The Quilt Museum, York

Spent the morning at the Quilt Museum here in York, arranging a visit for our Lakes & York tour next May.  This is a fabulous space, not to mention the beautiful quilts.  Set in a stylish, well-planted garden glowing with autumn colour, St Anthony's Hall is a medieval guildhall in the centre of York dating back to 1446.  In its long and colourful history, it has been a guildhall, a workhouse, a munitions magazine, a prison, a Blue Coat School, the Borthwick Institute (historical archive) and now a museum.  

Managed by The Quilters' Guild of the British Isles, its aim is to promote the crafts of patchwork, appliqué and quilting through changing exhibitions of historic and contemporary textiles. The current exhibitions, Structured (modern) and Quilting from the British Isles (traditional) were just amazing, especially so set beneath the dramatic black and white vaulted interior of the hall.  My favourites were the heritage pieces - just to die for!

From Structured at York Quilt Museum

SO much inspiration in colour, textures, pattern and form.  We were so excited by it all that we decided I would do my tour workshop at the museum.  The idea is to do a modular knitting class, then we could use all these wonderful quilts as a springboard to new knit designs.  The workshop room is well-lit and bright and fitted with digital projector, something that is pretty hard to find in medieval buildings. 

So, all in all,  a very productive morning, finished off with an excellent Americano in the Italian deli which is also on site.  Heaven!