Craft, Quilt and Stitch Show

Day 2 of our Perth sojourn and Carly headed off to the state library to do some uni work online and finish an assignment.

I jumped on a train to the craft quilt and stitch show at the showgrounds. As I got off the train I started chatting to a lovely lady who was there for her second day, so she showed me the way. The first person I saw as I came into the fair was the ‘infamous’ Maggie Grey. It was so exciting to meet her and Clive in the ‘flesh’ after chatting online and admiring her textile prowess for so long. After meeting her I can say she is the one of the most open, friendly and welcoming people I have ever met. It was quite amusing that she continued to call me ‘aussie’ over the next few days.

(This photo was actually taken at the workshop on the Tuesday)

Maggie gave a wonderfully professional talk about her textile work (despite the technical difficulties) to packed houses, and demonstrated at the Thread studio stall, surrounded by her beautifully crafted creations.

The first and most obvious port of call at the fair was the emporium of “The Thread Studio“; Dale and Ian’s stall was massive!!! Of course that meant all the more goodies to tempt you with and of course I managed to find some (well quite a few) items that were absolutely necessary. It makes it so much easier to pick out the colours in the flesh. 

After Carly had flown home I amused myself making a wrapped cord (a la Effie Mitrofanis) with one of the Thread Studio’s beautifully dyed stranded cottons.

Read on for “The Workshop!” 

Stash busting -almost

I have begun the stitch along for Stitchin Fingers’ hand stitching group and also incorporated a little stash busting. I have a large collection of fleecy offcuts from making trackies and pJs for my four children. I have been wanting to utilize them as the base for textile-ish experiments, but had a sudden brainwave while lying down having a back operation from 8 year old daughter (we were playing doctors) to use some bits for the stitch along which began on July 1st. This will become the centre ‘A’ square for a blanket which I’m sure said daughter will love, as I plan to use quirky colours and shapes.

These are the ‘a’ stitches, algerian eye stitch and arrow stitch. I began drawing the squares for the algerian eyes and then decided to go for the free style approach. Claudia is busy working on her ATC’s and postcards for gifts (to family) and swaps and I’m hoping she’ll be able to incorporate these stitches also as I work through the list.

At our last textile group get-together we spent an hour or two chatting while winding up some bead in various materials. I used painted tyvek and various papers, some not so successfully. The thinner papers probably need to stay adhered to a straw (they are the mangled ones on the right!)

One of our members was very lateral thinking and made beads from all sorts of things, including bark from the paperbark tree. They were extremely effective. I also added to my stash as Pam brought along some vintage fabrics and embroidered collars to share, and Pauline gave us a goody bag of bits and pieces (she had Claudia in mind with some flower sequins).

The last photo is some more stash ‘adding’ kind of! I’m getting ready for the Embroiderer’s Guild of Victoria bi-annual conference starting this weekend. I’ll be having some fun at Kirry Toose’s Victorian Capelet workshop. Although I enjoy hand stitching and find it very therapeutic I also love machine work so it’ll be a great two days of playing on the machine. I chose my colours from some cushions in a Vogue Living magazine, teal dupion silk as the base colour and the aubergine for the lining. I anticipate we will be doing quite a bit of layering and embellishment, so I’ll be taking lots of beads, threads and fabric scraps. (quick visit to the bead shop in the morning methinks!).

Cheers