The Festival Of Quilts

Advance ticket prices:

Adult Ticket £16.50
Concession Ticket £15
Child Ticket (5-18) £8
Two Day Ticket £29
One Day VIP Ticket £42
Two Day VIP Ticket £62

However, we have a special discount code for the readers of Let’s Knit. The code is LKNIT19 and it entitles you to £2 off standard advance adult (£14.50 instead of £16.50)/ £1 off advance concessions (£14.00 instead of £15.00)*. **

Tickets can be booked online at thefestivalofquilts.co.uk or by calling 0844 858 6749 and quoting the discount code.

*A £1.95 transaction fee applies per e-ticket order (for any number of e-tickets purchased), a £2.50 transaction fee applies per postal ticket order.

**This discount is for advanced bookings only and can be redeemed before 23:59 on Wednesday 31st July.

Attracting over 25,000 visitors from all over the world, Festival highlights for 2019 include: 800 hung competition quilts; 400+ workshops from leading quilting tutors (the most extensive workshop programme in the Festival’s history); talks, lectures and demonstrations; a full social events programme, including The Quilters’ Guild 40 th Anniversary celebrations; and over 300 exhibitors offering essential supplies.

A major draw are the Festival’s galleries which feature work by internationally-acclaimed artists and groups. Headline artists this year include US art quilter Michael James (Constructed Textiles New and Recent), Australian eco dyer India Flint (incomplete journeys), Hungarian textile artist Eszter Bornemisza (You Are Here) and British quilt artist Karina Thompson (Pattern Within), and there are galleries by Aina Muze, Heide Stoll-Weber, Leah Higgins, Sandra Meech, Sandie Lush and Sara Cook. The International Quilt Study Center & Museum, Nebraska will be showing an exhibition of 19th Century Baltimore Album Quilts.

There are group exhibitions by: the EQA, celebrating its 30 th anniversary in Threads Without Borders; The Quilters’ Guild Collection (Celebrating Four Decades); Middle East Quilt Artists, featuring work by women in the region; Natural Selection, a collection of artists from the US and Europe using ecologically sustainable plant based printing and dyeing processes; Quilt Art , an artist group from the US and Europe, inspired by the work of quilt artist Mary Fogg; The Quilters’ Guild Group, inspired by The Bloomfield Coverlet from 1850; SAQA , with a collection of abstract nightscapes, animal portraits, and other night time observations; The Quilters’ Guild Regions, with a ‘40’ theme; and The Russian Gallery, with work by Galina Krasnikova and Tatiana Sinitsyna.

At this year’s highly-respected Festival competition, the Vlieseline Fine Art Textiles Award, a new
international juried exhibition recognising the talents and skills of a broader community of textile artists, will replace the previous Fine Art Quilt Masters competition. There will also be two new awards recognising the skills associated with hand quilting and long arm quilting, and an updated definition for the Modern Quilt category. All competition entries must be submitted by 31st May 2019. Entry forms, category criteria, competition rules and key information are available on the Quilt Competition page of The Festival of Quilts website (thefestivalofquilts.co.uk).

Flying in to the UK to present a daily Trunk Show at the Festival will be YouTube quilt star Jenny Doan from the Missouri Star Quilt Company. Jenny will be sharing quick and easy quilting tips and techniques to make many of the quilts featured in her tutorials. There will also be artists live at work in the Creative Textiles Studio, demonstrating mark making, screen printing, breakdown printing, paper lamination, eco printing and free piecing. In the Japanese Pavilion, a selection of handpicked suppliers from the International Great Quilt Festival in Tokyo will be showcasing hard to-find fabrics and supplies in the UK for the first time, and in the Festival Theatre on Friday 2nd August, visitors can enjoy a catwalk show of wearable art from Russia. At the Lewis & Irene garden party, visitors are invited to view inspiring new fabrics while sipping a glass of bubbly.