On a beautiful sunny and warm February day Rachel & I took a trip to Bletchley Park Quilt Show, run by Region 7 of the Quilters Guild
Bletchley Park - the home of the Enigma machine & the radio centre. Beautiful grounds & a stunning house
All marred by dreadful organisation, dont know who was to blame but standing in one queue for a half hour not moving & being slightly accosted by a woman with stickers and a plastic bag asking for 10 pounds, given a sticker then told to walk a good way again, only to stand in ANOTHER queue for at least 20 minutes to get into one of the most cramped places that I have ever been to. The lighting was poor and the display, well later in the day the quilts on display turned out to be excellent but at the beginning, elbows, tipping over stands and the poor traders, stuffed into corners, come on Quilters Guild for a total of 13 pounds this was just not on.
There were toilets inside but no where to eat, you had to exit to eat or drink (we stood in a queue and got to the counter to be told the hot drinks machine had broken, so after being at the venue for nearly 2 hours we had water to drink, unless we went to the other part of the cafe and queued again)
Then we queued to GET IN again
Awful
I have been to many many quilt shows home and abroad and have never had such a shambles, if it had been cold or raining we would have all been soaked, we even had to queue on grass, great for ladies with sticks and a lovely woman with a guide dog
I guess that the show would have been lovely with a tenth of the people, wandering around such a fabulous building setting it up must have been ace.
I am very cross with the Quilters Guild for charging so much for what was only 3 rooms with quilts in and traders (not huge rooms)
We didnt go around the rest of the site, which was included in the admission fee, aparantly we could have got a ticket to return again to the park during the year if we found whereever it was and queued again. So we decided to go to Threads & Patches patchwork shop in Fenny Stratford. There we found a toilet and a lovely tea room & plenty of fabric to fondle and coo over
A lovely day out and such a bonus in beautiful weather, with excellent company, so enjoyable after being so low for so long. I saw lots of people that I knew, chatted to some, waved to others. Nothing really stood out but the work was mostly based on the park & inspirations from it
Thank you Rachel for a lovely time x
Look at the wonderful ceilings below
as a fellow quilter, I was looking forward to this exhibition, but having spent a whole hour in queues to get in, could not agree more with Shelagh's comments. Whole thing a complete shambles. Poor husband only placated by a plastic cup of dubious coffee and a visit to the Enigma Bombe project. Could have put a bombe under the organisers!
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