An inspiring week...

This is  a foundation pieced small quilt I did  some time ago. Easy technique, very eye catching in the black and multi colour.

The  most exciting quilting thing that happened this week was that my friend Louise bought one of my quilts at a charity auction, and  wants me to enlarge it  from double to queen size by adding a border . It was very encouraging that someone liked my quilt enough to actually pay MONEY for it.

Also went to the Craft and Sewing Show in Brisbane on the weekend. Most impressive were the "Under the southern Sky" quilts,banner shaped quilts  depicting many aspectts of Australia and New Zealand.  Another interesting thing  at the Show were talks by the woman from the Punch with Judy  stand about "upcycling" or re shaping or embellishing plain T shirts and sweatshirts to make  new clothing. That is exactly what I am interested in at the moment.

Off the sickbed and back into the routine

Hello, back again after illness and a short stay in hospital. Nothing serious, all better now.

this is just a doodle where I started in the centre and just kept adding. I have noticed a theme  in my doodles  of repeated shapes connected by bars.

This photo below is the portrait I have been working on.  It looks quite strong and compelling in a photo.  I have overlaid some beige satin on the highlights of his face, ready for some free motion machine stitching.

My journal has lapsed a bit also. It's so easy to get out of the routine. But I am making the effort and trying to do the daily drawing again.

fabric journal cover

This is a fabric journal cover that  I made, using leaf themed fabric and appliqued leaves drawn from real Australian gum leaves. Inside the covers the fabric forms a pocket to hold the covers, and the top and bottom edge are bound in satin stitch .

self portrait, quilt design

this is  the week's  offering,  a basic quilt design inspired by a necklace.  I liked  playing around with the necklace to find the most pleasing design. The necklace had beads of a consistent size but I think the variation in size is more pleasing. This one definitely needs a bit more work.

this is a self portrait in pen  and watercolour pencil, done with a magnifying mirror. Bear in mind that this was first thing in the morning, and I am not a  morning person!

Miniature quilt nearly complete

My miniature quilt is nearly complete. I have added sashing and corner posts to the 12 foundation pieced blocks. It was  all very tedious and I think it will be my only miniature quilt. What was particularly hard was accuracy on the sashing. In retrospect this  should have been foundation pieced also as any tiny  error really shows up. Next step  is the quilting. I was going to hand quilt this in the ditch, but hand quilting is very difficult when there are so many seams and thicknesses. I did a few stitches then gave up,  so this will be a machine quilting job. It is destined to become a table runner. Miniatures are very cute but definitely for the obsessives among us. Having said that, it was good to do once!

I came across a great quote today, in a decluttering  and organisation website-

(with apologies to 'Me and Bobby McGee')

Freedom's just  another word for

Nothing left to do. 

Art Journal going great!

I  recently had a birthday ending in "0" and  the house was full of beautiful flowers from my friends, including these orchids. I can see this  becoming an art quilt.

A quilt design, this would be raw edge applique on the orange and green background.

The view from the back deck including  corgi Pixie and my husband's foot!

A bunch of roses also for my birthday, these were  exquisite deep yellow with red petal edges.

My rules of art journal drawing

1. relax. Don't stress about it. Take a cup of tea into your  drawing area.

Have a special place where you can leave all your supplies out.

2.  start in  or near the centre of the page, with the focal point of the scene and work outwards until you hit the edge of the paper. The location of each item is worked out by what is adjacent. This works well with flowers and landscapes but not so well with  horses and people where spatial  accuracy is important.

3. Don't judge it at all.

4. Be patient and keep going. Push through the stages where it looks awful ( and  you shouldn't be thinking it's awful as you aren't judging it)

5. As the drawing happens each day, it doesn't matter  if some  don't work out. Doing it daily takes away the preciousness of each work, allowing you to take risks and possibly ruin it by trying something new.

6. draw whatever comes to mind. If you are short of inspiration, look out a window, grab a magazine, pick up some scraps from the sewing room floor and scatter them on the page and join them with lines.  Another good idea is to choose an item and draw it each day for several days using different media, different scale, different angles.

7. After a short while it is easy to sit down and get into the drawing frame of mind (right brain) very quickly.

8. Stop when you've had enough, or filled the page, or   completed the sketch of the item to a point where it has come to a natural conclusion.

Enjoy your drawing!

gingko shirt

this is our gorgeous backyard with old 1970s pool, and a new garden which I am trying to establish (all you can see is some ornamental grass but there are plumbago and geranium bushes there also.

this is my next "upcycled "item of clothing. A plain green check top from the op shop, was embellished with gingko leaves. I googled "gingko"and got some images to draw leaf designs, then traced them onto  fusible web which I ironed onto a nice yellow  and green   hand dyed quilting fabric from my stash. They were then fused to the shirt and  sewn around with zigzag on the machine, using  a variegated  machine embroidery thread.

My aim this year is to not buy any new clothing,  just adapt my existing items. There are a lot of clothes in my Mending  bag needing just buttons or taking in,

and some just need a bit of a lift, embellishing, and I will be  putting these on the blog as I do them.

original quilt designs

This is a medallion quilt design, intended to be in cream, grey and taupe, very subtle with just a small flash of red. I saw some lovely japanese quilts at the Houston Quilt Festival which were very understated in these colours. The central tree and surrounding branches would be appliqued. The outer border could be a striped fabric or could be pieced in the black, brown and cream.

this is another applique quilt design, I would make this with raw edge applique. The background behind the purple fronds is supposed to be turquoise.  

This pear design would be made with appliqued pears onto the blue-purple blocks, and these would be appliqued to a large piece of blue for the background, along with orange squares and joining dark blue bars.

These designs were all done with derwent inktense pencils, which are a coloured pencil  that becomes watercolour when wet, so you colour in the area then go over it with  a brush and water. Magic!