Things are a’ changing at Aurifil Thread Australia

It is with mixed emotions, and anticipation, that after nearly 16 years, I say farewell to my business connection with Aurifil.

Cotton Mako’ 40 is my favourite “all purpose” thread for piecing and quilting.

I have not posted very often this year so I know that it will not come as a surprise to you to hear that I have sold both businesses, Always Quilting & Always Thread, and plan to move on to retirement & other things leisurely.

It has been a wonderful journey, full of excitement, and special moments, not to mention, all the beautiful friendships I have made along the way. I thank you all sincerely for your loyal support and encouragement over the many years.

I am confident that I am leaving both the business, and you, in the best hands.

My knowledgeable staff, the team at Always Thread, under the management of the new owner, Jen Kingwell & her staff from Amitie Textiles, will continue supporting all your thread requirements & promoting Aurifil in Australia and New Zealand.

The transition to the new management will not alter how you place your orders, as the telephone number, email addresses & websites will not change.

Once again, thank you for your support and I hope to see you at a Quilt event or two!

So Farewell & Best Wishes for your many future projects with Aurifil

Jenny Scott

A New Year a New Colour Pallette

There has been some chatter about the 2016 Pantone “Colour/s of the Year” so I thought it was time to “Auriflirt” with the colours of the year using our Baby Pink (2423) & Light Wedgewood (2725) thread colours.

Or maybe, Light Rose (2430)  & Light Blue Violet (1128), it was difficult to make a decision.

As you can see, this year Pantone have featured two colours and, on first glance, their colours, “Rose Quartz” & “Serenity”, could appear old fashioned.

The fun begins when they are blended to generate a third colour

Here we have used variegated Cotton Mako’ 3840 to show a possible result of blending our chosen pink & blue.

A deeper purple Cotton Mako’ 6733 also makes a pleasing blending result.

Choosing pink & blue is certainly a change from the brighter, stronger, colours of previous years but it will still be possible to add fresh colours to make up a clean modern quilt.

It is even more fun to combine them with other mid-tones including greens and purples, rich browns, and all shades of yellow and pink.

Add in silver or hot brights for more splash and sparkle and you have a modern colour way that will be very liveable.

I love blue, but have never been a fan of pink, so this has been an interesting exercise for me, and I am surprised to find that I could imagine using some of the combinations that we picked out.

See more colour pairings for 2016 on the Pantone website

Summer Holiday Aurifil Treasure Hunt

I love finding textile treats as souvenirs whenever I travel. A new pattern, some fat quarters or patchwork tools are easy to fit into my bag & are meaningful reminders of my holidays.

I don’t need to search for Aurifil “souvenirs” when I travel, as I have the full range at my finger tips on our online retail store, but I do like to check out the shops that stock Aurifil and I thought that you might like to do so also.

If you are not lucky enough to have a good stock of Aurifil in a nearby local quilt shop or, even if you do have easy access to Aurifil, it is always fun to find something new.

So just for you, the souvenir hunter, I’ve compiled a list of the shops that have added Aurifil display stands to their stores in the past six months.

Many shops stock Cotton Mako’ 50 so it has been exciting to see that some of these shops below have chosen to stock the Cotton Mako’ 12, 28 or 40 thread ranges for their displays.

Cottage Quiltworks (Warriewood, NSW)

Fairies & Fortunes (Richmond,  NSW)

Jukejema  ( Nowra, NSW)

Picton Patchwork (Picton, NSW)

Pot Pourri Cottage (The Junction, NSW)

Pleasure Sew ( Capalaba, Qld)

Fifi’s Fabricology ( West Burleigh, QLD)

Hettie’s Patch  (Hindmarsh, SA)

Quarter Inch (North Hobart, Tas) the new shop for Hugs n Kisses

Amitie  (Gardenvale, Vic)

Sew Inn (Colac, Vic)

Periwinkle Patchwork ( Warnambool Vic)

Materialise ( Nedlands, WA)

But don’t just use this list, as there are many more shops around Australia & New Zealand stocking Aurifil!

To help map out your summer travels, go to the website to get a complete list of Aurifil stockists in Australia & New Zealand, many of which have had thread displays &/or a great range of colours for a long time.

Happy Treasure Hunting!

 

Wishing you a Merry Christmas & Happy  New Year for 2016

 

Tidy those thread tails

A few weeks ago I received the following email from Chris S

“I love to stitch and sew  with Aurifil threads I do have a good collection I do have a concern or maybe an annoyance that is the fact that is unravels when not in use”

This made me realise that it is sometime since I wrote about the clever way that Aurifil has for keeping the spool thread tails tidy.

The small spools have a slot at top & bottom where the threads can be wrapped several times to be anchored into place.

The large spools only have one removable end / base.

When using the large spool it is helpful to move this base to release the thread to run smoothly.

Once you have finished stitching, wind the thread back around the spindle & push the base back into place

Hope this helps keep your thread collection tidy!

Hand Quilting Extraordinaire

I was thrilled to see, and photograph, Julie Adamson’s quilt, “Jessie” recently.

I had missed the Victorian Quilters Inc Showcase earlier this year, where Julie won the Runner Up to Best of Show prize for her work on “Jessie”.

So I was pleased to catch up with Julie, at a workshop where she was teaching her hand quilting technique, and see more of her quilts.

It was pleasing to hear her explain to the students what a difference good thread makes to the ease of hand quilting.

Try choosing a shade up & down of the one colour to add depth & variety to hand quilting

Julie also showed us another quilt, a wholecloth that had a vine design quilted with Aurifil Cotton Mako’ 28 in one colour and the background fill quilted with a different thread.

She said that she had planned the design, and was working on the quilt over a weekend.  She enjoyed stitching the vine so much that she just wanted to keep quilting the background filler to see if the effect looked as good as she had imagined when she drew up the design.

However, she hadn’t expected to progress this quickly, and didn’t have the second Aurifil thread colour in her collection. So she picked up a different brand of thread from her basket and started stitching the background fill.

What a mistake! She said the second thread was not nearly as easy to use, as it twisted “with a mind of it’s own” and did not make as nice a stitch as her favorite Aurifil.

This example reminds me that it is easy to forget just how nice it is to stitch with Aurifil when it is the thread that you use everyday.

Aurifil really is the benchmark to which to compare other thread brands.

If you want to take a workshop with Julie Adamson check out the program for the 2016 Australian Quilt Convention

PS: Julie recently won 1st place in the Open Small Quilt “Predominately Applique” category in the SA Quilters Guild Festival of Quilts.

Australian Quilt Market 2015

It doesn’t feel like 12 months since the last Australian Quilt Market in Melbourne but here we are once again ready for the two day Fair to exhibit Aurifil to patchwork shops, professional quilters, teachers and textile designers.

Yesterday was “set up” day  so we started with a blank space.

After some heavy lifting to move the display from the van into the exhibition hall we started putting things up on the wall.

And then three hours later  we were done!

 

The hoopla theme this year meant we were working with smaller pieces and everything went together so much faster on the day.

Hope to see lots of retailers today & tomorrow at the Exhibition Centre in Melbourne.

If you can’t be there watch our instagram stream in the next two days for close up views  of the hoops.

Find out more about Aurifil

 

 

Miniature Versions.

Quilters are always making quilts for others, sometimes for loved family members and dear friends, sometimes for charitable causes, and sometimes as commissions. A couple of years ago I made a quilt for a young family member who was facing some traumatic experiences.

To read the full story go to Made with Love (Nov 2013)

Much love went into the quilt’s construction and after the quilt was with its new owner I decided to make a miniature version for myself. Not only does the mini quilt help to decorate a spot in my quilting studio, but it also serves to remind me of the person who received the full-size version.

No Gym Workout Required This Week

The staff & I have relocated one tonne of Aurifil threads in the past week.

No exaggeration.

I know people always say that they have a ton of things to do, but in this case we really did move one tonne of threads around the showroom.

We had been waiting for this thread shipment to arrive for 10 weeks so we were very excited.

As an aside story, I was very envious of the contestants on the TV show “The Block”.  When they needed some custom mosaic tiles delivered from Italy in 4 days, not the 4 weeks that the shipment would usually take, the tile manufacturer understood the urgency and expedited the delivery.

Oh to be a contestant on a TV show.

When the Aurifil shipment finally arrived it was “all hands on deck” to get it unpacked.
According to the shipping documents the shipment weighed  approximately 300kg, and we moved the cartons & boxes of Aurifil around many times!

We worked together to:

• unload the truck
• unpack the cartons to count the incoming stock
• shelve the new stock
• fill the backlog of orders
• take parcels to the post office

The store room looked fantastic!

The shelves were full for the first time in weeks and we are half way through filling 80 orders that had been waiting for items in this Aurifil shipment.

There is still more work to do, to get all the backlog orders filled but it was very satisfying to finish work on Friday knowing that, next week,  there will be lots of happy retailers in Australia & New Zealand when their long awaited Aurifil parcels arrived.

Are you quilting for a Hawk or an Eagle?

I’ve lived in Victoria long enough to have become accustom to a public holiday for a horse race but one for a football game was a surprise.

Now I am not a dedicated follower of the AFL so I am making the most of the day to play with thread …. Aurifil of course and in particular Cotton Mako’ 28, our favourite quilting thread weight.

But some at Always Quilting are followers, so here is a test that they set up for the committed AFL spectator.

Are you a Hawk?

Or an Eagle?

So was that a Hawk?

Or an Eagle?

So hope you enjoy the game, and still find some time to quilt.

Just Because….

Most of the projects I make involve fairly intense hand work, such as needleturn applique and English paper piecing. Here’s one of my current projects.

Even under “optimal conditions” (no housework, no paid employment, neglected hubby and family, and little sleep) such projects progress slowly. Much as I love this activity, it’s sometimes nice to have a change of pace and produce something that goes together more quickly and with less effort.

I have recently made such a quilt.

While distracted (i.e. browsing on the internet) I saw a quilt which I thought had an interesting layout. There was no name or pattern, but that did not deter me as I simply drafted my own, using dimensions of my choice. I had some suitable fabrics in my stash so I was able to begin without delay.

The blocks are simple and require only two seams.

The trickiest thing is to ensure the correct orientation of all the blocks once they are pieced. Check and check and check before joining!

I used the red sashing fabric to add a border around the edge to frame the quilt and bound it in the same fabric to maintain the framed look. In the photo below, I am trialling the position of the blocks and the border.

With my long-arm machine, quilting my projects is straightforward.  My quilting business, “The Quilt House” is located in Vermont South, Victoria. Check out my website :  http://www.thequilthouse.com.au 

I decided to use an all over quilting design (edge-to-edge) 0n the quilt, in this case I chose Lorien’s “Twirly Feathers”. It’s a really elegant design.

For this type of quilting, I use Aurifil 40 weight thread on my Gammill quilting machine. I chose a red thread to match the sashing fabric. It provides a nice contrast with the gold coloured backing fabric.

And here is the quilt used as a topper on my bed. I called it “Just Because”………well, just because!