Visit to Wangaratta

After a few days in beautiful Bright, we returned home via Wangaratta.  Of course we went to the Petite: Miniature Textiles exhibition.  I wasn't allowed to take any photos inside, boo hoo.  I knew about a dozen of the exhibitors which was rather exciting. The works are amazing and of a high standard.  It was also beautifully presented, in the front gallery.

In the back gallery there was a lovely exhibition of embroidery - put on by the local embroidery guild branch and groups in the area.  Also well worth a visit.  We met one of the embroiderers whose work we had been admiring.

This was part of the Stitched Up Festival at Wangaratta.

We also heard about the Strictly Quilts 6 exhibition at St Bernard's Primary School.  There were some wonderful quilts on view there too.
And I was allowed to take some pictures, so here are a few.

There were several of this design, the different colours chosen made a huge difference to each one.

I like the design and the main fabric on this.

The appliqué over the patches was very interesting.

Petite Miniature Textiles Exhibition

Last Friday my friend and I travelled to the Wangaratta Exhibitions Gallery to see the Petite, Miniature Textiles Exhibition in which I had a piece showing.  It was my first acceptance into an exhibition, so I was very excited.

I have tried to take pictures of the work before but they always seem to show the hand stitching too strongly.  It was good to see the work from a distance so that I could get a view of the complete work without being drawn into the detail.  

The piece, Fern Walk, was done on commercial felt.  I used foil in the background and then used a needle felting machine to put on wool and silk roving and then I hand stitched it.

I had not realised how far away Wangaratta is!  It rained all the way there and all the way back. I am usually happy to see the rain but not all the time I am driving. The journey was not too bad as it is straight up the Hume Freeway and very straightforward.  Overall, we travelled about 550km for the complete trip.  I was very pleased that my 15 year old car did it all on one tank of petrol.

The work in the show was well worth the trip.  There was a large variety of techniques - art quilts, art books, embroideries, jewellery, weaving, tapestry (quite a few by people I know through my course), machine embroidery, sculpture and 3D textiles, miniature knitting, crochet, wire knitting, prints and manipulated fabrics to name a few.  It was inspiring to see such a range of work.

The exhibition pieces all had to be within the 30cm x 30cm x 30cm restriction.  There was some very fine work, especially in the tapestry category.

We also were able to see Flourish, an exhibition celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Embroiderers' Guild of Victoria.  The work done especially for the golden anniversary was beautiful, all set out on emerald green backings to go with the theme of different branches doing different colours for the Celebrating Colour theme.

There was also a small exhibition of work selected from the Textile Collection that was next to the Petite exhibition, so we got to see that also.  There was some beautiful work there too!

All in all, a good day was had by all (two of us).