Sydney Quilt Show - part 1

After ten or so years of attending the annual Sydney Quilt Show, I decided last year (while I was at the awards ceremony, actually) that I would finally join the The Quilters' Guild of New South Wales and enter their show in 2014.

So I joined, and I entered.  Two items on the bucket list ticked!

I entered my favourite quilt in the world - a hand appliqued, heavily quilted piece that I designed myself. It's called "Across the Universe". I shared it a bit here, and a tutorial for how to make the perfect circles here. It was a quilt borne out necessity - a very stressful period at work required me to force myself out of the office and into the park for an hour each day. For three weeks of lunches I stitched circles onto fabric patches. Then I sewed them together. Even though the quilt was made during a pretty rotten time, I have nothing but good feelings about this quilt. It hangs in my entry at home, and we look at it and walk past it every day.

Imagine my surprise when someone from the committee called me last Saturday night to tell me I'd won a prize? She wouldn't tell me what, though. Unfortunately I couldn't get to the awards ceremony this year, and had already planned to go on the weekend.

So I was super surprised to find out I had won this.



I still can't believe it. Entering this show was on my BUCKET LIST! Winning a category wasn't.



I can't tell you how happy, and humbled, and amazed, and bloody chuffed I am.



The quilt show was AMAZING. It was at a different venue this year, and I don't know whether it was the extra natural light, or the extra colour in the quilts, but everything looked so beautiful. There were certainly some show stoppers there, and it was fun to examine them further while I was white glove duty on Saturday. I shall do a second post soon with the quilts that I got permission to publish photos of (from the makers themselves).

I picked up my prize (so generous. And thank heavens I brought Mavis, my nonna trolley with me). Came in handy when taking two ferries back to our apartment. I'll show you my amazing prize in the next post.



It was a wonderful day. My husband came to the show for a few hours and to take some photos and people kept stopping us to ask about the quilt, and to say such wonderful things about it. I was complimented by some pretty well-known quilters on how straight it hung! (and hardly a 1/4 inch seam in there! Told you I was lucky). A couple of other quilters told me they would want to take it home. I finally started to believe I had made something special - to others and not just to me. And for the first time in a long time, no one questioned why on earth I would hand applique it, and then matchstick quilt it (instead, everyone I spoke to said they totally got it. THANK YOU SYDNEY!)



I think I smiled all the way back to Double Bay. Also - Sydney you're beautiful. Thanks for giving me a wonderful weekend.