The TWISTED THREAD SHOW in London OLYMPIA

Up at 6.30 out the door by 7am at my friends by 7.30 and on the road at 7.34 ! Yup just the 100 + miles to London around the M25 ( think worst road ever ) and disasterous parking . THankfully we got parked eventually at a good friends in North London and ran for the train and from there on it was ................. whoooohhooooo!!!

NOw Twisted thread takes several forms and Olympia I have to say was A, a mish mash and quite poorly laid out and organised. THere wasn't a lot of fabric stalls and most were pretty routine and mucho dinaro but there were one or two jewels inthe crown .

500 quilts and banners/pennats mde for the 2012 Olympics were on display . THe quilts are breing given to the teams and athletes of both the Para Olympics and the Olympics. Work varied from small lap quilts in sherbert colours to HUGE quilts in vivid high contrast colours . Some "modern" styling was visible however traditional still held the sway and not suprosingly because the majority of the quiltingp articipants are over a certain age .

So I am including a few shots of quilts I liked or thought were good examples. Some were greaqt one or two were absolutely AMAZING and a couple ... well I'll say nothing .
You may see some of these at the International Festival of Quilts and I hope to go and see the major exhibitions later this year .

OK I lied ... this is a quilt a long being done by my partner in crime Denise ... a whole town made with the most fiddly diddly bits of fabric !! The woman is nuts .

Right I liked this one as I have a bit of a love of whirlygig  I really liked the colours and it was jsut a really really pretty quilt ..

 WOnky log cabin ..... there wasn't a vast amount of "modern " that I saw and what I did see was..... ok but not a lot of neutral space use... Come on Britain lets get some modern inspiration going !

very traditional but again pretty ... reminded me of salmon and cucumber sandwiches.

a wonky scrappy .

 The lime grren in this just made it sing and I think some times we have to be brave ... ok it;s a trad design but the colours aren't .

 I think some call this bento box.... and it wasi nteresting to see how it looked so different made in Trad fabrics.... it lost it;s design impact but still looked good.

 Now I have to say that bargello and batiks are not top of my list of likes.... but this was really really really lovely ... so yes I learned something new today and so should everyone. When we stop learning we stop l;iving.

 Wonky set box in box and probably one of the best examples there of use of neutral spce ... a note though on a lot of these quilts..... very very few flat matt solids.... batiks or embellised or embossed fabric but very few even encountered a solid .

 This was fun well made and cheeky I liked it a great deal  . It ticked my MFQ MQG box .

NOw this I adored ......................... until .................. I spotted that they had fitted a lace frill to the top of every wavey arm.... WTF! so please feel free to admore from a point where you can't see that abomination.

 Just lovely .... again batik .. not my comfort zone .... but so well done lovely corners lovely simple quilting and it just looked classy .

 HELL YEAH BRING IT ON ................................. this was glorious and should have been a major show piece ...

 well this almost made me sell my Nina... Made of 2 inch squares ( finished size) colour graded ... all sorts of amuzing words and pics in the squares and then a girl with a medal and a bouquet quilted on the podium...................... lovely lovely lovely .

 geese! realyl great sharp points and some lovely neutral spacing !

 HORAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH flik flak  with neutral space and a fabulous inserted contrast border ...  it looked great .

 Modern or art ? again lovely .

bento box in ornage  ( sorry for the wobble I was getting dehydrated and hungry at this point . )

Another salmon and watercress  creation and these are so easy ... some neutral space.

 Now as you know I love my cats .... cat fabric doesn't do it for me but this was bright and fun ... thank god some one had a sense of humour cos it was getting a bit serious by this time ....

Enjoy and feel free to comment .