Birmingham!

Half of me still in French mode, Quilting DD and |I hopped on a plane to Birmingham last wednesday. Not knowing what to expect from the Festival of Quilts nor from the town. Reports of riots were in the news just before we left.
Turned out that Birmingham is not a very pretty city, but it ís a shopper's heaven. So that's what we did the first day adding some things to our wardrobes :)
Some shops were barricaded with plywood panels and you could see windows being smashed by looters. Lots of policemen on the streets and shops closed early and the atmosphere was a bit tensed.
The hotel was situated just outside the centre in the midst of lots of bars, pubs and clubs.

 There are pretty spots in town but ofcourse we didn't photograph the ugly officebuildings..
After a good nights sleep we headed to the exhibition halls. OMG what an explosion of sounds, quilters, crowds and  shouting (tickets here ladies! get you guide here! cash only this line ladies! etc)
The hall didn't look so big at first, but how wrong we were! It took us 3 days to see all the quilts and visit all the shops. We really were overwhelmed.
This is the quilter's café, at least part of it...

It's impossible to recall quilter's names,not even with the exhibition guide (only text there, no pics) but I'll show you some of the quilts we saw. On Quilting DD's blog there are more.

 One that was completely knitted!

 Polly must love her quilt :)

 A winner

 Made, well painted, entirely from tiny pieces of fabric

Japanese artwork..
We also saw celebs like Kaffe Fasset, Marti Michell. I recognized Lisa Liam from her Uhandbag blog and more .
I was very impressed with the tentmakers of Cairo. What craftmanship, such beautiful quilts

 More in a next post; blogger starts complaining about an overload of pics :) There so much more to share!!