Festival of Quilts Competition
Image: Winner, Traditional category 2019 - Gwenfai Rees Griffiths - Pennsylvania.
Entries for The Festival of Quilts 2021 are now open and, for the first time, The Festival of Quilts and The Quilters’ Guild are opening up the annual competition to first-time quilters with a brand new Complete Beginners category. The new-for-2021 category, with a prize of £1000 sponsored by Sewing Street, is designed for people with less than one year’s sewing experience. Entrants must have no prior exhibition experience and no formal qualifications in textiles.
Image: Ann J Harwell, Star Birth (detail). Shortlisted in Art Quilts 2020 category.
The Festival of Quilts competition is designed to promote and encourage all aspects of patchwork, quilting and appliqué, with every entry displayed for public view. There are 17 competition categories covering a wide range of quilting styles and for individual quilters, groups and schoolchildren. The theme for this year’s The Quilters’ Guild Challenge is the fitting ‘Coming Together’. Other competition developments for 2021 include two new overlay awards: The Excellence in Machine Quilting award which celebrates machine quilting created using a static, domestic sewing machine; and the Superior Threads Thread Master Award which recognises mastery of techniques where thread plays a starring role. Quilts entered in any Festival of Quilts competition category are eligible for one of the four overlay awards, excluding category winners. Each award comes with a £500 prize.
Image: Maureen Reeves, New York Mardi Gras (detail). Traditional Quilts category 2020.
Anna Baptiste, Event Director for The Festival of Quilts, said: “The Festival of Quilts competition is a spectacular sight every year but this year, of all years, promises to be a riot of colour. I imagine we will see themes of remembrance, community and hope as many makers will have taken comfort from their quilting during the challenges of the pandemic and lockdowns.”
Although last year’s event moved online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year The Festival of Quilts will take place, live, from 29 July – 1 August 2021 at the NEC Birmingham, UK, where many of the competition entries will be on show.
Submissions close on Friday 4 June 2021. To find out more visit The Festival of Quilts website.
2 comments
Hi Gwen, I believe that participants do not have to drive their quilts to/ from Birmingham if that is unfeasible (as it may be for some). There is also an option to post your quilt to the festival organisers. You can find more information on the Festival of Quilts website: https://www.thefestivalofquilts.co.uk/getting-quilt-us-packaging-quilt/
Hope that helps!
Would love to know, Is there an existing plan to get quilts to and from Birmingham you can connect me to? Or, would you like to to get involved in organising ourselves and sort out our own collection system? I don’t want to go to Birmingham twice in one week, thanks, but maybe we can work out a way to share the logistics? Someone drive them up, someone else drive them back? What do you reckon? Or is it just too complicated?!
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