Rhonda Bracey: At Random

On Sunday, my friend Bobbie and I drove to Perth and back, just to attend the Perth Craft and Quilt Fair at the Convention Centre. It was a long day — nearly 7 hours of driving, and 7 hours on our feet at the Fair. But it was absolutely worth it!

In addition to lots of booths selling all sorts of goodies, there were several quilt exhibitions with the most fabulous pieces of art (it was hard to call most of them ‘quilts’ — at least in the traditional sense of the word). The West Australian Quilting Association (WAQA) had their annual exhibition with many prize-winning quilts displayed in all sorts of categories; it was the last chance to see the “Under Flynn’s Wings” exhibition of quilts made to celebrate 80 years of the Royal Flying Doctor Service; and the 30 winning finalists from the Australian Patchwork and Quilting competition I entered my dragonfly quilt into were on display. There were other exhibitions too, but as they were all in the one large hall, it was hard to tell them apart.

We were allowed to take photos for non-commercial purposes, so I did! My pics are here, but there was no way my photos could do justice to the incredible techniques or amazing artistic detail from some very creative women (I don’t think any of the quilts were made by men, but someone please correct me if I’m wrong). It was hard to pick a favourite, but for sheer gob-smacking, jaw-dropping awesomeness, I couldn’t go past the farm scene.

Bobbie and I had lunch with our friend Michelle, from Raggedy Stitches. Michelle had a booth, but she has some great staff so she was able to get away for 30 minutes or so.

I also spent some time catching up with Susan, my work colleague — we last saw each other in February, though we talk on the phone almost every day.

(I just realised that I hadn’t mentioned that late last year I entered my dragonfly quilt into a national competition! 30 finalists were selected — I wasn’t one of them, but I got a letter from the magazine asking me to send them my quilt to be professionally photographed as they want to include it in an issue later this year. How cool is that? Of course, now that I’ve seen the finalists, my quilt looks like a very poor relation in comparison…)