This year's Quiltmarket was a truly international show, with visitors and exhibitors from all over the world. This was our second time exhibiting at Quiltmarket, and we had fun setting up the stand ready for the opening day, our new Peter Rabbit licenced designs generated a lot of excitement as well as our new upcoming quilt collections, and the American's loved our new London theme fabric which will be launching in January 2017.
The hall was once again a mass of colour and inspiration, with exhibitors using new and innovative ways to display fabric ranges. The lifestyle booths were our favourite which helped people to see how a piece of fabric can be transformed into various items, and displayed in such a way that makes you want to recreate the look for yourself, quilts were displayed amongst cushions, dresses, and smaller craft items to set the scene.
It was very apparent that the show catered for both the traditional quilter, and the modern enthusiast. There was an obvious contrast between the classic Autumnal colours used in quilting and the fresh, bright colours used for modern quilts. This was echoed again in the quilt exhibition hall which showcased a large variety of quilts made by talented designers, some of them almost photographic, and the attention to detail was second to none.
The use of fabrics for both apparel and quilting continued from the last show and was still hugely relevant, children's wear was a popular way of displaying new designs in a different format.
It wasn't just printed cottons we were seeing either, but a wider range of fabrics that can be used in craft, interiors and fashion such as; cotton voile's, fleeces, furs, jersey, lightweight denim and canvas.
There wasn't any obvious colour trends this year, but bold and bright were definitely a repeated theme, with fabric designer Tula Pink really fitting this model. Pattern sizes have continued to grow in size, with quilters preferring to use an element of a pattern instead of the whole repeat.
The biggest theme we saw at the show were flamingo and cactus prints, which work really well for craft, nursery and childrens wear. Nautical designs were still popular, with more sketchy whale and sea creature prints and the odd mermaid making an appearance too!
