Textile Art Festival

I had a wonderful day today! At nine o'clock I was there when the Textile Art Festival opened its doors, and the first thing I did was run to the stand of The Thread Studio to answer Dale's question! And so I won a bag of gorgeous goodies - great start of the day! The Textile Tantrum quilts were around the corner and I was thrilled to see the Highly Recommended star next to mine - especially when I realised how many entries there were!



I went on to see the Twelve by Twelve exhibition (the quilts are beautifully displayed and well worth a visit!) and have a chat with Brenda and Kirsten. Then I had a look at the State of the Art quilt 10 exhibition - and came face to face with my own quilt MAGnificence:



Which was quite strange after almost five months... and I found I didn't like it as much as I used to. I think my two more recent gymnastics quilts are better (see here and here).
I did very much like some of the other quilts though!



Here are some of the finalists of the Embellish a Bag Challenge, and this is a close-up of my bag:



I used a piece of multicoloured fabric from Dyed and Gone to Heaven for this bag.



Of course they were at the show and since I have used so many of their fabrics lately in my quilts I decided I could sign up again for their Monthly Metres Club ;-).



I made these postcards-to-be in a transfer painting class by Susan Pietsch from Essential Textile Art. I liked the process enough to buy a kit and some white lutradur to play at home. I also bought some coloured lutradur and snowflakes stencil:



And this book that I have been wanting to buy for quite a while now:



A few colourful impressions - there's another one on my daily photoblog:





In the afternoon I needed some fresh air and decided to walk to the Queensland Art Gallery and visit the Hats exhibition:



It was very good but unfortunately no photography allowed. I am not very interested in fashion but I love hats - and I love living in a country (state) where you wear a hat most of the time! (in the Netherlands people only wear hats at weddings)



Because it was the last week of this exhibition there was a discount on all the related items in the museum shop, so I bought the catalogue, and also this book:



It has lots of gorgeous photos of people wearing military, work-related, sport-related and school uniforms, and many more. It also provides a lot of background on uniforms which I find very interesting - maybe because I haven't often worn a uniform. There are no school uniforms in the Netherlands and I have never been a girl scout, or a member of a brass band, or part of a sports team... Actually, the only uniforms I remember wearing are a gymnastics leotard when I was a little girl (yes, I used to do gymnastics too, and no, I was not very good at it! But I did enjoy it) and a white coat/scrubs in the first few years after finishing medical school, when I was still doing clinical jobs.

Anyway, enough about that... As you will have noticed, I had a lovely day today! I will be back at the Festival for a while tomorrow, when there is an informal gathering for exhibitors and sponsors of the State of the Art quilt 10 exhibition. One of our wonderful nannies has offered to come and babysit the boys while I am there - for hubby has left today for a trip to Europe (he will be back in two weeks - when the school holidays are over! They have started today...). In his suitcase are three quilts, for various family members in the Netherlands - I will show them here when they have arrived at their destination.