Tickets for Ricky Tims Seminar

We will begin posting the tickets for Ricky’s seminar on Friday of this week (3rd February) and you should have your tickets by the following Friday.  Keep the tickets safe as it will be required to receive your Book, entry into the seminar, quilt show and vendor mall; ticket will be valid Friday only.

Tickets are still available for Ricky’s Seminar “Ricky’s Best Kept Secrets”.

We’ve had many enquiries about the tickets for the Banquet Dinner, these will be released at a later date and notification will be via this blog.

Advertising

There are many advertising opportunities available at Festival and most can be found on the website.  The cost of having a 1/4 page in the Class Catalogue is $75.00 and a 1/4 page in the Show Program is $65.00, a total of $140.00.  However, we are offering a discount to those that choose to take 1/4 page in both the Class Catalogue & Show Program and the total cost will be $100.00.  To take advantage of this great deal your ad must be received no later than February 29th.  Check the website to make sure you have your ad in the correct format.  If you have any questions relating to advertising please contact Tracey. 

Do you have a web-based business?  Would you like to get your product or service out into the quilting community?  If so, contact Sharon and she will email you details of a package that has been put together to promote web-based business’s – cost $100.00 (+GST).

Classroom Sponsorship

We are proud to announce that Handi Quilter and A1 Quilting Machines are sponsoring two of the classrooms.  Handi Quilter will be supplying Sweet 16’s for their classroom and this room will be referred to in all promotional material as the “HQ Sweet 16 Classroom”.  An A1 Quilting Machine will be used in another of the Classrooms and this room will be referred to as the “A1 Quilting Machine Classroom”. 

At the time of writing we have another two companies that have expressed interest in sponsoring a classroom and once this is confirmed it will be announced on the blog.  There may be one more opportunity to be involved in this type of sponsorship, if you are interested please email Sharon.

Teacher Profile

Jane Monk is another of our Teachers and Jane should be “basking in glory” at the moment.  In this month’s issue of Quilter’s Companion you will receive a DVD in which Jane demonstrates the art of Zentangle.  If you haven’t got your copy, pay a visit to your local Newsagent and purchase one – it’s certainly worth it.

Jane has been drawing with pencil and ink since she was a child. When she started quilting in 2002, she realised her love of drawing could be combined with her love of quilting and she purchased her own long-arm quilting machine in 2007. Jane’s customers love her freehand quilting style and she has won a number of awards for this style of quilting. Jane also designs and draws a lot of her own quilting patterns and background fillers for specific use in quilts. The development of Zentangle by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas was a fantastic catalyst for Jane to create background fillers from her drawing and use everyday life and items for their inspiration.

If you are interested in taking a class with Jane please visit the website to see what she has on offer.  Jane’s DVD has certainly created excitement on the forums with people anxious to learn her technique.

That’s it for now, until next time….

Keep on quilting!

Sharon & Tracey

AMQF Staff

Tracey and I are on a mini-break at present, we’re attempting to catch up with our families and spend some time with them before preparations begin in earnest for AMQF 2012.

Tracey is in the South-East of South Australia staying in their caravan and I am in Tasmania trying to catch a glimpse of Tony (DH) in between his speedway commitments!

Neither of us has much computer access and I’m even more limited as it would seem that Optus has omitted to install many towers in Tassie at all.  Please forgive us if your questions haven’t been answered or dealt with in our usual way – we are doing our best and it seems there’s never a good time to take a break!

Volunteers

In 2010 we were blessed to have so many people nominate as Volunteers are we are hoping that we have support again for AMQF 2012.

Val Towill has offered to once again take on the position of Volunteer Coordinator and she will create and maintain a database and allocate volunteers where needed.  Val is about to undergo a complete knee replacement and we wish her all the best for her surgery and a quick and painless recovery. 

I will be taking the nominations up until March when Val will take over.  If you would like to offer your services for the many available tasks please email me your details, sharon@amqfestival.com.au and the times/day/s that you would like to help.  This information will be passed on to Val and she will be in touch with you in due course. 

Teacher/Class Information

As you know the information on our Teachers and classes was released last week.  Primarily this was done so that those travelling from interstate and overseas can make their travel arrangements and take advantage of the cheaper flights.  We will have further information available closer to the opening of registrations. 

We will be profiling each of our teachers and this week we will start with Cindy Needham.

Cindy is known as the Linen Lady as she has mastered the art of taking an old piece of linen that had no further use and turned it into an heirloom and at the same time giving it a new lease of life.  She is a fantastic teacher with a great sense of humour which will become apparent as she shares her stories.

Cindy is teaching a total of 5 classes and these classes are for anyone that uses a sewing machine of any kind – all Cindy’s work is done on a domestic sewing machine but it is easily adapted to mid and longarm machines.  She shares all her techniques and you will be confident in your ability to produce some beautiful work of your own at the end of the class.

Cindy is also a National Educator for Superior Threads and what she doesn’t know about threads isn’t worth knowing:-) She will impart her knowledge of thread during her “Threadbar” classes which will cover thread weight, tension, needles, delivery and the tricks of the trade on troubleshooting even the crabbiest of threads!

To see some of Cindy’s work please visit, www.cindyneedham.com

Until next time, keep on quilting!

Cheers

Sharon & Tracey

2012 Teacher listing

It is with great pleasure that we can now announce our teachers for 2012. We want to shout this to the rooftops!!!

We have an amazing line up of teachers for Festival this year, with still some more to come prior to opening registrations. We are just working out the final details of some new & exciting classes for everyone. Please pass this on to all your friends & quilting cohorts so that they can either bookmark this blog or sign up to the newsletter to get the information direct in their inbox when we send it out.

To see the list of 23 teachers that are offering 74 different classes you can visit our website here. Please note that registrations for all these classes will not open until April 2012, so PLEASE do not ask us to take early bookings at this time. We will be profiling all our staff over the next few months and everyone now has the opportunity to dream, plan & save for this amazing event.

Many of you have been asking what will be available to enable you to plan your travel & accommodation accordingly. Well now this will give you something to work on! Don’t forget that accommodation options are listed on our website, but that there is ample choices in Adelaide with the Festival being held right in the centre of the city on North Terrace. The Adelaide Convention Centre is located next door to the Adelaide Railway station, so all trains will finish their journey right next door as well as our tram service from Glenelg, that stops right out front!

Only 9 months to go & we have lots still to do! It is exciting working on all this & we are honoured to do this to assist in promoting the opportunity to receive education on all types of machine quilting. We love that we can assist those business’s that make huge efforts to provide goods & services to us here in Australia as well. 

In the near future we will have some pretty amazing offers to enhance the exposure of lots of little businesses here in Australia. We would like to encourage all readers to support those that support us!

Until next time…

Tracey & Sharon

Ricky Tims

The response to the Ricky Tims seminar has been fantastic and the enthusiasm for this is certainly infectious!  There are still vacancies for the seminar and if you know of anyone that is interested please let them know.  If you wish to book then please click on the link below;

http://www.amqfestival.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=57&Itemid=63

In the coming weeks we will be sending out registration letters that will include a registration number and this will need to be presented at the Registration Desk on your way into the Seminar. 

The reason for these letters being sent out is two-fold.  Firstly, it will confirm that your registration has been received and that you are on the Database for the seminar.  Secondly, this letter will need to be presented and exchanged for your “seminar bag”.  This bag will include your ticket to “Ricky’s Best Kept Secrets”, a 56 page Book and your ticket to the Quilt Show & Vendor Mall which can be used on Friday 28th September. 

This will enable us to streamline the registration process on the day and ensure everyone is seated in a timely manner.

Please keep this registration letter in a safe place as it is a vitally important part of the registration process.  

Classes and Teachers

We are really pleased and excited to have 23 teachers & 74 classes planned at this stage with more being negotiated prior to registrations opening.

The classes will cover longarm,  midarm & domestic machines. There will be classes for those with computerised systems including Intelliquilter,  Statler,  Compuquilter & Qbot.  There will also be classes  that focus on design, drawing,  embellishment, art quilting & digitising.  The list of classes will be released in the near future although registrations won’t open until 15th April.  There really will be something for everyone!

Sponsorship Packages

The major sponsorship packages have now been emailed out to our previous sponsors and we are currently seeking further sponsors.  If you would like a copy of the packages available please don’t hesitate to contact us.

We are also looking for “contingency sponsors” and we are certainly open to discussion and negotiation.  If you have any products that you’d like to donate or a new notion that you’d like to get out into the quilting community we have many unique ways of helping you do this. 

An event such as this requires sponsorship so that we can make it as spectacular as possible.

All sponsorship queries should be directed to sharon@amqfestival.com.au

It’s now less than 9 months until Festival is here and we’ve certainly got our work cut out til then!

Until next time,

Sharon & Tracey