Rhonda Bracey: At Random

I spent yesterday at the Perth Craft Fair and QuiltWest exhibition. My feet were sore by the end of the day, but it was so inspirational that many of the issues just getting to the Perth Convention Centre disappeared fairly rapidly.

The main issue was that, without any notice, the organisers of the ‘HBF Run for a reason’ event closed The Esplanade from Spring St AND closed the Convention Centre car park until 11 am. All info I had prior to that event was that The Esplanade would be closed from Mill St. Even the trade exhibitors were caught with the closure of the car park at 7:30 am. And it seems the trains didn’t stop at the Convention Centre for some hours either (again, without notice as far as I could tell) — they went on to Central so anyone catching the train had to walk from the city station back to the Convention Centre. Not good for anyone with mobility issues who had deliberately caught the train to be dropped right at the Convention Centre.

Parking was at a premium as the city centre was host to 30,000 runners, but I eventually parked the car up behind Parliament House! My friend Joan and I had a long downhill walk to the Convention Centre…

Back to the Fair… The big plus of those road, train, and car park closures was that the Convention Centre was almost empty of everyone except officials and stallholders for the first couple of hours, which meant we could get around without bumping into other people or being forced to move on because of the pressure of crowds. And we could get to speak to stallholders and view their products without hindrance. And get a seat at some of the free demos.

The highlight of the event was the QuiltWest exhibition, which highlighted some of the stunning work by local quilters, and had on display the Australian winners of a national competition, and some from a South Australian competition. And there was a big display of community quilts— many of which I recognised as I’d quilted them 😉

I took a heap of photos on my camera phone, so the quality of the images is not particularly good. I tried to capture the essence of the works, but of course, the exquisite detail is lost. I didn’t record any information about each quilt, so here are the photos, not in any particular order.