AQC 2013

     

I took Friday the 19th of April off work (which feels forever ago now), so that I could take my Gran to the Australasian Quilt Convention (AQC). I've been to AQC a few time before (find all posts here), and have also been to a few of the other shows that come to Melbourne, and I'm of the opinion that if you go to just one of these quilt shows in a year it should definitely be AQC, it has the largest selection of both quilts and stalls.

     

After arriving nice and early, we picked up our borrowed wheelchair from the Melbourne Museum and headed into the show. I have to say, the wheelchair was amazing! If I (accidentally) bumped into people with the wheelchair they apologised to me! And when we approached a stall or quilt people moved out of the way for us, it was great!

    

Our first stop once inside was at the scissorman stall, as I had told some friends I'd pick them up some cutting mats. Then, as it was still fairly quiet we took the opportunity to take a look around the stalls first to see if anything for sale caught our eye.

     

Then we were onto the 'meat' of the day; looking at the amazing and inspiring quilts (pictures throughout this post). As usual there were some absolutely stunning quilts at the show, showing incredible skill by the creators.

       

Although I don't know if it's just me, but it felt like there were a lot less traditional (as opposed to art) quilts this year in comparison to previous years. As amazing as the art quilts can be, I also like to get inspiration for quilts that I might one day want to make, which at this point isn't art quilts.

       

I didn't buy too much on the day other than the cutting mats, a quilt/embroidery pattern and some lovely trim:

However, I did come home with something incredibly special*...

My and my gran decided to sign up for one of the workshops at the show, entirely as an excuse to try out the super expensive Sashiko sewing machine.

So, a few hours later we left each with one of these delightful* wallhangings. The Sashiko machine was interesting; it only has a bobbin thread and hooks up the thread so that the front really does look like a hand stitch (there really is nothing between the stitches on the right side). However, the back is less visually appealing. It looks a lot like a normal sewing matchine stitch, but with dodgy tension.

I don't know how much use the machine would be (given how expensive it is), considering as how ugly the back is. It would look good on wall hangings, but for quilts for using it's not all that useful.

*insert sarcasm font here. The wall-hanging is SO not my style, but it was still fun to try out the machines.