When Juki Met Molli

Well here I am! Today was bump in for the Australasian Quilt Convention being held at the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne. What a glorious start to the week! Have you ever walked through an airport terminal with a blue sequinned top hat and a suitcase full of quilts? Oh, you have? Well, then you are fully aware of the intrigued looks and mandatory autographs you have to sign along the way. The airport security screening attendant wanted a #selfiewithsparkle, but it just didn’t feel right holding up the line for that. Instead, I gave him a whisper of glitter and went along my merry way. 

Once the clouds parted and I dropped into the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne, I got to meet the wonderful Juki team. It was like showing up to a blind date, except there was one of me and five of them! I know I’ve got the love, but whew, I had to put on the charm offensive to break that ice quickly. These are my new peoples for the week, and we’ve got a quilt show to impress!

I promptly set about hanging the six quilts I brought with me: Shudder, #MSBHQAL, Sparkleworks, Union Jack Surprise, On the Flipside and #SelfieWithSparkle. The immediate feedback I got from the Juki team, “Your quilts are so big!” Well, um, yeah. I guess compared to the smaller, intricately-pieced quilts of Victoria Findlay-Wolfe on the neighbouring wall, mine are ginormous. I just see them as quilts that need to be big enough to cover my toes! By the way, how unbelievable is it that I have quilts hanging under the same banner as Victoria? (I just peed my pants a little bit, right then). Completely different styles and presentation, but well that’s Juki, bringing out the best in every quilter!

Day one is already a success and the Australasian Quilt Convention hasn’t even started! I’ve got all of my outfits ironed and laid out for the week (cute!), the sequinned hat ready to go, and a blue glitter pen on-call. Tomorrow promises to be another historic milestone in my quilt career, and I hope you can share it with me. Make sure you catch all the latest on Instagram (IG: molli_sparkles) as I’ll probably be chasing my proverbial tail until Sunday Stash. Melburnians: If you want to test drive the best straight line sewing machine on the market, the AQC is the place to be, and my Juki is ready to work hard for his money!