52 Quilters, Anna Maria Horner and The Festival of Quilts 2017

Last week was insanely great! I have so many emotions still overflowing me even though it’s new week already and it’s a Tuesday evening 🙂

52 Quilters

I was lucky enough to take over @52quilters Instagram account exactly the week of The Festival of Quilts (FoQ)! Lots of thanks to Chris, the creator of 52 Quilters.

My week was week 34, running from 7th to 13th August.

It was a fun week and I truly enjoyed it.

It was difficult not to overgram though 🙂 but I hope no one minded as I got some new followers for the account and for myself too. I also created my special hashtag #52qzs to be able to easily find my 52 Quilters posts a few weeks, months or years later as a reminder/photo diary of a fab week.

What happened in the week then?

Anna Maria Horner

On Monday 7th August I went to an evening workshop with incredible Anna Maria Horner at The Village Haberdashery in West Hampstead.

The class was called Inspiration by Hand and it was time well spent chatting, stitching and learning from Anna Maria. She is such a lovely lady, so nice and relaxed. It felt like she was everyone’s good old friend.

Below is a collage from the workshop, 1st image is my handstiching, the rest of the images are Anna Maria’s handstitching and close ups of her beautiful quilts that she brought with her to the class.

It was a nice enjoyable evening with Anna Maria and a lovely group of ladies and I just had to take a photo 🙂

The Festival of Quilts (FoQ)

This was my 2nd FoQ (I went last year) and it was full of joy and many smiles, quilts and friends.

I was there Friday and Saturday and barely managed to cover everything I wanted. After scrolling through post Festival Instagram I realised I missed some wonderful quilts somehow. Next time I need to go for 3 days at least.

There were too many incredible quilts at exhibitions and it’s impossible to photograph all of them of course, but here are few collages for your pleasure:

A selection of the amazing Victoria Findlay Wolfe‘s quilts from her special exhibition. Our London MQG had a fantastic workshop with Victoria about 5 days before FoQ and we all enjoyed the class tremendously and learned many new quilting tips from the lady herself. Patchwork never was as easy as it is with Victoria. Such a skillful and knowledgeable tutor and friendliest personality.

From left to right and top bottom below

Space Dust – Lisa Naylor and Trudi Wood
Alice meets Abigail – Dorothy Hill and Abigail Sheridan de Graaff
Gravity – Vivian Poon and Trudi Wood
Hot Water Microbes – Jo Avery and Tatyana Duffie
Quilt No 4 – Elli Beaven
Mod Strawberries – Margaret Lehmann
Broken Records – Anna Maria Galvin
Nine – Colette Moscrop
Almost Black – Jo Avery

Below from left to right, and top to bottom:

Wasabi on the Side – Abigail Sheridan de Graaff
Aloha Portholes – Chris English
Lone Star – Eva Le Blanc
Fractured Squares – Hilary Jackson
Fraction – Lou Orth
Fanfare for Molly – Marianne Ten Kate
The Big Bang – Nicola Howard Hobbs
La Passacaglia Goes Large – Dorothy Hill
Total Square – Sarah Humphreys

Below from left to right, and top to bottom:

Moroccan Windows – Anne Marshall
Damn Right, I’ve Got The Blues – Rebecca Bell
Don’t Box Me – Trudi Wood
River Quilt – Jenny Haynes
Club Tropicana – Anne Marshall and Trudi Wood
My Butterfly Garden – Dawn Monk
Coastal Walk – Sarah White
Dresden Plate Sampler – Margaret Lehman
Revolve around me – Lou Orth

Below from left to right, and top to bottom:

At the Edge – Kaja Ziesler
Chrysler Alternatives – Carole Wood
Likes, concerns, suggestions – Chris English
Lowen – Julius Arthur
Starry Night: Shattered – Jennifer Letchet
Shirley Valentine – Louise Donovan
Arcade Game – Jacqui Cole
Lowicz Folk Carriage – Magdalena Badura
Project of Doom; A Harry Potter bookcase quilt – Maya Jordan

A selection from Quiltcon 2017 booth

Mindblowing Pictorial Quilt- 1st place winner – African Village by Janneke de Vries-Bodzinga. The picture doesn’t do it justice!

These two microscopic hexies quilts are by the same person – Juliet Nelmes. Each hexie is like a nail on your finger or even smaller!!!

This is me crushing on Anna Maria Horner and buying all her fabrics available 🙂

Kaffe & Brandon & me fangirling again!

Kaffe Fassett FoQ

With the incredible Victoria Findlay Wolfe

Very inspiring talk from Victoria on Saturday afternoon

I met so many people I know and follow on Instagram, but unfortunately didn’t take photo with everyone I met 🙁

I met Lucy @charmaboutyou and Clare @selfsewn. I was so happy to find them after Lucy’s live Instagram video that I couldn’t stop smiling 😀

I also met a very special lady Jo @unicornharts – one of my best Insta friends and my fav FPP designer. Finally we met IRL! We spent the whole Friday browsing FoQ with Jo and Vanisha @vanishasattic (no idea why I didn’t take her photo from FoQ ugh!). I made Jo this mini Candy Cat Quilt out of her FPP pattern and Jo gifted me a beautiful pouch and pincushion!

I also met Beth @stitchedbybetty – we failed to meet up at last year FoQ, this year finally made it!

Below is Jenni Smith and her cool quilt out of Anna Maria Horner’s fabrics and Kaffe Fassett’s pattern

I could write this post forever but I have to finish here.

Sorry if I missed some amazing quilts and didn’t mention some people I met with – you know who you are and it was a great pleasure to see you and chat to you. See you next year or earlier – you never know!

Finishing with my FoQ haul photo: