Saturday 7 November 2015

Auckland Festival of Quilts 2015 - the people I met

I had such a great time at the Auckland Festival of Quilts on Friday.  It was held at a lovely bright, light, spacious venue - The Auckland Netball Centre in St Johns.  There was loads of room for all the quilts, and lots of retailers too!

I went for the afternoon with my mum, and we both met lots of people we knew there.  First up I met Victoria Chin, who I've been friends with on Facebook with for about a year, but hadn't met in person yet.  I met Victoria through the Kaffe Fassett Facebook group. 

Next up I had agreed to meet Donna Ward, Jackie, Belinda and Ashleigh at 1pm. I met Jackie at the start of the year through the Millefiori / la passacaglia Facebook page, so I was looking forward to meeting her too.


Donna runs a quilting business in Hamilton, Donna's Quilt Studio, and she has been experimenting with English Paper Piecing lately too.

 Mum met many people from her own quilting group - Howick Quilting Friends.  She was keen to introduce me to Pien, who it turns out used to live in Singapore and is friends with two of my long time online quilting friends:
Vreni of Oops-lah who is now back in Switzerland
and Heather of Heather's Sewing Room who is a New Zealander living in Singapore.



I kept running into Shirley Mooney from Don't Wait to Create through out the day.  Shirley is from Wellington too, but she knows quite a few of the Auckland Guild members and wanted me to meet them.  We spoke about la passacaglia to quite a few people.

I did squeeze in a bit of retail before we left:



Then on Saturday morning I was just walking through a shopping mall, and Julie from JulieLou approached me and asked if I was Wendy! She recognised me from my blog!!  Wow, that was a surprise.

Aotearoa Quilters Green challenge

So that's the social side of my trip to the quilt show.  I promise to actually show you some quilts in the next day or two.  It was great to connect with all these people in real life. Social media is great, but meeting in real life is important too (where ever possible).


8 comments:

Dasha said...

Sounds like you (almost) had more fun meeting up with on-line buddies than you did actually seeing the quilts. LOL Lovely purchases. I love going to shows for the retail stalls. So many and all in one place, no driving for hours to get to the next one!

Sue Wild said...

I like the collection of little green quilts. Such a variety of shades. It's always good to go to a quilt show, not only for meeting friends, but a good source of seeing what's out there, in a way that media can't.

Carli The Quilter said...

Hi Wendy, you were wearing a very cute dress! Thanks so much for this quilt show and who you all met up with. Nothing better than a quilt show to start my day!

Pip said...

I've seen a couple of photos of the Auckland Festival of Quilts on Facebook so I'm looking forward to seeing your photos. The social side of quilts shows is great especially when you get to meet online friends in person.

OPQuilt said...

I'm meeting up with three IG-ers when I go up to my Dad's 90th birthday celebration in a neighboring state, so I agree--meetups are great fun! (And you look so elegant!)

Elizabeth
OPQuilt.com

HeathersSewingRoom said...

Isn't social media amazing as it has just made this world so much smaller. I am still a bit in shock with how small the quilting world is! It is a real treat to meet people in person that already feel like a close friend.

Oops-Lah said...

Do you know the "Six degrees of separation" theory? I'm pretty sure in the quilting world it's only "Two degrees of separation" ;)!

Granny Maud's Girl said...

Recognised in a shopping mall! You are famous!
It looks like you had a fun and social outing.