Festival of Quilts 2012 - the photos!

OK, now that my feet have recovered from all the walking, my arms are back to normal length after all the carrying,and  my credit card is getting used to being firmly back in my wallet, here are the photos of my wonderfully exciting day at the Festival of Quilts, NEC, Birmingham UK, yesterday.
I got there well before opening time....... but so did everbody else!!! I have never ever seen such a long queue to gain entry in all my years of visiting the show. The queue went right from the entrance at Hall 7 to the end of the exhibition centre at Hall 12 before the doors opened, and the horrific length of the queue was the sole topic of conversation that I heard whilst waiting to go in. Despite everyone's fears however, once the queue started moving, it moved quickly and when inside we all seemed to disperse enough to be able to get good views of the quilts and to shop without too much pushing and shoving.
So, if you are not able to go in person, here is my little take on the highlights of the show.
First there was the quirky... a patchwork cat from Nel Whatmore's new Cat-Club

the Jennie Rayment workshop that is on Friday and Sunday (wish I could have attended this)

some English Paper Piecing.....

which is just a close up of this full size quilt !!!! -

There was the traditional.....





 the modern.....



the humorous take on the Olympics....



a close up of a small part of a romantic.....

a clever combination of piecing and texture....

a great modern graphic....

which had some lovely hand embroidery.....

a miniature (I guess about 12 inches (30 cm) square.......

another miniature (I wish I had hands nimble enough to do this)....

and finally a couple more of my favourites......

There seemed to be fewer mixed media quilts this year (I always love the paper ones) and I didn't see any journal quilts, but I know there was a bit I didn't get to because it was nearly closing and I was just too tired, so maybe I just didn't see them.

Oh, there is one final picture to show you.... the stash that I bought! I couldn't find everything on my list, but I did pretty well.

I got my Sketch, my Summersville (see those cute houses and flowers just waiting to have some random embroidery added) and a bundle of Klona solids all from Backstitch on Stand G6. I got one of the Jelly rolls I wanted (not on my list, but I knew I wanted it as soon as I saw it!!!) I got some Liberty Tana lawns, and I pre-ordered some of the Liberty Lifestyle (Fabrics Galore, Stand A28 actually had it in stock, but I only found that afterwards). I also got a chalk pouncer for marking designs - I've never used one before so I thought I'd give it a go. I was also very tempted by a Sewezi table - a smallish portable table on which your sewing machine sits flush with the table top.

My machine just has to sit on an ordinary table at the moment, and it does cause problems when I'm quilting a large quilt, as it keeps getting caugth on the machine.

Has anyone got one of these tables? Are they any good, or are they too small? I would really love to know what you think.

If you are going to the show, have a wonderful time.

Julie