Australasian Quilt Convention in Melbourne April 2013

(Get a cuppa first, there are HEAPS of photos!)

Who would have thought back in ??November?? when I first heard about the challenge that I would end up going to Melbourne? I have sort of recovered by now, my theory is that the human body is not really made for flying around so it usually takes me a while to get over the exhaustion (flying down to Auckland on Monday morning, back on Tuesday night - sigh...).

After two days work in Auckland I flew to Melbourne on Friday night two weeks ago and was picked up by Kiwi friends who I stayed with for the weekend. Melbourne is currently 2h behind NZ time, so jetlag did not happen really. On Saturday morning my friend Sandy and her Kiwi friend Angela took me into the city by train. I took a considerable amount of photographs but I seem to have the special skill to take very bad pictures even with my little camera that does everything for me! I will put in a selection and link to some on the AQC website which are of a much better quality.

Melbourne itself was interesting, 4 Mio. people - this is almost all people in NZ in one city! The public transport is great, trains, trams, buses etc. The buildings are an interesting mixture out of historic and modern - reminds me a lot of the big cities in Europe. The only other state in AUS I have ever visited was Queensland, and there I spent next to no time in cities, maybe all AUS cities are like that? The weather unfortunately had turned from high temperatures to a cold biting wind. People wore coats and scarves and long pants and socks - the kind of stuff this former German now Northland girl had long since donated to the Children's dressups lol.

tower, an old lead pipe & shot factory, and dome are now part of the Melbourne Central Station

I think this is the library

one of the university buildings

we weren't sure, but the girls thought it was the old jail

Post Office

Flinders Street Station

Royal Arcade - some of the arcades still have the original mosaic floors, very pretty - though too expensive for shopping for me!

I just had to take a picture of this for my boys at home!

Federation Square

Yarra River with high rises

Once we got to the Carlton Gardens, we had brunch at the cafe in the museum opposite for energy and in we ventured! Lots of stalls, more than I had ever seen before, and the prices even after considering the exchange rate AUS to NZ$ considerably cheaper than at home.

 

Royal Exhibition Building

can you see the wind driving the water to the left? we went around the right :-)

the actual entrance was around the corner

 Here are some of the quilts from the Best of Australia section, each and every single one of them were stunning:

 

The shading in the snow all achieved through using different shades of thread!

 

I can't remember which section this was under, but I like the quilting in the negative space!

 

This was probably my favourite Australian quilt: Not only did it look like what I think of "Australia", the detail was amazing: The dress looked like it was nuno felted, with parts of the silk bubbling out around the midsection of the dress, and then a row of feathers and of course the skirt itself coming out of the quilt (hard to describe, I hope you understand what I mean!). The gum tree leaves were also 3D!

  

Aptly named Milky Way (I seem to recall)

An incredibly poor photograph of the quilt that won the National Quilt Award: Golden Ivory by Rachelle Denneny

 And here some 'famous pieces':

The Colour Play Collection of the 12 by 12 Artists was stunning but right under windows where the sun shone in hence the sunstroke in the pics

Susan Brubaker Knapp

Judy Coates Perez - I went to her and told her how much I admire her work :-)

Gloria Loughman - I am signed up to her Craftsy course but yet to have a look at it :-)

The Free Challenge! The best pictures of the 27 entries you can find here with their artists' statements. I feel the quilts who were judged first and second thoroughly deserved it, and while the viewer's choice was not my first choice, I feel it was an honour to be selected as part of this exhibition:

Look at the work that has gone into this, the small pieces in the background! From memory the tree was appliqued, but here it now looks like it's painted. Add the felted leaves, the echo quilting, beads etc.

detail of the first prize winner - simply stunning!!! And all that quilting, even using metallic thread!

detail of the viewer's choice :-)

Little triangles fused down and fmq over the top - this was the background to the quilt with the horse, very effective (add to the to try list!). The quilt itself was less impressive in person than on the website, I felt the binding let it down.

detail from the cheeky quilt at the nudist beach. Can you see how the people really look like they are in the water?

This would have been my viewers choice - if I would have found the voting box!!!

And here is is - Frei - with Sandy, Angela and I! I have to admit I was not impressed by the creases on it, and I emailed the organisers to say that they were welcome to steam it but this does not seem to be their policy. Hmm, we're learning from this to use fabrics in a challenge quilt that are more crease resistant??

Almost done now, I leave you with a few shots of a different kind of art:

 Thanks for hanging in there with me through all these pictures!

Happy Sewing!