AMQF Day 1

Today I went along to the Australian Machine Quiltng Festival and took a couple of classes. Despite the early hour, I was there with time to spare! The first was a 4-hour hands-on class with local quilter extraordinare Rachelle Denneny - who's being flown to Houston shortly to be at the awards presentation to find out which of the major prizes her quilt has won. Rachelle's quilts are amazing, but what I really like about them is I can see that I could actually achieve something like that myself when I find a bit more time and patience. I knew when I booked that this class was probably aimed a bit below my level, but I still got plenty out of it - plus four solid hours of practise! Here's some of what I did; I love the new filler variation I learned, that's around these feathers.

The Pam Clarke lecture/demo was aimed more at longarmers, but I got some good design and stitching tips from that, too.

There were some amazing quilts which won, but unfortunately I can't blog the photos I took. Here are the two quilts I entered; Adds pieced the one on the right:

I bought some wonderfil threads (mostly metallics):

a feather-designing template to go with the Infinite Feathers book I bought recently:

and a book of quilitng designs.

I also tried a couple of long arm machines and found one I really like, but unfortunately it will be a while before I can seriously consider getting one.