Stitches & Craft Show, Sydney

Had a great day on Sunday at the Stitches & Craft Show at Darling Harbour. I have only been once before a few years ago. The show has many more stalls and the quilt display was totally awe-inspiring. Some extremely talented people.

Many different styles of patchwork and quilting. Incredible designs and colours, here's just a sample of the work on display. I love the design here...

..and the colours chosen for the quilt below.


I am still a great lover of the scrap quilts though, and the whole idea of 'making something out of nothing' as was the original concept to use up old scraps for bed covers. I'm sure many of us started a quilt like this one with cardboard templates, only to run out of patience and decide that patchwork wasn't for us!

How far they have evolved now though, to become works of art that you wouldn't dream of using as a simple bed cover.

Some very inspiring Australiana designs....

Some beautiful Japanese designs and fabrics.

This owl quilt was incredible.

A beautiful three-panel quilt which looks like a tribute to mothers everywhere..

I did spend alot of time looking at the 'fantasy' themed quilts.. can't imagine how many hours of intensive work they took to complete not to mention the creativity involved. Alot of them used different techniques and mediums which combined to produce a stunning work of art that was hard to tear your eyes away from.

There's no doubt at all, from the level of talent featured by HSC and TAFE students, that the boundaries will continue to be pushed in all area's of textile mediums to produce even more incredible designs.

Finally, I couldn't end the post without making mention of my absolute favourite quilt of the show - if I really had to decide. Wendy Bailye was the Guest Artist of the Quilt Show (presented by the Quilters' Guild of NSW).

The quilting detail as you can see below was awesome. Being a potter myself, I love the theme and the research that obviously went into the design of the pots.

Here's Wendy chatting about the quilts and her designs. Incredible to think that she's only been making quilts for 6 years. Prior to that, she was an artist in other mediums. The one featured above was created by bleaching out area's on black fabric, then heavy quilting over the entire piece.

It was well worth attending the show just to gaze in awe at Wendy's quilts which featured many different theme's, from Australiana to a beautiful African inspired quilt, and to hear her talk about her work. Very inspirational.

But of course, we ran out of time. So we headed back out of Darling Harbour with a head full of fresh idea's and newly inspired to dig out the sewing machine....

..past the ferris wheel...

..past Chinatown...

..and trying to remember where we parked the car!