Catching up on events


Hello … me again. I’ve put down my work for today and decided I might try and catch up on a few details of the past two weeks.

You’ve seen the framing and the quilt blocks but how about some pictures of stash enhancement and some amazing inspirational quilts. Two weeks ago Sharon and I decided to indulge our latest hobby and attend a day at the Australasian Quilt Convention. While we didn’t have time to organise to attend any of the two day classes or even the one day ones we did intend to sit in on some of the seminars (note I say intend).

We got in at a reasonable time somewhere between 10 and 10:30. My intention had been largely to get a couple of tools I felt would be useful for my emerging plans for new quilts (after the class one is finished of course). I was also on the look out for sashing inspiration or backing for the class quilt. While I love looking at all the fabrics at the shows the ones I like are not usually available in lengths at the shows so I find myself with a large number of fat quarters that I am still wondering if I will ever use.

Well you know what they say about intentions. I did get the tools I was after, a 12.5″ square ruler as well as some strip rulers in various widths but then there was also a bunch of templates, diamonds, hexagons etc. Within the first half hour I had spent what I had intended to be my entire budget for the show lol. I even went back later in the day and picked up a curved nine-patch template thanks to the quilt displays.
Templates, patterns and more

Against all my best intentions I also found myself picking up quite a bit of fabric, a lot of the pieces were half metre or 60cm cuts which are nice but of course a few fat quarters jumped in as well… who can resist skeletal dinosaurs?! no me that for sure.

Abstracts and  greys
Halves and Quarters
Quilt Show Loot FQ's

After the first round of stalls we ran in to one of the ladies I work with (technically one of my bosses I guess she is the head of the senior science faculty). We sat down and shared what we had bought and had a quick chat over coffee before heading our separate ways for more stash enhancement. I had also taken a long my blocks from the class for a quick bit of show and tell. It is interesting seeing people’s reactions to my colour choices, they certainly couldn’t be considered conventional or conservative I guess but I didn’t think they were that wild or out there especially on the sampler… Oh well I guess people will be even more weirded out later when I start pulling out more of my Halloween / skeleton / goth style fabrics. Each to their own and lets face it I am used to being a little left of centre 😛

A good portion of the day was spent looking at the display quilts there was an amazing display of 12×12 art pieces as well as a section devoted to Quilts brought over from Korea. Sharon and I took lots of photos for inspiration, I was particularly interested in seeing the different quilting patterns to try and get some ideas for what to do with my sampler once the top is fully pieced. I am thinking of hand quilting using different motifs but at this stage I have no idea which and how to go about planning which ones would best suit the blocks. Or perhaps I will just go an all over design this time with just something different on the borders and sashing… only time will tell what the final decision will be. rather than putting the images all here I have uploaded a selection of them to flickr. You can see them in full if you click through on the mosaic. There really were some amazing pieces there, well beyond where I ever hope to be but inspiring all the same.

 

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Next Year I think we might try and sign up for a couple of the classes. There were some great looking beginners courses and two day courses dedicated to particular techniques and patterns that looked like they would be really helpful.

3 Comments

  1. Comment by Nic on April 29, 2013 7:03 am

    Love all the stash. Isn’t this new hobby fun. Plus it gives you an excuse to buy cool fabric. Like those dinos. Good to see your buying pattern at shows hasn’t changed – mine haven’t either :). Looks like we don’t need each other to be bad.

    Well, others may be weirded out by your fabric pairings, but I love them. I’m looking forward to seeing what quilt number two will be.

    I love that you’re thinking of hand quilting. Jinny Beyer’s Quiltmaking by Hand has some chapters on quilting that you might find useful. At the rate you’re going, you’ll finish your quilting before I start mine on moonglow. One big tip I’ll give you on hand quilting is that the batting choice is very important. There are many available that you really only want to use for machine quilting as they will not be fun to try and push a needle through. This info I largely found by reading lots of blog pss on hand quilting. There are a couple of cottons that seem to be good. Otherwise wool or silk battings are apparently to a needle like butter is to a hot knife.

    And thanks for the quilt pics. I’ve seen quilts that others have shared from the show but none of the ones you’ve shown here. So much inspiration, so little time…

  2. Comment by Sharon on April 29, 2013 4:50 pm

    I still fail to see what the problem is with your colour and fabric choices!!! Maybe it’s everyone else who has a colour issue…..and going by some of the colour choices in our quilting class…you just have to wonder 😛 We had a great day (bar me loosing my stupid myki) and yes, there were plenty of quilts that inspired us….it’s just a shame we don’t have the confidence in ourselves to try something different but I think we have made a great start and we’ll only get better from here on 🙂

  3. Comment by nancyp73 on June 28, 2013 10:37 am

    Great fabric choices, not weird at all. I love the dinosaurs. Looking forward to seeing what you end up making with them. I didn’t know there was such a thing as an Australasian Quilting Convention. I just googled them, and it looks like they had some gorgeous quilts on display. I so wish I could sew like that!

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