It’s been a while, but I have been otherwise occupied applying for jobs (unsuccessfully), nursing my Mum back to health (successfully), and helping run the local quilt club’s Celebration of Quilts (very successfully!).
Mum had a foot operation, which meant a few weeks of inactivity. To say she was a difficult patient is an understatement. As a normally active gardener, taking care of her garden, my sisters, and her neighbours either side, she did not take to sitting down very well. There were frequent cries of “I’m bored” from her recliner, much like those of a child by week 2 of the school holidays. Luckily for us both, she is back on her feet now. Another operation may be in the pipeline, but next time I will take more DVD’s for her, and my sewing machine for me.
The Rose City Quilters Celebration of Quilts was held over the weekend, and was the first time I had been involved, or shown a finished quilt. Since we thought numbers were going to be down this year, I entered both of my versions of Jen Kingwell’s Gypsy Wife Quilt.
The “Summer version” was finished last year, while the darker “Autumn version” was finally bound and finished this quarter, as one of my third quarter goals.
I was hoping to finish MY Small World in time, but embroidering the quilt is proving very slow. I have decided to aim for 2018 instead. Surely I can be finished by then!
I’m glad to say that I won a prize with the “Summer” Gypsy Wife Quilt, the Category for Best Hand Quilting.
I also entered into the Club Challenge, “Through the Looking Glass”, with a small quilt addressing the recent water quality scares in the Hawkes Bay. This little quilt won a second place, but it was the only quilt in its class, so it sort of had to win something. I enjoyed making it, since it was my first art quilt. I have only pieced quilts up til now, whereas this one had embroidery (E. coli) and minimal quilting (agar plates), and a facing on the back made from the remnants of the tea towel.
Most entries kept to the Alice in Wonderland theme, but a few others also chose to interpret the theme in another way.
It was a pretty exhausting weekend, with set-up alone taking seven hours. I arrived early each day, and stayed until after closing time, along with the other organisers. I have slept extremely well the last few nights! The exhibition was held at the Huia Centre at PNGHS, and was a great venue. My job was to be the Merchant’s Rep, to hang out here….
…while trying not to get too tempted by all the fabric, thread and general quilty goodness on sale.
Some of my favourite North Island Quilt Shops were in attendance, but I held strong, and only gave in to some French General fabric and Aurifil thread….plus a bit of Allison Glass…and Lizzy House.
Okay, so I was only partly restrained! I do try to write a very short mental list of things to look for, but I can only withstand temptation for so long. As the rep, I had to keep visiting the stalls, which meant the temptation kept mounting.
We also had a de-stash table, where Club members could sell off bits of their stash they no longer wanted. There were some”vintage” fabrics from the 80’s, but a large part of the fabric found a new home.
The take-down went much faster than set-up, as we had more volunteers. Afterwards I staggered home, I badly needed to get off my feet for a while.
Today I re-acquainted myself with my sewing machine and sewed two more blocks for my 365 Challenge quilt. I am so far behind I have resigned myself to this being a two year project, but that’s okay.
In closing, while she didn’t win a prize, Daughter #2 entered five of her little art quilts in the exhibition, including the Scary Cheshire Cat, and the X-shaped piece next to it. They were all experiments in new techniques, playing with paint and thread. She received a lot of encouragement from more experienced art quilters at the show.
I hope you have a great week. I will stop eating Ferroro Roche chocolates (congratulations present from my Mum), and get on with the day.
quilts across the aisle 
That’s quite a busy time you’ve had! Congratulations on your mom’s recovery and your show.
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Nice to see you back….there’s always a good reason – or several for quiet spells. I hope your group show was successful..I drove to a quilt show recently, and felt that either we are all slowing our productivity down – or maybe I have seen too many shows. I was more excited to spend time with my favourite merchant.
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Your favourite merchant being? I quite like catching up with the folk from Stitchbird, and Delbrooke.
Our show had about 170 quilts, but 90 of them were large quilts. So the numbers were down, but we struggled to find space to hang them all. It was interesting, since many of our members are retired, and insist they are struggling with large quilts now. I think we are finding an increasing reliance on our commercial quilters to finish their projects. Which is great for their small businesses, which might struggle with just selling fabric and notions in these days of Massdrop and online purchasing.
I am off to Town and Country in Levin this weekend, so many shows on at the moment!
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Couldn’t attend your club’s exhibition last week as we were still in transit from our holiday in Oz. Many congratulations on your wins, what a thrill.
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Thanks, it was a bit of a thrill. Hopefully you were somewhere dry in Oz, their weather has been even worse than ours in the past few weeks.
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