15 minutes of play, play, play

We went to Sydney on Thursday, and on Friday I awoke to this sunrise.



And I knew it was going to be a good day.

We had breakfast, and I hopped in a cab to Drummoyne. And after several emails between us, I finally got to meet Victoria Findlay Wolfe, who was going to teach us about her 15 minutes of play philosophy as it applies to patchworking.



Victoria started by telling us about the quilts that she'd brought along with her (all the way from New York City!). It was the perfect show and tell. Anyone who knows me well knows that I can't handle a quilt meeting without a show and tell. And here we had it in spades (and buckets).






Victoria took us through a demo of making some "Made-Fabric", which is essentially using your scraps to build and build and build a piece of fabric that you can then cut into a shape or block ... and then you can use the remnants to build your next block. Some people call it crumb quilts, others crazy quilting.



All I knew was that I liked it!



I decided early in the piece that I might like to try a large triangle quilt - like a thousand pyramids arrangment, but perhaps with the made-fabric blocks upside down.



I'd brought along some lengths that I thought might be good for the background, and decided to add some print fabric that I got from an online store a few weeks ago which has an mahoosive print - too big to cut up and made into something small.



Kind of like this. What would you call this? Thousand valleys? Thousand buntings?

Thousand minutes of FUN????

All around me fellow quilters were buzzing along on their sewing machines, cutting strips of fabric and squaring up. Inspiration was everywhere.



This is what my new best friend Chris (who was sitting opposite me) came up with.Hexagons! I love!

And here is the work of some absolute geniuses that were there on the day. I'm so, so sorry I can't remember people's names!







Before the workshop, Victoria had asked that we bring our scraps along. We'd pile them into the middle of the table and just pull out other people's scraps, she said. It was brilliant.  And messy.



I learned a lot during this workshop. One is that although pushed to pick a colour I don't like working with (purple) I still really don't like it (purple). In fact on looking at my blocks, I noticed there is too much (purple) in there and it makes me squeamish. So I'm going back to reds and oranges and yellows and greens.

In fact that night, after the beers I'd had with dinner with my bestie had worn off, I took out my little Elna Lotus, plonked her on the hotel desk, and made two more blocks. The windows to our room were wide open to catch the breeze. I may have woken a few hundred Elizabeth bay residents with the roar of old Elna here, but hey - it was Friday night. They should have been out partying.



See that? More red, less purple.  Much better.



I'm so in love with this way of treating scraps. I think I might be onto a winner here.



So thanks Victoria for sharing so much of yourself, and for travelling so far. I'm glad I met you, and I'm glad I got you onto that Architextures fabric (I am such an enabler).

And thanks to Material Obsession in Drummoyne, especially  Kathy Doughty who thought to bring Victoria out to Australia. It was such a well run day, and the food was fantastic, as were Megan and Cath who looked after us so well. I doubt this will be my last MO workshop - they really are too fantastic to miss.



Gratuitous final sunrise shot from the next morning. Sydney - why do you always look this good this early? Why no bed hair?