Festival of Quilts 2010 Academy Programme

Described as "the largest, most eagerly anticipated event in the patchwork and quilting calendar anywhere in Europe", the "Festival of Quilts" takes place at the NEC in Birmingham during August.

While Quilters who have previously visited know that it provides huge inspiration, with the Victoria and Albert Museum (see previous post) showcasing some of their quilt collection this year in Quilts 1700-2010, we hope that the "Festival of Quilts" also tempts those who don't aspire to necessarily make quilts but for those for whom the art and artistry of quilts, the history or the beauty and colour or texture is enough reason to visit. Last year over 30,000 people visited the NEC from over fifty countries - it certainly felt like it as someone who could not get from one end of the stand to the other!

So if your diary is handy - the dates are:

19th to 22nd August 2010

Opening Hours: 10.00am to 5.30pm (closes 5pm Sun)

For those who want to get on with the "making", one of the highlights is the collection of teachers whose workshops and lectures provide that inspiration to extend knowledge and techniques into new areas.

While the organisers Twisted Thread are able to show the Quick and Easy Workshops programme on their literature The Academy Programme is now so vast that the easiest way to view it is online. We thought we'd give a taster of some of the masterclasses, lectures and workshops that you can sign up for on the Twisted Thread site.
Non Quilters Guild members can start booking from today!

Marti Michell


We are delighted that Marti Michell together with her husband Richard Michell (and seen here with their daughter Stacey who runs Shades Hand Dyed Fabrics) will be joining us on The Cotton Patch stand for demonstrations of her templates and advice on how to Machine Quilt in sections, make a real log cabin...I mean make a Log Cabin Quilt and lots more!



Marti will be reaching for the stars with A Constellation of Star Quilts (Reference 271)

You won’t want to miss Marti’s star studded trunk show. It is full of tips
and tricks for making Evening Stars, Feathered Stars, Kaleido-Stars and
stars you might not think are stars, even Seven Sis-stars. Oh my stars, you’ll be star-struck!
Lecture (1 hour)
Saturday 21st August 10.00am to11.00am

Machine Quilting in Sections / Quilting As You Piece (Reference 294)
You’ll learn the difference, the similarity and how both methods can help you finish your quilts on your home sewing machine! If manoeuvring a big quilt through that little opening in your sewing machine is overwhelming, this lecture has answers! There are always new quilts and tips.
Lecture (1 hour)
Sunday 22nd August 10.00am to 11.00am

Why Use 8 Fabrics When You Could Use 80? (Reference 249)
Who knows whether you have lots of fabric because you love to make scrap quilts or you love to make scrap quilts because you have lots of fabric? It doesn’t matter, you’ll love Marti’s scrap quilt trunk show. Plus Marti will review the top 10 reasons why you need more fabric!!!
Lecture (1 hour)
Friday 20th August 4.00pm to 5.00pm

Kaffe Fassett

Kaffe Fassett - what can you say about a man who has contributed so much to pushing the boundaries of colour within the traditional designs of patchwork that hasn't already been said? So often people know that the colour in their quilt is not quite right but
don't know what to do to make it so...Kaffe Fassett has that talent (as we discover when we try and substitute a fabric in his quilts and find it quite tricky!).

Kaffe is shown (below) with Nik from The Cotton Patch signing books on the stand at the Festival of Quilts in 2009 - Kaffe has his own stand this year but will also be doing book signings on The Cotton Patch stand.

Kaffe is also doing a Soup Supper talk entitled Concentrate on Colourwhich is designed to inspire and motivate. The presentationhighlights works from his latest projects, these include his patchworkquilt, fabric, needlepoint, mosaic, painting and knitting designs. For more details and how to book please visit the Twisted Thread site.

The Kaffe Fassett lecture is designed to inspire and motivate. This year Kaffe will be talking about Diamonds...could be a girl's best friend...

Diamonds (Reference 258)
Kaffe Fassett
Play with colour in design from a Kaffe Fassett quilt structure under the supervision of Kaffe and his assistant Brandon Mably. Most class time will be spent teaching the arrangement of fabrics to develop each student’s own personal colour palette in making one of Kaffe’s original designs. Students will need to bring lots of fabric to play with! Although Kaffe and Brandon teach the same principles of colour, the class structure will be different and you will come away with two totally different wall-size hanging quilt arrangements.
You will be arranging your work on a piece of flannel that you will just fold up at the end of the workshop, ready to take home and sew.
You may elect to keep your projects wall sized or expand them to full size once you return home. The quilts are primarily scrappy so the workshops are for scrappy quilts done in fairly low contrast. Kaffe and Brandon will be taking you through the same process they use for designing their quilts.
1 Day Masterclass
Any Level
Saturday 21st August 9.30am to 4.30pm

Amy Butler

Last but by no means least....Amy's influence on the world of design just keeps on growing. We recently saw that Amy has teamed up with Graham and Brown who manufacture the most gorgeous wallpapers so your next quilt may match your wallpaper! Amy showed some of the rugs she has designed at the Soup Supper at last year's Festival of Quilts - they are a perfect foil for her designs. Wow! So now its quilt, bedding, wallpaper, rugs.... find out what inspires her and her creative process at her lecture. She'll also be available and will be signing her books on The Cotton Patch stand. Below is one of the rugs from her collection -

Inspirations with Amy Butler
(Reference 244 and 274)

Spend an hour chatting, laughing and getting inspired with American fabric and interiors designer Amy Butler. Get an inside look at some fun, behind the scenes imagery and stories chronicling Amy's latest creative adventures through her travels and studio life.

Lecture (1 hour)

Friday 20th and Saturday 21st August

1.00pm to 2.00pm

One of Amy's beautiful handmade 100% New Zealand wool rugs.

Further Tales from the Festival of Quilts

For our final installment of our blog about Festival we've a few more photos of various people on The Cotton Patch stand.
All photos courtesy of Liz Hingley.



Amy and David Butler, Marti and Richard Michell and Kaffe Fassett signing his latest book "Kaffe Fassett's quilt romance".


There are a few blog posts around the net you might like to check out on the Festival of Quilts - one I loved is the Henhouse Blog Great photos and what a fantastic collection of fabrics and goodies to drool over - her choice of book "Material Obsession" seems particularly apt!

Having fun at Amy's class..






All those lovely Kaffe Fassett and Amy Butler packets, fat quarters and packs...!











Sandy Chandler going non-stop with curved piecing! She could have made a large King-sized quilt with all those pieces!

Festival of Quilts at the NEC - A Riot of Colour

Few who attended the Festival of Quilts last week could fail to have left inspired and brimming with ideas. Attendance was in excess of all expectations and the quilting community certainly came out en masse to view a fabulous collection of quilts, works, classes, workshops and shops.




Accents from all over Europe and North America could be heard every day. So thank you to everyone who visited The Cotton Patch stands - we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did and we look forward to seeing you again next year!


We were fortunate to have the photographer Liz Hingley on the stand on Friday to capture some of the essence of the atmosphere of the show. It was Liz's first Festival and like so many first-time visitors was amazed and inspired by it. Over the next few days we'll be posting some of her images... For those of you unable to make it we hope it gives you the motivation to join us next year!

Anne, Ellie and Nikki helped with cutting the fabrics, setting up the stands (and dismantling them!) and were pretty invaluable on the Rowan stand.

Geoff demonstrated the Little Gracie II, Pinnacle and the new Bernina 8 Series Quilting frame to hundreds of people during the show. Here, one customer is testing out her stippling technique on the Little Gracie II.

More photos will follow. For those of you into social networking you might like to join the Festival of Quilts Facebook group - just follow this link.

Festival of Quilts 2009 - Amy Butler, Kaffe Fassett et al

Preparations are well underway for the Festival of Quilts at the NEC from 20th to 23rd August. We are delighted that Amy Butler, Kaffe Fassett and Marti Michell will all be joining us again. We also have Sandy Chandler from the States who will be demonstrating the Curve Master, tweezers and seam roller.

Amy and Kaffe will be able to sign copies of their books at the following times. They may be on the stand at other times as well if they are not doing classes and lectures so please stop by on our stand at B25 - we'll have lots of fabrics by the metre, packs and books. There will be some great Show Special Offers so it will be well worth a visit.

Amy's Book Signing Times

Thursday 10:30 - 12:00 and 4:45 - 5:15
Friday 10:30 - 12:00 and 4:45 - 5:15
Saturday 10:30 - 12:30 and 2:00 - 3:00
Sunday 10.00 - 11.00

Kaffe's Book Signing Times

Thursday 11:00 - 1:00 and 2:30 - 4:00.
Friday 11:00 - 1:00 and 2:30 - 4:00.

Our main Cotton Patch stand is just across from Amy and Kaffe at C19 and our demonstrations of hand and machine quilting frames (including the new Bernina frame) will be at B21.

Don't forget that our shop is only 1/2 hour drive away from the NEC so please do visit while you are in the area. The shop is open on Thursday, Friday and Saturday (20-22 August) from 10am to 5pm. To give you an extra incentive to visit, if you spend over £35 on any of those days get a free copy of one of the following books! (Offer is limited to one copy per customer per day.) For directions to the shop please click here.

The Quilt Road by Kaffe Fassett (Ref 4259, normally £15.95)

A collection of 20 projects to suit all skill levels by:- Kaffe Fassett, Janet Bolton, Keiko Goke, Roberta Horton, Mary Mashuta, Liza Prior Lucy, Pauline Smith, Betsy Mennesson, Brandon Mably and Hilde Aanerud Krohg.
This Rowan Patchwork & Quilting book is styled by Kaffe Fassett and photographed by Debbie Patterson in the dramatic Pennine landscape of Yorkshire, amongst the barns and lichen encrusted mossy dry-stone walls that are so characteristic of the roadside scene in this part of Northern England.

The Impatient Patchworker by Jane Emerson (Ref 4395, normally £12.99)

If you like the idea of giving your home an individual touch, but lack of time, the experience or the ideas, then The Impatient Patchworker is just what you need. Jayne Emerson has created a range of 20 quick-to-make patchwork projects that will transform your home in a matter of a few hours. She includes wonderful mixtures of patterns and colours to create eye-catching but simple textiles, including cushions, shopping bags and purses, table runners, cloths and napkins.

Seven Easy Pieces by Kaffe Fassett (Ref 4057, normally £7.95)

A collection of 7 cool and contemporary projects with beginners in mind. The projects use just 10 Kaffe Fassett fabrics so, if there is any left over from one project you can use it to start the next!

We hope you can visit the NEC in August and if you do, we look forward to seeing you there!

Festival of Quilts - Post Show

The Show met and then exceeded all our expectations. It was buzzing with the energy created from the combination of many factors that make the Festival of Quilts a show that is in a class of its own. That combination came from the wonderfully varied and international audience, a fabulous selection of quilts from the competition entries, the galleries and the stands themselves with, as usual, the quilts being presented in a way that really does justice to the work and talent of its creator. The excellent venue and the ease with which local, national and international visitors can access the site plus the range and depth of the workshops on offer gives participants a greater knowledge and skill of the craft..brilliant!

So thanks to Andrew, Rhonda and the team at Twisted Thread for another excellent show.

The fabric packs of the quilts from Kaffe's new book Quilts in the Sun are now available.

We had the opportunity to meet old friends and make new ones ourselves and some of them will be featured over the next few weeks or so on this blog.

We were fortunate again to have Kaffe Fassett and Marti Michell on our stands and they were joined this year by Anneke den Broek who was demonstrating the needle puller which her husband designed.

We have been busy today unloading the vans and trying to get back to some semblance of normality. For those of you who managed to make it to the show we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.

Festival of Quilts Preparation

Final preparations are underway for the Festival of Quilts at the NEC and it promises to be even bigger and better than last year! We really hope you can visit and look forward to seeing you there.

The FESTIVAL OF QUILTS runs from 16th to 19th August, 2007 at the NEC, BIRMINGHAM. Our stands at D20 and E20 will feature lots of offers and products including..

Fantastic offers on Cotty thread boxes - this is a closeup of the threads earlier today whenJayne, our latest Cotton Patch recruit who will be working at the NEC for the first time, was putting together our Cotty thread boxes.

Kaffe Fassett will be signing copies of his new book "Quilts in the Sun". We will have a huge selection of Rowan fabrics, kits of the quilts in the new book, charm packs and special collection packs.

Marti Michell is visiting from the US for the third year running to demonstrate her rulers, templates and books, including her latest book "Kaledioscope ABC's", which is hot off the press. For more information on her latest book and the Kaleido Rulers click here

We will have demonstrations of Daylight Lights, which make sewing a lot easier on the eyes for many crafts (and for reading). We will have some fantastic show offers on selected products including the Ultimate , Portable and the new Clip-on Battery Lamp.

Anneke ten Broek, from Holland, will be demonstrating her Needle Puller, which makes your quilting easier and less tiring on your hands. For more information on the Needle Puller please click here and scroll to the bottom of the page.

FESTIVAL OF QUILT CLASSES AND WORKSHOPS
If you need to order items to pickup at the show for classes (or just to save on postage!) please let us know by Saturday 11th August so your order can be ready to pickup from the E20 stand. Please specify the day you require it. For web orders put the "Delivery to" address as the NEC,the second line as the date required and the postcode as NEC E20

We look forward to seeing many of you next week at the Festival!