Toil and Joy II

Today I headed north to Birmingham to attend the Festival of Quilts and catch up with wonderful friends.  The day has inspired me on so many levels and given me such food for thought and great design ideas! I can’t wait to go back again tomorrow.

To my sheer delight I also met up with Sallie Ead of Antique Textiles and Costume. She sourced one of my favourite quilt finds, a 19th century jockey cap quilt top. I last saw Sallie at the Selvedge Fair at the American Museum in Bath and it is always a pleasure to chat all things antique fabric with her. She did not disappoint! Today she had some lovely toile de jouy fabrics, some of which I was fortunate enough to bring home! This divine scrap has a hot air balloon just floating off to the right , seemingly carried by the gentle breeze rustling the leaves of the foreground tree. The middle-distance line of willow/ popular trees reminds me of the tree-lined straight roads in Brittany. The deep red on softest cream will be a pleasure to weave into a little quilt.

Sallie had a truly superb early purple toile that she generously held up to show we girls.

The vignettes divided by a trellis in my second purchase have really caught my attention. I have one width but 29 different scenes that are each as charming as the next. I can’t wait to get home and put it on my design wall. What a superb day!

My final find has filled me with excitement! A brown scrap of Chinese pagoda toile. I have photographed it with a fine brown stipe from Karen Styles Quilters’ Guild Collection – the vases and urns in the pattern will be a joy to sketch, enlarge and appliqué onto a border for a long narrow quilt hanging.

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