Lovers of Applique

I had a special day on Saturday when I attended an extra meeting of my group- the Castlemaine Applique Group. We meet 4 times a year but this was an extraordinary meeting as we had special international quilters as guest speakers.
Approximately 200 quilters attended and ay what is the largest applique group in Australia. Mary Koval, a specialist in reproduction fabrics and fabric designer from the US, spoke about her designs and how she became interested in antique quilts and fabrics. She has a stall at the Houston Festival every year and sells antique quilts and fabrics there. She asked for all quilters attending on Saturday to sign her memory quilt and most lined up as you can see in the photo.
Petra Prins, a Dutch quilter who designs fabric and also has a quilt shop in The Netherlands, spoke about antique Dutch fabrics and quilts and showed one of her new books, Treasures from Holland.
The next speaker was Nels Kooiman, who co-owns the quilt shop Den Haan Wagenmakers in Amsterdam, with Petra, also spoke about her quilting journey and how she had enjoyed traveling with Petra and being inspired when visiting other quilters.
The last speaker was Carol Veillon, who produces the French quilting magazine, Quiltmania. She spoke about how she started out to produce a magazine which is now sold with three translations to meet the need of quilters internationally.
All of the speakers were very entertaining and the fabulous quilts which were shown at Show and Tell were very inspiring. Carol said that she was very impressed with the amount of time and detail that Australian quilters spend when creating their quilts and said that she would be putting out a special magazine edition about Australian quilters and their works. There was a photographer who took photos of the speakers quilts as well as those shown at Show and Tell and we could all purchase a CD so we're sure to get some nice photos to remember the day too.
The day was very well organized and it was lovely to meet up with one of my blog readers, Ann Birch, from Vic.
I took some time to work on another block of my Civil War Bride quilt and enjoyed taking some time for hand work. Since then I've been busy dressmaking with our youngest DD so I'll show progress on that tomorrow.
Hugs, Jan Mac