Palmwoods Craftfest

Bestie and I headed up to the Sunshine Coast to check out the Palmwoods CraftFest.  A great show - all types of fibre crafts and some retailers.  I think this is only on every second year - but its really worth a visit.

Noela asked for some pictures - so I took ...quite a few:  Maybe photo overload...grab a coffee...

This is the display that caught my eye as soon as I walked in - that purplish jacket is covered in embroidery - maybe brazilian style - lots of flowers with bullion types of stitches - I should have taken a close up...

This quilt gave me a few ideas for a project I want to work on next year...

 a gorgeous pouch / purse

This quilt was very large - perhaps 6' x 6' and each block is hand done - the birds are embroidered with quite a fine thread and the backgrounds are hand quilted in patterns that really give the whole thing a lot of movement.
(It was hard to stand back enough to get a good photo) - I thought this was fantastic.

Here is the detail of one block

Next to this quilt was another quilt (done by the same lady) that was absolutely covered in hand embroidery - this time she started with a panel and toned down the strong colours in the panel to something a lot softer, then added the blocks & borders around it to make another very large quilt.

This is a section of the panel she started with

and this is a similar area of the quilt.  Perhaps you can see the entire flower is covered with feather stitch.  The purple leaves at the top were covered in a back stitch and all the small flowers were covered in satin stitch - mainly using variegated threads.
Amazingly neat and beautiful colours.

here is the whole quilt

and one of the side panels

The quilting (professionally done) was also amazing - not just the diagonal lines you see in the photo above but also some Chinese Symbols in circles.

We spent a lot of time looking at this - had there been a Viewers Choice - I'm sure this would have won the prize.

Another group of small quilts that caught my eye were about 40cm square of flowers that had been entirely covered with machine stitching.  I love strelitzias - so this was my favourite..

and here is the detail....

and one of the others in the group.

I also saw this lovely cross stitch of patchwork blocks

 and a group of objects made with coiled fabric tubes. 

 I also loved this City Scape - I think it was drawn onto the fabric then machine stitched and embellished.

Palmwoods seems to be a small villagey sort of area - the show had a lot of sections where the sign indicated that tutors had come in and given classes on a lot of these techniques  - there were more than I have showed here - like weaving using natural items like banana leaves and felted wool including seed pods.

It wasn't a huge area - but we took quite a while to take it all in.


And no trip to Palmwoods is complete without a slight deviation to Forest Glen.... 

and we were really lucky - because it was the last day of the Quilters Trail (a Shop Hop that went for the month of June) - they were open past the normal closing time of 2pm - we arrived about 10 to 2.!!!
and I was very restrained and only bought one packet of Theodora Cleave buttons.

Just as well Lynette Anderson's shop closes at 2pm - that could have been more dangerous.

A great day - I think I need to retire to Palmwoods - imagine how many UFOs I could accumulate then!