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,

End of October tidy-up

I set myself a simple little goal for October's OMG in the hope that I would achieve it and also that it would kickstart some work on a neglected project.

All I wanted to do was add some pink to my Scrappy Sprouts blocks...pink being October's colour in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

I still managed to leave it to the very end of the month - but - yaay - I did it!! 

[In actual fact I cheated a little as the start of the top pink blocks were kindly donated by Sue of Mother Patchwork...although I did add the white/creams and add the bottom squares, etc :-)]

The scrappy sprout blocks always look a bit odd when they are at this
stage....

...but when they are joined up with a stem they look a bit more like scrappy sprouts! 

Scenic shot of the day. I thought the tree trunk would be big enough to fit the
blocks but not quite... it was too curvey!

We have everything in that photo above, the cows walking back to their paddock, the apple tree blossoming, sweet peas growing, the grapevine taking over PLUS the re-generating orchard paddock after Miss Piggy dug it all up. Spring has well and truely arrived!

Thank you Patty for hosting the One Monthly Goal party. Patty also has Bag It 2017 running at the moment - click *here* to find out all about it...there are some cool bags and tutorials featured.
[If I'm not too late, I'll be linking up to Angela's Rainbow Scrap Challenge too - thanks Angela :-)]

I've also managed some more work on my ' A Holly Cottage Christmas blocks' by Michelle Ridgeway (the SAL is *here*). October's block is this sweet bird delivering the Christmas post —

Here is this section all joined up —

While I was busy cutting squares, I re-made July's Stocking block; my original one wasn't in these fabrics. I love how this project is growing :-)

And now for the 'ahh how sweet' moment. Nothing better than having your two young granddaughters sitting at your kitchen counter to eat their breakfast (yes that's Marmite on their toast)(they're kiwi kids afterall)... this doesn't happen very often so it made my week ♥ They're back in Australia now..sadly they both caught yukky colds while they were here and the family didn't have the most restful holiday.

Aren't they adorable?

Our last cow calved yesterday and we have weaned the first 110 calves. Life is slowly starting to return to normal... My sewing room (The Palace) is calling out for a jolly good spring clean...maybe I'll fit that in one of these days. Festival of Quilts is on down in Auckland this weekend which will be fun and I guess that means the spring clean in The Palace will have to wait...shame...

'til next time,

Happy Stitches,

80 hearts for 80 years

There's been a bit of secret quilt sewing going on in my space lately....I've managed to share the odd glimpse in recent posts without giving too much away.
First of all I made 80 hearts —

80 different fabrics...!

Then I made an applique block —

A bit of tricky maths was needed to make it all fit  

And then I sewed it all together, quilted it, bound it.

Nigel helped hold the quilt down at binding time —

It aint a quilt till it's been loved by a cat :-)

Then I packed it in the car and off we went down to Tauranga for Mum's 80th birthday celebration - what a fun weekend!
We hired a room in the Tauranga Historic Village .... a great setting!
Family and friends gathered. There was plenty to eat —

And lots of dancing. We had an awesome country-pop band and the dance floor was busy all night —

Back to the quilt - here it is in its finished state. I gave it to Mum on the night —

And invited everyone to sign it —

Spot my gorgeous wee grand-daughters ♥

Lots of lovely messages —

Lovely to spend my time with my family —

A bit of goofing - as well as lots of plaid wearing, hats and boots featured strongly. We three below had just the right boots!

The next day I realised I didn't yet have a photo of the quilt, so out came the camera again —

hehe posed shot!

Me and my Mum!
Don't you like how we dressed to match the quilt!

We had such a great weekend....it was a long weekend here in NZ so everyone was in relaxed mode....plus having overseas family here made it all the more special.
I'll share a few more quilt details in my next post but for now,

happy stitches