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.

AQC Purchases

This post is a little belated since life has somewhat been in the way of my blogging, but I still wanted to post about it. Despite how tempting it is to spend heaps of cash when you go to a quilt show, it's also a bit overwhelming with how much stuff is there! My purchases this year were very modest and all from one stall - Scissorman.

Last year at the show I bought a medium sized pair of scissors from Scissorman. Long story short, there was a manufacturing problem with my scissors and they had a blunt patch. Inconveniently Scissorman are located in a different state to me so I was worried about being able to exchange them, but one phonecall to Scissorman and I was reassured - they offered to post me a replacement pair. In the end they put me in contact with the distributor as they were located very close to me and I got a brand new pair.

These scissors quickly became my absolute favourite scissors and I was using them for everything, even things they weren't really suited for as they were a bit too small. I was using them instead of my shears because my shears have not quite been the same since I made my Hikaru jacket, and have some blunt patches on them from people cutting into pins that have never quite sharpened out.

So I decided to buy some new scissors! After my sucess with my scissors last year I decided to stick with the same brand, Kai, and also due to the fantastic service I recieved, I decided to stick with Scissorman. I bought these beauties:

A little extravagant but they're so smooth and just the right size for my hand. Needless to say, these will be treated VERY well.

(They're also veeeeeeery sharp! As my hand can atest to, I snipped through some skin by mistake on the weekend! ouch!)

I also bought a new cutting mat - A1 sized for only $30!!! and some more rotary cutter blades and a 12.5" square ruler.

I'm very happy with my little haul, and have already started making very good use of it.

AQC 2012

This past weekend I spent a few enjoyable hours at this years AQC (Australasian Quilt Convention). As I did last year, I thought I'd share some pictures of my favourite quilts on display:

(click on the photos to see them larger, apologies for the quality, photos were all taken on my iphone)

This design reminds me of a kalidescope of some kind:

This brightly coloured one had some gorgeous coloured quilting that really added to the quilt:

This was a disapearing 9 patch with some gorgeous japanese fabrics, but I particularly liked the borders:

There were quite a few quilts that I was drawn to made of these pieced 1/4 circles and circles. Does anybody know if these designs have a name?

This one was completely hand sewn - piecing and quilting. The quilting in the borders added an amazing texture, and the blocks looked great:

This quilt, that was essentially made of HSTs was lovely:

How cool is this guy (I actually saw a pattern for this on sale, but I don't remember which stall):

This quilt was made of silk so had a lovely sheen that really set off the beautiful quilting:

The background "Tiles" on this mini quilt create such a unique effect:

At first I thought the curved lines around the inside of the circle were ricrac, but on closer inspection I saw that it was embroidery floss twisted through a running stitch. Beautiful effect:

Amazing use of black and white:

How cute are these little guys:

And I saved my favourite for last:

This one was a black wholecloth quilt that had then been painted with metallic paints and then quilted. The skill was just awe-inspiring, the combination of painting and stitching was so precice that It took me a while to realise that it was infact a wholecloth quilt! Amazing, really amazing.