Festival of Quilts and OMG

(If you're here for OMG, scroll to the bottom!)
This last weekend the Auckland Quilt Guild held their Festival of Quilts exhibition. As one of NZ's larger (largest?) guilds in our largest city, this event always creates a lot of interest.
I was excited, as always, to be there.
Before I could enjoy the show, there was a bit of work to do. The Country Yard, my favourite quilt shop, (and the one that I work at hehe) was a merchant there so the last little while has been spent frantically making new samples, putting together kits, patterns and so on.
This is how our stand looked after set-up on Thursday afternoon.

The Auckland Netball Centre is a great venue; it's spacious and airy and never gets too crowded and hassled. Here is the view from The Country Yard's stand —

And the second level is a good spot for a photo too.

Friday at the show was my play-day and Saturday my work-day. I spent a good little while on Friday with Julie and Linda. Together we took in the quilts. There were over 200 there and I enjoyed their company. What I love about the quilt world is even though we may all have different tastes in fabric, colour or design, we can still appreciate it all...maybe that's just a sign of a well addicted quilt person but it thrills me just the same.

There were plenty of beautiful and interesting quilts. naturally I haven't photographed them all and there are plenty of note and interest that I've missed but here is a sprinkling of what we saw.

BEST OF SHOW - Whitewash by Annie White. Own design.

Amateur Best of Show -
Patchwork of the Crosses by Diane Campbell

Dandelion Wishes by Margaret Reid.
A 'Passionately Sewn' pattern.

Vron Square by Susan Wade.
Variations of Rose of Sharon blocks.

Graceful Beginnings by Tracey Roberts. Her own design.

'My Around the Corner Quilt' by Rebecca Bishop.
A Wendy Williams design.

A Karen Styles design by Mary Hawke.

Sophie's Star by Samantha Scott.
Yes, worn jeans! Apparently the quilter went through about 9 needles!

Some quilts I just have snippets of —

Victoria, a crazy quilt by Anne Joule.

'Tribute to Linda' by Colleen Burr.
Using Sharon Schamber's cording technique.

Quilting on the same quilt

Another great edging, this time on Julie Brittain's Ruby Blue.
(Her own design.)

There were several Special Exhibitions there too.

The Hoffman 2017 Challenge —

The challenge fabric is on the left.

Some of these were amazing. Sadly I only photographed one, the winning entry.

By the light of the moon by Hayley Scott.

The Aotearoa Quilters 2017 Challenge - Orange —

A very striking wall!

I think this one was part of the Symposium travelling Exhibition. 

'A Granny' by Clare Smith.
Very clever use of the doilies, even her face was a doily.

The Aotearoa Quilters Challenge - Fragile —

Shop Local by Helen Beaven

There are more quilts shown on Julie's blog, Wendy's blog, Sue's blog. Sue also won a ribbon  - click *here* to see her gorgeous quilt.

Before I sign off I'm going to quickly add my One Monthly Goal for November; time is running out for me to link up with Patty's Elm St Quilts. I don't think I'll get a chance to blog again before the linky expires!
For November I really want to pull out my Friday's Village quilt top and get some more quilting done on it.
Here it was at the end of July —

In October it had this quilting on it but nothing has happened since.

I was nearlyhalfway there with the quilting.

So having put this in print, I now need to make this happen! I've got till the end of the month, surely I can do it!
And, as a carry on from my previous post, I have done a bit of tidying of The Palace. I did some pottering yesterday and got some things put away and tidied.Yaay!

Happy stitches,