Yet Another Day Out in June - Sydney Craft Fair

On the last Wednesday in June we hopped in the car and headed down to Sydney.  We hadn’t been there fore a few years and now we have been in the area several times this year.  Hopefully, this will be the last for a while.

Our destination was Homebush for the Craft Fair, held in the Dome at the Showground.

Some background.  The big craft fair that was held at Darling Harbour had the Quilt Guild quilt show and the trade section was run by Expertise Events.  Last year there was a split.  The Guild now holds their show at Rosehill Racecourse in September, in conjunction with Craft Alive for the trade section.  This show is Expertise Events and the quilt show can be entered by anyone, not just Guild members.  It was much smaller than the Darling Harbour event. However, we still had a really great day out.

As normal, we headed to the quilt show section first.  Mick is always happy to see these, as he considers it to be an art exhibition, just in fabric.  So true.

One of the guest artists was Lorena Uriarte.  I hadn’t heard of her, but her work is stunning.  She had quite a few quilted jackets on display.  

Oh my!  Can you imagine cutting up a Dear Jane quilt to make a jacket.  I’d be terrified of ruining the whole thing.

This one was super cute.  All her jackets had fun fabrics for the linings.

Lorena had quite a selection of her quilts as well, covering quite a variety of styles.  She is one extremely talented artist.  I figured it would be easier to show her quilts as a collage.

The other featured artist was Karen Cunningham.  I have been familiar with her work for many years and it was lovely to see a collection of her quilts displayed together.  She used to do classes at Bathurst but I never had the opportunity to take one.

This is for all you Lucy Boston fans. Lovely muted colours in this version, and the wide border makes the most of only sixteen blocks.

This one is entitled “Miss Happiness” and it does look like a very happy quilt.  When you zoom in, it is quite a simple quilt featuring fussy cut squares and long diamonds in a rectangle.

I think this was my favourite, entitled “Fairy Wrens”. Once again, fairly simple piecing, with great colour placement.

The centre blocks with the needle turned appliqué is the real focal point.

The judged quilt show had some lovely works.  I’ll start with the “Recycled and Restyled” section, as that seems to be what I was drawn to.  When I’ve reviewed my photos, the majority seem to be in that section.  Zoom in on the labels to read the details.

This one was quite different.

And the winner is…. Isn’t it wonderful.

However, the 2nd prize winner was my favourite….

Here is Karen with her quilt.

I took loads of photos of the various sections.  It is created from twelve separate sections, joined together.  Most seem to have a tapestry or cross stitch in the middle, mostly found at op shops.  Karen said the tapestries are surprisingly soft to work with.  The back is a grey patterned fabric and the layers are held together by being tied with a matching thread, so they are barely visible.  I cannot imagine how many hours went into this quilt, but it apparently took about eighteen months to create.  Just beautiful, in my opinion, although I think it would be more a display piece rather than a quilt for your bed.

Here are just a couple more.

And finally, the best of show.

Check out that quilting.

While we were looking at this quilt, a lady introduced herself as reading my blog.  She recognised Mick in the crowd.  It was lovely to meet you Beryl. I’m pleased you said “Hello”.

Funnily enough, another lady came up to us while we were having lunch.  We used to see her and her husband at classic motorcycle rallies about 25 years ago.  It was really nice to catch up with her too.

There was an exhibition of the AQC Challenge quilts, with a theme of “In Full Bloom”. There were so many interpretations on show.  Here are just a few.

The final exhibition we enjoyed was the Cavalcade of Fashion.  This year the theme was how women kept warm through the years.  Such a nice variety of styles.

After lunch it was time to have a look at the stalls.  Yes, of course I went shopping.

My favourite stand had to be that of Anni and Pete Downs at Hatched and Patched.

I possibly added another pattern to my collection waiting in the wings for their time to shine.

The only thing on my shopping list was some rotary cutter blades.  Tick.  I also bought a couple of pairs of snips to use with Monique and some sticky dots to stop my rulers from slipping.  It will be interesting to see how they go.

Sashiko seems to be the flavour of the month lately.  I do have one panel here to work on, but bought some more.  There was a table runner kit for sale, but it would be too big for our table, so I bought a few smaller panels and some multi coloured threads, so that I can emulate the one I really liked.  We’ll see how we go.  Now, did I think to buy a needle?  Don’t be silly.  Why would I think of that?  I will get one locally and then give it a go.

There was one really interesting stand.  It was The Achieve Sewing Basket.  They have four shops throughout Sydney and are run by Achieve disability support. They are staffed by people with a disability and volunteers and all the stock of fabric and other haberdashery and craft items are donated.  They had quite a variety of fabrics for sale and I bought some panels suitable for donation quilts, as well as some Deynse Schmidt fabric and a length of Yuwa fabric which should make a nice backing for my Laundry Basket Mystery Quilt. Everything was very reasonably priced.

My final purchase was this light bar for above my sewing machine.

We started to head home by about two, and the weather had turned wet and miserable.  We were thankful for the little courtesy train that took us to and from the car park, which was quite a distance from the hall.

As we left the plains of Penrith, it looked like we were going to have a misty trip home.

Yep.  Not the best driving conditions.  At least we were home by dark.

So, my overall thoughts on the show.  To be truthful, we were a bit disappointed, as we were used to the Darling Harbour event.  It will be interesting to compare it with the one at Rosehill later in the year. However, we will probably be away at that time.  Would I go again?  Yes, but probably not every year.  Maybe this one, one year, and Rosehill the other.  We’ll see.  We did still have a really nice day out and are glad we went along.