Quilt Fair Reflections

Japanese Fabrics from the Quilt Fair

I ventured out to the Craft Fair in South Australia today and phew.. so many people! I must admit that while the eye candy was everywhere, the prices were a bit of a shock to me. I am usually all for quality over quantity and believe that since time is the most expensive thing to me, there is no point putting in a lot of time into a piece of art or craft if cheap materials will let it down in the end - ie. I don't want to end up thinking : "I spent 50 hours creating this... what I pity I didn't spend the extra $20 instead of buying the cheap stuff."

Quilt fabrics are such an absolute rip off (gets on my soap box)... For a simple pattern in a couple of colours there is no way 90% off the stuff I saw today should have been selling for more than $15-20/m... Most of it was around $7-10 for a FAT QUARTER! And people were paying that!

I must admit that I did buy two pieces of material that I thought were a bit rich... The geisha's pictured above were $7.50 for a fat quarter (ie approx $30/m), and the blue dragonflys were $8.70 for 30x110cm (ie approx $30/m). The other 4 fabrics were $3.50 per FQ (ie approx $14/m... much more reasonable!). I did think that since I had spent $20 on parking and entry that I wanted to come away with something.

I took quite a few photos in the display area, however unfortunately there were signs everywhere saying that I was not to publish any of the photos so I can't share my favourites with you. I found it interesting to study a few different pieces and see if I could tell how they were put together. It has given me a heap of ideas, and most of my photos turned out ok so I can remember what I saw. Now my mind is overflowing with possibilities!

I also wanted to find out about quilt shops and groups in my area, however I found that most stall holders were not hugely forthcoming. The Quilters Guild left me with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth after I patiently waited for a lady to finish enthusiastically talking to one lady, who then skipped past me to the lady behind me, and when I tried to ask her a few questions she was quite abrupt. I think a young 20-something is not the kind of clientele they are generally used to.

It wasn't all bad though as I had a lovely chat with one of the staff members in the exhibition hall early on, and I came across a couple of lovely stalls, including the ones that I purchased a few items at, and I will list the links at the end.

So there you have it folks! Three jam packed hours, and then my claustrophobia in crowds got the better of me, but it was a great morning!

Kimono Girls and Dragonfly

Be Be Bold (NSW) - Specialising in Japanese Imported Fabrics... had a lovely range and I spoke to a very nice man who was very helpful and suggested that if anything isn't on the website to email and see if they have it in stock anyway. I purchased the blue dragonfly fabric from this stall.

Patchwork with Gail B (Vic) - Amazing range of fabrics and they stock over 9000 bolts of fabric most of which is $14/m or less! Lovely stall holders who were very friendly and you can't go past their value for money. I purchased 4 fat quarters from this stall.

Logans Patchwork (NSW) - One of the larger ranges of oriental fabrics that I saw and some lovely packs and patterns. I purchased the geisha fabric from this stall.

Patchwork By Sea (SA) - I was smitten with one of their block of the month quilts, but alas, you couldn't take photos in the stall area. They have it on their website however - Longevity Symbols. It is even more stunning in person and the lady at the stall was very nice. They also had a stunning range of William Morris fabrics which were reasonably priced so I will have to check out their shop one day soon.

The Quilt Basket (SA) - I think this was the one that had heaps of nice panels and the ladies were quite nice. I can't remember why I grabbed their card (I had reasons! lol), but I only grabbed cards from the stalls that made a good impression, so check this one out too!