Craft & Quilt Fair x 2

I must confess, I actually started writing this blog post last week right after the fair, but didn't manage to finish it and hit 'publish' until now! I hope you enjoy this somewhat belated account of the Craft & Quilt Fair!

Last weekend I made it to the Craft and Quilt Fair not once, but twice! What a lucky girl I am. On Saturday I spent the entire day admiring the beautiful quilts, making one or two small purchases (!) and being inspired by all the talented crafty peeps at the show. I spent the day alone, but before you start to feel sorry for me you must remember that I am the mother of 3 very busy little people and time alone is an extremely rare commodity in my life. So I absolutely relished the thought of spending hours and hours, by myself, wandering through the craft fair. (I did try to make Jodie's meet, just to say hi, not realising it had been cancelled, hope you're feeling better soon Jodie).

And it certainly was a great day. I stopped to admire the beautiful free motion quilting of a very talented lady who turned out to be Kate of Kate's Sewing Centre, who invited me to sit down with her and proceeded to give me a half hour tutorial in the art of FMQ. Kate was so lovely, not to mention generous with her time and sharing her knowledge, I learned so much, thank you Kate!

I was particularly taken with this beautiful whole cloth quilt "Hearts of Love" by Wendy Arnold. I am very new to quilting, and to be honest, it had never occured to me not to have a colourful pieced quilt top. This has opened up a whole new world of ideas for me. Although this quilt is actually pieced from three pieces of white cloth, it was still referred to as a 'whole cloth quilt' by the 'quilt angel' who was chatting to me about it. It is huge, measuring 216cm x 260cm and is machine quilted.
Andi has lots more photos of the amazing quilts that were on display, including another of my favourites, Crop Circles.

On Sunday, I made it back to the Fair with the Junior Crafter and her Crafty Sidekick in tow. We met up with Karen and Liesl (with Argy and Bargy in tow) and had a wonderful afternoon wandering around the fair.  Argy and Bargy were particularly well behaved and ever so cute, despite dire forecasts to the contrary!

The Junior Crafter was very interested in purchasing some 'horse fabric', so Karen kindly took her to a stall over in the next aisle to find some. The Junior Crafter carefully perused the fabric and informed Karen that although it was lovely, she didn't think she would buy it as it wasn't great value for money. She had already purchased a fat quarter for half the price this merchant was asking for a 30cm cut, she knowingly informed Karen. (She's 8 years old, and was ever so careful with her $20 spending money!)

The girls and Argy and Bargy had a wonderful time felting at the Sewing Art Studio. The kids were able to use the Pfaff Embellisher machine to make some amazing pieces of fabric art. I love this machine, it uses no thread at all but instead has 5 needles which punch through the layers of fabric, creating a felted effect.

The Junior Crafter using the embellisher (and wearing the pinny I made her)

Bargy discovering his artistic side on the embellishing machine

I also had fun playing with fibres and free motion stitching in the Sewing Art Studio:

I'm not yet sure what I'm going to do with it, but I really like it. I think it would be nice inset into a panel on a bag, or maybe just hung on the wall in my sewing room?

Of course, the afternoon was somewhat hampered by my painful foot, but I soldiered on and eventually made it home where The Bloke Who Lives At My Place administered ice, bandages, rest and a healthy dose of medicinal chocolate. Just what the doctor ordered.

Update: xrays showed no fracture and the foot's only bothering me slightly now, thanks for all the concern lovely readers.

Now that's dedication...

A funny thing happened on my way to the Craft Fair.

Okay, actually it wasn't so funny, it was quite painful.

You see, I was on my way yesterday from Father Bob's celebration to the Craft and Quilt Fair when I had a little stumble on an uneven footpath and rolled my foot. It was immediately clear to me that the situation was dire, and an ambulance was needed to rush me to hospital for emergency orthopedic surgery, when suddenly, I remembered...two dear, sweet, innocent little 8 year old Crafters were looking at me with huge disappointed puppy-dog eyes. They had waited their entire crafty little lives for this one day at the Craft Fair. Not to mention some other crafty peeps who were awaiting my arrival at the show! Who was I to let them down? So I pulled myself together, swallowed my pain and soldiered on, all the way to Jeff's Shed.

Okay, so that's not exactly how it happened. But...I did roll my foot very painfully, gave it a few minutes to see if there was any damage and when it appeared all was fine I continued on to the Craft Fair, with the Junior Crafter and her Sidekick in tow.

However, after a few hours of wandering the Fair, it became painfully apparent that I had actually done some damage to my foot, and by the time I got home last night I could barely walk. I popped in to see my doctor this afternoon and he sent me off for x-rays, concerned about a possible fracture.

I'm still awaiting the results, but if I find that I spent yesterday afternoon walking every aisle at the Craft and Quilt Fair with a broken foot, then surely I must qualify for some kind of Dedicated Crafter Award?

More about what we got up to at the show (and pictures of loot) to follow soon, I promise.

I'm marking my calendar

Look what's just around the corner!

See you there!