Festival of Quilts 2016: The Rydal Hall Effect?

 The Festival of Quilts and annual  retreat in the Lake District at Rydal Hall  are the highlights of my year.  Both Julie Bunter and Leah Higgins from  exhibiting group 'Etcetera' and our Rydal Hall retreat group  had  work juried into 'Fine Art Quilt Masters' at  FoQ this year.  Leah also won 1st prize in the 'Art  Quilt ' competition category ( the winners list is here) .She was working on this at Rydal, sewing for hours at a time , while her neighbour Jean Marshall  was building up layer upon layer of subtle colour and stitch on  her 'Coral Reef' entry for CQ On the Edge.  She was part of the 'Salon des Refuses'  ( a place I'm familiar with!)  but won 2nd prize in the 'Art Quilt'  !!  

 Julie meanwhile was experimenting  with stitching exquisite small structures  and Karen Hurrell was  gradually building up  her carousel of brightly coloured ponies which won the Sue Ridgewell  challenge at the QGBI  conference at Llandudno.

We always have a wonderful time at Rydal, working hard but with a lot of laughter. This year  it's gone up a gear - it's a privilege to work alongside such talented  people, I hope a bit of the stardust brushes off ....