lena Pugachova from Dublin. It did get a Judge’s Choice but no prizes. The quilt depicted a young woman in a yellow-flowered (daffodils) flowing cloak sweeping the land and bringing in Spring. English paper pieced by hand and some machine piecing and appliqué. St Brigid is a pagan goddess in Ireland and is celebrated as the bringer of Spring - very ethereal.

There were so many amazing quilts and the work was excellent. I noticed there were quite a few protest quilts reflecting the problems around the world. The overall winner was called Twisted by Simone Steuxner from Sweden, a very complicated and beautifully made quilt - impossible to describe but check out the winners of all the categories on the FoQ or Quilters’ Guild website. For a change I could agree with this being the overall winner.

All in all an enjoyable although long and tiring day, but I do recommend a visit to next year’s Festival if you’ve never been. For a quilter it is a not-to-be-missed experience.

I have discovered some videos on YouTube of this year’s exhibition - Google YouTube Festival of Quilts 2025.