One Joy

This is the quilt that I entered into the Down Under Quilts 100 competition. The theme was, of course, one hundred. I thought long and hard about what one hundred meant to me, but...nothing. So eventually I went to a quotations website and typed hundred as my search word. I found a Chinese proverb which said, One joy will shatter one hundred sorrows. Isn't that fantastic! It made me think about how a hug from a tiny person in your life makes all you worries melt.

I used one hundred four inch squares to represent the sorrows. They are black in a range of textural fabrics - suede, organza, tafetta, silk, satin and polyester. The enormous flower represents one joy and the dimensional butterflies - organza on netting - are spreading the joy.

Yesterday the quilt arrived home. It wasn't a winner in the competition. Tomorrow is my mother-in-law's birthday. She genuinely admired this quilt when I was making it. The timing of its arrival means that this will be a birthday gift for her! Saves me facing the shopping centres!

Craft Show

This week from Thursday through to Sunday is our craft show. It is supposed to serve as the craft show for the whole region - North Queensland, but this year it is disappointing. I am sorry to say that it has not been well organised or advertised. Lots of ladies didn't even know it was on until just days ago. That is not enough time for ladies in remote centres to organise a trip to Townsville. It is very small - about half the size of previous years. I hope that it won't be the last craft show in our area. There is already talk of a break away group organising their own show. I guess time will tell.

I am running one workshop and one demonstration each day. My workshop is making a postcard using christmas images printed onto fabric with lots of lace and button embellishments. It is a nice marriage between fibre arts and scrapbooking, as we are making a fabric collage. Below is a photo of my ladies working hard today.



Don't you love that moment in a workshop when everyone is so immersed in their creativity that a silence descends on the group! Look at the focus on all of these faces. This is really my whole workshop room. It was supposed to hold twenty people! I wouldn't like to be squeezed in there with nineteen others!

My demonstration each day has been of quilt as you go techniques. I have been making up a 'mock quilt' with tiny blocks and a border each day. I use it to demonstrate free machine quilting. Each day I have had a full house - about thirty ladies. I have received lots of positive feedback, which makes it all worthwhile!

Our Beautiful Fabric

A few weeks ago Flo and I began to experiment with hand dying fabric. The very next day I recieved a phone call inviting me to hold a table at our local Christmas market. This must be fate, so naturally I agreed, and with just five weeks to get ready we found ourselves very busy.

This week we have dyed sixty-five metre pieces of fabric.My husband and daughter have cooked all meals, my mum has helped out with ironing our fabrics, and everything else has had to wait. Mind you, I still managed to machine quilt two client quilts. It's really just housework that has to wait!

Here are two of our pieces which I love. Is it wrong to hope that no one will buy them?



Probably should have pressed the creases out of the second one...sorry.

Red Pleated Dress...

For Jan.

Here is a close up of the dress that interested you. It is my sister's favourite too. She wants to take this image to a dress maker and have one made to wear on special occasions!!

Sixteen...sigh

Last week my daughter (my eldest child) turned sixteen. I am really not sure where all that time went, nor am I sure that I could really be old enough to have a sixteen year old child! She went to leadership camp just a few days after her birthday and while she was gone I made her this quilt.

This is a Jan Mullen pattern called dressez. Thanks Jan and Sally for the kit that you sent. I was really pleased with the red 'hightlights' to the dressez. I am sure that I owned some of these dresses during the 1980s. I know that I made myself a red with black polka dot number for a wedding around 1988. Beautiful!

Name in Print

Isn't it nice to see your own name being acknowledged in a quilting publication. This is only the coming next issue section of Quilters Companion - not even the actual article! It still warms my heart, although I'm sure that I am the only one who noticed (after looking and searching!)

It seems odd to have my work descibed as traditional - I know that I hover around all quilt styles without specialising in any particular genre. I don't think of myself as traditional. Although in this project I was experimenting with shapes that gave a traditional result. I am looking forward to the magazine when it is published in November.

Elements - Kyoto

This is my entry to the local quilt competition which has the theme of ELEMENTS. It is called Kyoto as a political comment about energy. The red squares along the left hand side have a Japanese script printed on them. This is a lovely coincidence. I just liked the contrast of the red against the other colours. When I showed it to my quilting friend Jenny she asked "Did you choose the red fabric as a comment about the Kyoto protocol?" This is an issue which is close to her heart. Her daughter is actively involved in raising awareness around global warming issues. It sounded good to me, I was trying to make a comment about elements and energy from elements. So the quilt is now called Kyoto.

I really enjoyed making this quilt. I was quite impulsive in my processes. I just cut the shapes that I wanted from fabric already attached to fusible web, without any drawing, just visualising and cutting. I am sure that I will use this process a lot more for my own art quilts. No patterns! This photo has been taken prior to the quilting, which is quite heavy. I will take another photo when it is hanging at the exhibition.

Dying with Flo

Last weekend my friend Flo and I had a lovely time experimenting with hand dyes. We were pretty happy with our fabrics and have ordered more fabric.

I had initially envisioned us working in a very controlled manner, creating our colour combinations and recording them diligently. This lasted for about an hour, then we became completely impulsive and threw colours together. Naturally our impulsive work was much better than our controlled stuff. Who can be controlled and creative at the same time? NOT US!

Witches' Workshop

Tonight we are having a make it til midnight quilting session at the patchwork shop. My brief was to create a project in black and orange. Mine is not too witchy. It is however simple enough to be completed during our ten hour stitching frenzy (with plenty of breaks for eating, drinking, talking etc...).

You might recognise that the same fabrics were used in the postcards that I made. I quite liked this colour selection of analogous colours. I finally read a book about art and colour theory in quilting! All those colour choices that I had been making instinctively apparently do have some theory behind them. Fancy that!

Where to go with this?

This is a quilt that I have started. I think that it is for a local challenge with the theme of elements, but I'm not too sure where I am going with it. I like it...I guess, but it is not very interesting to me just now. My husband was glowing in his respnse to it, which is very unusual. Generally his comments are in the form of constructive criticism; lots of suggestions for improvements. Maybe the fact that he seemed so accepting of this work is the reason that I am not so trusting of it. Now that's reverse psychology!!!

I am thinking to quilt this in big circles and shading. Maybe I'll add some more applique after the quilting. It needs some other colours, it's a bit too monochromatic.

On another note I have been pondering the notion of the textile artist. When does one stop being a quilter and become a textile artist? Generally I refer to myself as a quilter. I design quilts, they are original designs with influence drawn form all that I see around me. (Even though I said original I know that there is nothing new under the sun) I create because I like to and I usually like what I create. I was drawn to consider all of this when someone referred to me as a 'crafter'. I found that a little offensive to my sense of art, but it seemed pretentious to say 'no, no I am an artist'. Maybe I'm nothing but completely self indulgent to my own desire to create! Whatever it is, whatever label is attached: I'm having fun.

Family Joy

Tomorrow my sister, her husband and their daughter fly to Taiwan to pick up their new son. Joseph has been in an orphanage since his birth in February. Our family has been waiting for many months for court processes to finalise to allow Joseph to come to Australia. We are looking forward to meeting him next week when they return home.

I have made some postcards for my sister to take with her as tokens of thanks for various people. I kept them very simple as I needed to be culturally sensitive. I am interested in further exploring the negativ space flower which is on top of this pile. It might feature in another quilt somewhere.

Border of the Month

I had to finish my quilting fast today so that I could get to my Border of the Month pattern for Sails by the Sea.



I spent far too long on photoshop trying to get my page set up just right. It was worth it though. I think it looks pretty darn good! Each page has a blue sea like section at the bottom, with an overlaid ship's wheel and fish. These were cut out from the photo...very time consuming. I am adding little pieces of interesting, but probably useless information, to each page of the pattern.

Now that I have the page layout and month one completed it shouldn't take me too long to finish the rest of the pattern...should it?

Jan's House

This little quilt is the result of a workshop with Jan Mullen of Stargazey Quilts. We were so lucky to have her visit our shop in Townsville. Fortunatley her style doesn't require exact measurments because I was terribly ill with the flu both days that I worked with her! These two blocks were the ones that Jan cut as a demonstration and I stitched for her. I randomly added bits and borders in a 'log cabin' style to finish this quilt at 19 inches by 20 inches. I still need to hand stitch the binding in place.

The ladies who attended the workshop were very keen to continue working in this style, so this weekend, with Jan's permission, I am teaching the first gathering of the Jan Mullen club the Christmas Treez block. Should be fun!

First Challenge Results

This week the challenge that I set for myself was to represent a fossil. After lots of thinking...the most time consuming part of the creative process...I decided to represent an ammonite. I like their spiral structure. They were once plentiful in the oceans and many fossils in various sizes have been found.

My first point of call was the internet to find a suitable photograph.




This one here is the one that I chose. I like the detail that it shows. I can follow the shape with my eyes. When I printed it out I forgot to change the orientation of the paper and only ended up with two-thirds of the image. I wasn't disappointed though, I found that I rather liked the partial image and decided to use that in my quilt.



Ammonite 11inches by 16 inches Ammonite - detail

I selected some beautiful hand-dyed fabric for my quilt. I bought it earlier in the year, but it is inspiring me to consider dying my own fabrics. I free hand cut a curved shape into both fabrics and then pieced them together. The quilting lines were used to 'draw' the ammonite shape in a brown thread. These were done free hand, without marking the fabric first, but using the picture as inspiration. The lines quilted into the brown background represent the cuts and gouges made by the paleontologist as they work to release the fossil from the rock.

Overall I am pretty happy with this quilt. I don't think that I am finsihed with ammonites just yet though. I would like to represent an ammonite in a more abstract way using applique. Maybe that should be my next challenge!

Delightful Distractions

This week I have been a little slow to complete my own challenge. The reason for my delay is the quilt that you see above. It looks small and delicate, but in truth this quilt was an absolute monster. It was over 3.5 metres long and was 2.7 metres wide. It was made by a dear lady who had redecorated her entire bedroom in hot pink and crinoline ladies in prepatation for the quilt. It took many hours to mctavish and left me with well developed arm muscles!! All worth the effort. My client was delighted with the result. She will have it bound and on the bed by now.

Delicate and Dramatic

This week I have worked on some quilts which could not be more different! This one was a Halloween inspired quilt. I have quilted orange bats on a black background...very dramatic.

The second one was a cream rosebud surrounded by McTavishing...very delicate! I will never be bored with this variety of quilts!

This year has marked a dramatic change in my life. I have gone from a full-time job surrounded by other intelligent women, to starting my own home based quilting business. At times the silence has been deafening. I enjoy the quilting that I am doing. I love to be immersed in creativity and textiles and I am creating a viable business around myself. I have recently been exploring the blogs of other creative, intelligent women and have decided to write my own blog as a means to converse with these people.

To that end, I have decided to set myself a regular quilting challenge. My quilt responses need only be at an A3 size, that is 30cm by 42cm or 12 inches by 16 inches. This size is able to be achieved in a relatively short amount of time, but it is big enough to let me explore techniques and materials. If any one should happen upon my blog and like to participate in my quilt challenges I would love to see your finished pieces (or UFO).

OK... First challenge. There have been quite a few dinosaur shows on TV in the last few weeks which have been catching the attention of the younger members of my family. So my first challenge is to represent a fossil.

Thinking already and off to sew!

This is my first post. A bit of an experiment to see what happens. If this works there will be more!