Australian Machine Quilting Festival 2018

Well, it's come and gone. Great event organised by Tracey Browning from Constantine Quilts right here in South Australia, Adelaide.

I went for 3 days straight and must say, I was totally exhausted by then. While exhilarating and fun, I also felt slightly overwhelmed with inspiration, as usual. Currently washing some fabrics to try out Ricky Tims Convergance quilts idea...luckily, I took a week's leave to recover and let the ideas sink in and just finish off some things.

My last class was a Wholecloth drawing class with Cindy Needham. After a bit of a lecture on Wholecloth design (also got a CD of this as part of the class which I still have not had a look at) we got to draw for the whole afternoon. Cindy had the entire stencil collection out for the class to use. Usually I draw a bit and then loose focus unless I have got a very definite idea, but that day I was super focussed and just about finished an entire Wholecloth, measuring about 36in in the afternoon.

It was very interesting to see how people approached this in the class and every piece looked very different to the next (not that I saw that many as I had my head down the entire afternoon). I started with my little motif in the middle, not really sure what to do with it. However, I thought, it will come to me as I go along and just kept extending it out.

I used Cindy's Ultimate Stencils for the middle section, first drawing in the motif with the circle stencil and then using the square stencil to extend it out. I do usually do a bit of filling as I go along, just to get an idea of what could go in there...will always have to have some cathedral windows in there, so marked this in. Also tried one of Cindy's tiny border stencils in one of the inner borders and got myself very confused with direction initially. Then I went out further and put some feathers in the inner part and to finish this off I used Cindy's High Tide border stencil for the outer border...and presto, I had an entire Wholecloth! Not the most exciting design, however lovely to look at and a very workable design. I will re-draw this on paper and tidy up some areas and then stitch it out to have a bit of a memento of this class.
After the class, I went straight upstairs and bought Cindy's Border Stencil collection.

Now this was not part of the plan 😏. I had looked at them before on the internet and had thought that I do not need this as I can draw the basic shapes myself. Doing this class though I realised how very handy they are...in the inner part of my drawing I wanted a bit of a curly type feather and then realised that I could use one of the border motifs (simple swirl) to just mark the curve in and off I went with my feathers. This was so handy and fast and looking now at those basic shapes I can see how useful this is going to become. Also liked the border stencils with the corner element and middle line cut out for alignment (I do struggle with this at times). This was a breeze to put into my border with a bit of fudging fitted nicely into that space. Obviously when I am going to draw it I will work this out a bit more precisely, but even drawing it in this roughly, it looks very good.

Enthused plus!!!

Karin