Off to the Quilt Show

I had to make sure I was up bright and early on Sunday morning, because I was going to a quilt show, how exciting!  My quilt club had hired a mini bus  and 11 of us climbed aboard, settled down, and we headed south to Otaihanga to Southward Car Museum.  The morning started off well when the bag of lollies was passed around.  "Lollies at this time of the morning?", someone asked.  And why not!

We've arrived, and that's our little bus in front

The ladies taking our entry fee warmly welcomed us, and then we checked out the raffles.  I do love those gift baskets full of quilting goodies, maybe I'll win one of these, that would be so nice.  We admired all the Community quilts that the Kapiti Coast Quilters make, and then headed inside to the adjacent hall to see the exhibition.  Where to start?  I wandered up one way and back the other.  Here are a few quilts which took my fancy.

"Lulu the Elephant" was stitched and beautifully machine quilted by Sue Elliot.  Such a beauty and I loved the intricate machine quilting, this is not something I am capable of doing myself.

Lulu the Elephant

I do love big, beautiful bed quilts.  "Bedroom Garden" was made in Kaffe's World class by Belinda Nixon and Felicity Neate, and quilted by Bobby Duncan.  Just look at all those lovely fabrics.

Bedroom Garden

I rather liked this quilt, titled "No Dogs on the Bed", possibly because I've stitched something similar.  But then, who doesn't love cats?  This was made by Pat Webster, using Kaffe Fassett fabrics, and quilted by Suzanne Sage.

No Dogs on the Bed

After wandering around a while, I took myself upstairs to the cafe for morning tea.  The cafe looked down onto the car collection in the museum.  We had visited the museum in earlier years and there are lots of interesting cars on display.

Bright and shiny cars on display

Downstairs again, and I checked out some of the many vendors.  Although there was lots of lovely fabric on display, I only like to purchase for particular projects these days.  

Ladies checking out some of the vendors

So I was very restrained but fell in love with this gorgeous  printed panel full of native wildlife.  I have plans for this.

My only purchase of the day

We all met up again upstairs in the cafe at lunch time and I was thrilled to win one of the raffles from our little group.  There were some pretty floral fat quarters, and two lovely hand made greetings cards, many thanks to Sandra and Lois for organising this.  I've yet to hear if I won one of those lovely quilters gift baskets from the show, so I guess I haven't.

My raffle prize.

Downstairs again, and one last look around the quilts.  There were several ladies gathered around this gorgeous wall hanging, so I stopped to have a look too.  "Bygone Era" was Di Barnden's way of show casing her collection of doilies set between Kaffe Fassett fabrics.  Such a beautiful setting and this was my favourite quilt in the show.

Bygone Era

Thanks so much for the friendly blog reader who approached me to say hello, so nice to meet you.  And I also caught up with several members of my former quilt club, Pinestream Quilters, of Upper Hutt.  Seems that  several of these ladies have moved north from Upper Hutt, and have joined the  Kapiti  Coast Quilters. 

We were all getting a little weary by this stage so agreed to leave a little earlier than planned.  But first the friendly bus driver had a very important job to do, we asked him to take a photo of us all.

A happy bunch of quilters

I have to say that some of the ladies had more shopping than others.  We climbed aboard the bus, the bags of shopping were tucked away safely, and we traveled north back to Levin.  It was a lovely day, and thankfully my back wasn't too bad after all that standing around.  Thanks so much to the committee for organising our day out for the members.