For this year’s Festival of Quilts in Birmingham, UK, Jenni Smith and Kay Walsh proposed putting a quilt frame front and centre at the Aurifil Stand & Lounge. It promised to be something entirely new and ended up being an absolute game changer, fostering new connections, encouraging creative freedom, and making space for artists to collaborate and converse in the most beautiful way. Here, Jenni shares the story of Fun Around the Frame— and how a simple wooden frame became the beating heart of our stand.
Placing a quilt frame centre stage in the Aurifil booth this year was a little nerve-wracking if I’m honest. Whilst as a team we could imagine hosting our guest speakers on the seats around it and the people gathering to meet them, I was unsure if visitors at such a large and eventful show would take the time to slow down and sit.
Perhaps it was the simple beauty of the wooden frame itself, or the bright pieced patchwork Kay and I pieced with Sally Kelly’s prints to stitch into, but our first visitor was contentedly stitching a version of Halley’s Comet before 10am of the show’s opening day. As the design came to life in gorgeous orange 8wt thread those sat close by learned of a romance born during the comet’s last perihelion in 1986 which is still going strong and this sense of sharing and joy simply never stopped.
With no pressure on Aurifil’s part to complete a specific design people leaned into whatever they felt like stitching and sharing – a sheep, a vine, flowers, a boat, some swearing (guess who!), a rosebud and many running lines and curves in a host of colours from Anna Maria’s Indelible Collection.
As quilters we sometimes talk about the historic notion of Sewing Bee’s with sweet nostalgia and yet what we soon realised is that all you need is a frame surrounded by chairs for the magic to happen. Sewists from a host of countries sat and made conversation. Quilters who felt confident to do the rocking stitch gave both time and patience to those who had never tried it before, and we lost count of the number of people who skipped away with a new skill or the inclination to keep practising. Serendipity also came into play on so many occasions but one that springs to mind was the meeting of veteran US hand quilter Joe Cunningham with the winner of the Heritage Craft’s Patron’s Award Deb McGuire and heritage crafts bursary student Samantha Jones. Here were 3 people so incredibly passionate about the preservation of the craft of quilting in a frame, able to sit and share knowledge and stitch in each other’s company in the middle of the happy chaos of festival of Quilts. There were a few tears in my eyes as I soaked all of this up!
Often slightly frustrated friends and family members came by to convince those sitting at the frame to move on, or return to their shopping and quilt browsing, but as one person moved along their space was soon taken up by another curious observer. The frame never sat unattended and always radiated a warm and happy feeling.
Back in the studio today I loaded the quilt off the frame and photographed the work people contributed – and what struck me straight away is that everyone single stitch was unique and the most common stitched motif was a heart, which seems to perfectly sum up the whole experience. The title we gave to this project ahead of Festival of Quilts was Fun around the Frame but in truth it became so much more that, and I hope it is something we can share with many more people in the future.
Huge thanks to Jenni & Kay for the vision and creativity that they bring to the Aurifil stand at FOQ year after year. The stitch table may have felt like the heart of the stand this year, but we think maybe it’s Jenni & Kay who are the true heart. Until next year!
