Festival of Quilts = Part Two

After an exhausting first day at The Festival of Quilts I met up with Susan Briscoe & Glyn for a drink in the pub before retiring back to The Village Hotel. We were joined by several other quilters including Lis Harwood, Jan Allston, Janice Gunner & Maggie Relph. It was lovely to have a nice sit down and rest my very sore feet! All too soon it was closing time and time to head off back to the hotel.

Decided to try the hotel restaurant and had a really nice meal of garlic flat bread & a delicious sirloin steak with chunky homemade chips. Umm all washed down well with a glass of wine.

After a good nights sleep, and a tasty breakfast the feet were ready for round two! Back to the NEC.

My plan today was to finish viewing quilts, try out all the different long arm machines whilst I had the opportunity and complete my shopping list.

I took so many photos on the first day that I filled by SD card!

So here are a few more of the quilts

Recognised this one too - another Alison Bramley

 

This is another one I knew too - its a Philippa Naylor. Phillipa lives locally and I have attended several of her workshops before. She dyes all the fabric herself too.

Close up of the blocks

And... The Winning Quilt

I did manage to try out all the long arm machines too and quilt frame adaptions. 

The Quilt frame adaption from New English Quilter was great, but I feel that the quilting area is too much of a restriction for me, although the idea was fantastic and works really well with the Juki machine.

The new Juki long arm was lovely and was fun to use, but the construction of the frame and smoothness was no where near as good as the Innova.

I didn't like the visual appearance of the Gammill - it just look far too scary and serious. I spent quite a while on the Cotton Patch stand with their longarm machines and although they work well, the manoeverability felt very heavy and I'm sure after a while will result in very tired arms, but the back up and service is local - Birmingham so thats a huge plus. 

I went back to Innova and Ferret confirmed that she will be stocking spare parts for the UK and providing some support. Sorted! Now to convince Tim we need one and to make some space - lol!

Here is my car - decided that if I was going to pay £10 per day to park it then it may as well earn its keep - lol!