Here's my large double-bed sized quilt at the Festival of Quilts at the NEC last week. It's the first time I've put a quilt in a big exhibition - and this is a big one - over 900 quilts on display. It's a great exhibition, lots of inspiration from ohter people's quilts, plenty of trade stands to buy from (and I did!) and a wonderful chance to meet up with friends. Some go for the full 4 days and take part in workshops and attend lectures - I did 2 days at the show and needed it all. I'll have to go for longer if I'm going to fit in anything else. We travelled down on the Friday and spent most of the day in Lichfield. Neither of us had been there before - a lovely little town. The days at the show are very full - quilts to see, fabric to buy! Members of our internet group manage to meet up for lunch and show each other our purchases. We have a traditional dinner together on the Saturday evening too, which makes it a really great little holiday. Hope more of you can make it next year.
This is the group quilt that I masterminded co-ordinated and nagged into existence. One of our internet group, Sue, quilted and bound it (the hard bit, in my opinion!)
My dwarf borlotti beans. We ate a few of them as fresh beans but the real intention was to have them for dried beans. However, I decided to try some as shelly beans. In America it's quite a popular way of eating beans - when they are fully formed you shell them out and cook the beans. They take much less time (and fuel) to cook than if you leave them to dry. You can also freeze them as shelled fresh beans and again, cook them up faster.
They are wonderfully substantial beans and I'm going to use them in a casserole tonight. There are plenty to try out - I have lots more of these dwarf beans and also a huge A-frame of climbing borlottis at the allotment. If they work well shelled I shall try some both ways - shelled and frozen AND dried. At least with the dried, you have seed for next year too.
3 comments:
Nice to have you in our neck of the woods, Flum - Lichfield (no 't'!) has a lovely market town feel to it. I do hope you managed to have a look round the cathedral whilst you were there - a regular school holiday outing for us many years ago!
Now we have plenty of pubs to choose from too - our favourite is the Queen's Head which sells 'proper' beer from local breweries (if you like that sort of thing) and has a most wonderful cheese counter for bread & cheese lunches!
Some of the quilts that I've seen on your and your chums' blogs are quite breathtaking - well done to you all!
Hey Mrs Flummery, that large quite is pretty damn spectacular! Well done our kid. Looks to me like it is made in the style of Turner/Rolfe's "Scrap Quilts from Simple Rectangles" which is another on my never-ending list of projects to have a go at. The slender dark stop border works really well. Wish I'd seen it at Birmingham, hey ho, will have to drive East one day for a Show & Tell! hugs, Bilbo
I stand corrected on the spelling Hazel! We had lunch at a local pub but I now can't remember the name - I remember the beer though - Banks! Yes we did spend quite some time at the cathedral - also went along the Stowe Pond (?) to St Chad's well. Very fond of St Chad. Humble but nice with it. Allegedly!
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