Despite being one of the short months in the year, June felt much longer than usual as I managed to fit an extended trip to Sydney into the usual everyday business activities.

A classic photo of the Sydney Opera house at sunset by Ian Scott
The original reason for the trip to Sydney was the annual Quilt & Craft Expo.

The Aurifil stand at the Quilt & Craft Wholesale Trade Expo June 2011
This is the wholesale trade fair for textile crafts, where you find distributors for patchwork fabrics, threads & craft tools, pattern designers & button makers all showing their wares. It is a great opportunity to network with the business side of the craft industry, a place to meet other shop owners from around Australia, talk to the designers and get inspirational ideas to take home.

We made a feature display of the new mini spools of Lana wool blend at the Expo
I stayed in Sydney for the week after the trade show to visit some of our Aurifil retail outlets, so I had an opportunity to attend the Quilt Exhibition for the first time in many years.
Wow! There were some very beautiful quilts on display and I was particularly excited to recognise the names of Aurifil customers on some of the award winning quilts.

Chris Jurd won first place in the "New traditions from Old Favourites" category with this quilt
Chris Jurd is a well known designer & teacher in the NSW patchwork world. This wonderful quilt won first place in the “New traditions from old favourites” Open category and is just spectacular in real life. Chris enjoys foundation piecing designs that look complex, and she says that Cotton Mako’ 50 is ideal for this type of stitching.

A close up view of some of the blocks in Chris Jurd's award winning quilt
You can join classes, taught by Chris, at the Cottage Quiltworks in Warriewood, Berrima Patchwork in Berrima, Home Patch in Bathurst and Hobbysew Wollongong and Kings Park.

Sharon made this stunning Bethlehem Star quilt in modern, eye catching, colours
Sharon owns Morning Star Quilting, a machine quilting service at Avoca Beach and has been the recipient of many awards since she started Longarm quilting in 2006.
You have to agree that the fine detail in the feathers and cross hatching look very pretty stitched out with Cotton Mako’ 40. Sharon won fourth place with this quilt in the “Traditional Professional” category.

Sharon machine quilted this beautiful complex design of feathers & cross hatching with Cotton Mako' 40
Two more quilts that had the “Wow” factor for me, were made by Catherine Butterworth. When I saw the first quilt, “Hexagon stars for Ulladulla” I loved the complexity of design and colour.

Catherine's quilt "Hexagon Stars for Ulladulla"
Then several aisles later I found this quilt, also by Catherine, called “Googly Eyes”, named after the effect created by the fussy cut fabric in the sashing stars.

Catherine's quilt, with the fussy cut "Googly Eyes"
When I contacted Catherine for permission to show photos of her quilts here, she replied:
“Yes, you may use a photo of my quilts, and yes I pieced and quilted them with Aurifil. I prefer 50/2 for piecing and stitch in the ditch quilting. I then use either 50/2 or 40/2 for the free motion quilting. If it works for you when blogging, feel free to mention that I teach classes for both of them. “
If you are interested in taking classes with Chris Jurd or Catherine Butterworth please send me an email request for their contact details.
You can see all the award winning quilts for the 2011 exhibition at the Sydney Patchwork & Quilting Guild website.

I had to finish the post with another classic photo of Sydney at night by Ian Scott
Go to the website to see the full colour range, or to purchase Cotton Mako’ to make your own wonderful quilt.