"It takes ages to finish a quilt you're not working on!"

Saturday, July 30, 2011

Craft & Quilt Fair Melbourne.

Last Thursday I attended the Craft & Quilt Fair with Cheryl - one of my stitching buddies. One could say 'same old stall holders, same old quilt show', but the same old stall holders always have lovely new stuff! And the Quilt display does feature quite a few of the quilts that were on show at the Quilt Convention earlier this year, but they are all so stunning, they are worth a second look. I took about 60 photos, and have posted most of them on my special "Quilt Shows" blog, so if you want to have a look, click on the link.
I was quite restrained in my spending for a change. I went with a small shopping list and found most of what I was after, but only bought one of those, and a couple of extras. I was looking for a new plastic ruler for cutting and squaring quilt blocks, but there were so many variations, I decided not to bother buying any of them, as they were all rather expensive. I'll stick to my mat and ordinary plastic ruler! But I did buy something I saw on somebody's blog - "batting seam tape", which enables you to stick all those small bits of batting together to make a usable size, instead of throwing them out.
My 'impulse buys' were this book on using paper napkins to decorate stuff - I bought the special napkin craft glue earlier this year, and this book provides heaps of ideas to put it to use.
And some fabrics. The coloured paw prints are a substitute for something I was looking for to use in a particular project, but I don't think it is going to work, so I'll find another use for it. The peacock feathers fabric came in two colour ranges, but it was $27 a metre, so I just bought half a metre of this one. The blue fabric with Asian writing on it was too beautiful to pass up, and the Aussie sunset fabric is for another specific project I want to do. The one fabric I was looking for, asking at every stall that sold fabric, was Raindrops. I need a fabric printed with raindrops for a cute wallhanging which has brightly coloured umbrellas against a background of rain. Nobody had ever seen or heard of it! But a few stalls did have fabric with sky and clouds, so I might have to settle for that.

6 comments:

Jane said...

I've not seen that tape before, what is it made from?

Joanne said...

Because I haven't been for a few years now, I found it nice to spot familiar faces behind the tables; but I also did see quite a few new stalls since my last visit.
Nice to see Monica Poole still going and the girls from Blue Willow.
That tape looks like a great idea- I'll keep that in mind for when I get back to quilting.

Joy V said...

Gina - if you butt your pieces of batting together - just touch and make sure the two edges are straight, and then sew a wide zig-zag you don't have to use a tape. Not sure how the tape will go qhen quilting over it. Sorry to sound a drag, but thought you might like to know this.

Linens and Royals said...

Very pretty fabrics, half a metre can be more than enough when fabrics are too expensive.

Annie said...

The tape looks interesting. Let us know how well it works. I imagine you may try the zig zag piecing too so you can give us a full review!

Julia said...

I looked at tha tape at our last show...now I wish I had bought it...let us know if you like it..another show coming up this month..thanks for reminding me about it Gina..