Convention 2011 wrap up

I'm back from Launceston and almost fully recovered. This Convention malarky takes a lot out of you! I'm also on the Committee now so have to pull my weight in that regard. The Convention this year was held at Launceston Church Grammar School located in Mowbray, Launceston with a fabulous view of the Tamar River.

My room was situated in the boys dorm (I forgot to take a pic...again!) and it was heated which was a good thing as it was quite cold down there. The dorm rooms are furnished in various styles ranging from 1800s school house to modern on-site caravan so you can imagine. I was lucky in that I had the Vice Captain's room and got a mirror, power point & dressing table! Others were not so lucky.

The food was magnificent - hot brekkie every day, a selection of hot & cold stuff for lunch and a 2 course dinner. Morning & afternoon tea were also catered for, varying from cakes to scones & sausage rolls. Really good. I think I gained weight. :)

Anyway, onto the classes. I only did 2 cos I was needed elsewhere. The first one I did was Fabric Colouring for the Non-Artistic with Cindy Watkins. The kit for this was quite expensive at $60 but included 5 different colours of Genesis Liquid Radiance paint. What can I say about this class? It was FANTASTIC! Cindy showed us lots of different ways of using the paints. We had 12 pieces of white cotton fabric & basically just played all day. The epiphany for me was that I can now dye my own fabric & not have to worry about trying to find stuff in the colours I need. Yay!

We also dyed some socks using shaving cream. That was fun too. Don't mess with a woman waving a squeegy!

The other class I did was also with Cindy - making a quilted bag with fabric you've created. This time, we painted the fabric and dried it in the microwave & then made it into a bag. I decided to make a mega mug bag out of my absolutely gorgeous piece of fabric. Unfortunately, I didn't take a pic of the fabric before I cut it up. We also did free motion embroidery on this fabric. I did a little but then just used a stitch on the sewing machine for the rest. Very easy!

The following pics are the various sides of my bag. The colours are much more vibrant in real life.