Last Friday a carload of 5 crafty, quilty ladies from around here went across to Hamilton the Claudelands Events Centre to the National Craft and Quilt Fair. The youngest one drove her husband's big car and we did the usual stop in Cambridge to have a coffee so we could hit the ground running on arrival at the fair.
There were 3 exhibitions of quilts. NZ ones, Australian ones and Japanese ones.
The photos are of Best in Show of the NZ ones.( Quilts Aotearoa had 120 quilts) Each circle had swirled handpainting on the fabric with hand work embellishments. Old coins were tied to it. I don't think the photos do it justice.
Also on display were the Best of Australia Quilts- the best in each state during 2005.(many of you in Oz will have seen these works on display or in magazines.)
The Japanese quilts ( 50 ) which were not allowed to be photographed , were amazingly varied. It was the first time they had been shown outside Japan, so we were priviledged to see them. There were a few traditional hand dyed and woven cloth ; lots of dark blue. There were also every other type of quilt imaginable - some with influence from the US, others with modern and abstract features which I really liked. Even a Japanese version of Crazy Patch. I looked at the quilts twice during the day; first and last. ( still didn't take them all in)
In between of course was some retail therapy. I arrived with a list of 4 things and went home with 3 of them....so it kept me focused. Several other bloggers had recommended the book "Collaborative Quilting," by Freddy Moran and Gwen Marsden which I purchased after seeing it and have read half of it already. I found plastic hexagons ( had to get 2 size packs) to use on my I Spy Hexagons....I now have 15 different sizes, starting at 1" going up in 1/2 inch sizes. I'll never wear those out! I found more fat quarters of fabric for that quilt too....I tried to select colours I needed and ones that had several objects to fussy cut on the one fabric. The thing I couldn't find was more of my backing fabric ( cause I want to make it bigger )....but selected 2 other star on black background that I will intersperse ....it may even prove to be a good look.
The count is now over 100 finished hexagons and still going strong!
2 comments:
Sounds like you had a good day - what size are you aiming for with the hexagon quilt?
Crib size first and then maybe continuing up to single bed size if I have enough backing fabric. So somewhere between 30" by 45" and 63" by 78". (Is that about the measurements normally worked on?) I would try it on a bed to see how it looked before deciding it was finished.
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