Well, the Festival of Quilts 2008 has come and gone so quickly! And what a tremendous learning curve for us. This was our very first quilting exhibition and we had jumped in at the deep end with the biggest.

The preparation had seemed nerve wracking and endless and yet the Festival itself seemed to last no time at all. From set-up on Wednesday through to break-down on Sunday night seemed to pass in no time at all.

Recollections of being an exhibitor in other industries were of tedious, foot aching days waiting for it to end. Not so the Festival of Quilts. There was a continuous stream of genuinely interested people who were keen to ask questions and share experience, both visitors and other exhibitors. And from all parts of the world too.

Our little stand was often overwhelmed with people with inquisitive expressions wanting to see what this 'Shweshwe' fabric was about. It was a little too odd for some who found it strange that it should be starched at the factory, but many others were keen to hear more and feel the wonderful sofness of the purple washed samples you can see on either side of the stand and how the fabric felt in the finished samples like the shirt on the left, that we had on display.

It was a real challenge to both fit everything onto the stand and keep it in good order. One of the big lessons was to make sure in future exhibitions that we had enough space to cut the fabric. We had a tiny table tucked into the right side of the stand that was simply not big enough to lay out even the 90cm bolts. Merril created miracles of cutting. How she managed the 150cm bolts like she did was amazing.

Whilst we had given some thought to what people would buy, we never expected the African Sunset and African Story placemat panels, that you can see on the back wall, to be so popular. We had completely sold out of both by Saturday and had to take orders to be sent after the show.

We'd like to thank all those people who stopped at our stand and in particular a big thank you to our exhibitor neighbours who made us feel so welcome.

Pauline and Alan at Pauline's Patchwork, the ladies at Intelliquilter and everyone at Art van Go. To Maggie from African Fabrics and Anne from Out of Africa who made a point of visiting us and sharing their experience.

It was great to meet others with a real interest in the wonderful fabrics and products from the various countries of Africa.

We look forward to future shows where we'll be putting into practice everything we have learned and to meeting up with

new found friends

Wow! Great news. We have managed to secure the very last exhibition stand at the Festival of Quilts 14th to 17th August at the NEC Birmingham. This is such exciting news for us as we thought we had no hope of being able to show our beautiful fabrics this year having started so late in the year to get our fabrics together.

Our stand will be C5 and we are now running around getting our thoughts together about how the stand should look and what we'll take with us. This will be our very first exhibition so we know we'll have such a lot to learn.

More information about the show HERE at the Twisted Threads website.

Famous for 60 years 100% cotton Shweshwe fabric, made in South Africa by da Gama Textiles in the Eastern Cape where they also make beautiful cotton prints and specially manufactured cotton quilting fabrics, are now available from SA Fabrics based in the UK.