Workshops in Cairns - photos

In Cairns, we were down the road from Patchwork Friendsy for our workshops, in a larger air conditioned room at a local community centre. The space worked really well, with half the room for the sashiko workshop and talk last Friday and the whole room for the bag workshop on Saturday. The plants in the photo above were outside the neighbouring children's centre - I was excited to spot an Australian plant I had seen before, if only as a houseplant in the UK!


I started a version of the workshop panel myself. The fan panel is one I began as a teaching sample at Noosa the previous week. This fat quarter panel condenses the fan, the corner design (fundou - the other option is shippou, as on the larger furoshiki) and a kamon crest into less space, ideal for finishing as a large cushion or small wallhanging.


Patchwork Friendsy is in a gorgeous old 'Queenslander' house.


There are steps at the back up to the raised ground floor.


I saw a few of these cute 'milk churn' mailboxes around Maleny too.


Saturday's workshop was based on the Bollywood Handbag from '21 Sensational Patchwork Bags', but assembling the zip gusset using the same method for the Quilter's Suitcase from 'Fabulous Fat Quarter Bags'. This isn't a workshop on my main workshop list but it worked so well, I think I'll be adding it soon. The bag panels were made and quilted in advance at Patchwork Friendsy, but if I run it as a UK workshop, quilters will need to prepare their own panels in advance (unless we do it as a 2 day workshop, which is a possibility...) Colleen, the owner of Patchwork Friendzy, is wearing the red top in the centre of the photo below.


Me with some of the quilters.


The bag! I made one too, as a demo piece. It will be finished with bias binding. The other quilters got binding strips to match the handles, but I'll bind mine with some strips left over from my latest book quilts - predictably, there was a run on the strip fabric, as it was a pretty design of temari balls with metallic highlights.


This sashiko panel is shown in an earlier photo from Friday's workshop and was finished on Saturday afternoon. It is a monochrome version of the one I'm stitching. Do you like the detail on the noshi cords?