It just gets better…

Check out the cover of the new Quilters Companion magazine.

That is my quilt!! I knew that it would be published in this issue, but I didn’t know that it would be on the cover. What a thrill! I haven’t actually seen the magazine yet, only on the website. I hope to have one soon. You can bet that my mother will be carrying it around in her handbag and showing it to complete strangers in the street.

I feel on top of the world right now. I took a big risk this year. I took a year away from a teaching position to ‘have a go’ at being a quilter. I was certain that I would bankrupt us, be responsible for all sorts of bad luck etc etc. But from this side of the year it life feels quite wonderful. Maybe fortune does favour the brave.

Makes me Proud

This year I had a quilt selected for inclusion in the Down Under Quilts 2007 Calendar. (I am Miss June).

The publishers of the magazine also organised for the quilts to be exhibited at International Quilt Week in Yokohama. Yesterday I received an e-mail from Erica Spinks, editor of the magazine asking permission to also exhibit the quilts at International Quilt Week Osaka March 15-17 2007.

How very exciting! It will be a well travelled quilt by the time I see it again!

Geometry

I have drawn up some pointy blocks onto freezer paper for my pineapple quilt. I used my husband’s compass set that you can see. He has had it since he was doing graphics in year nine. He is an architect now, so it is very precious to him. Mind you, he hasn’t used it for a VERY long time because everything is done with computers now.

I wish that I could tell you that I used a mathematical formula to work out this block. I did wonder how long the circle arcs were in order to segment the pointy shapes evenly. Something to do with pi multiplied by the radius???. But then my head hurt so I just used a guess and check method. I don’t really care if it is mathematically correct, it looks how I wanted it to look. If I learn something out of this then the next one will look better.

I have traced four of these blocks onto freezer paper (using pencil, not nikko as in the picture). These will be for paper piecing. Hope to have them done soon.

Push Pineapple, Shake the Tree

This is a really quick sample piece that I put together to show our hand-dyed fabrics. It took all of ten minutes to conceive the idea, draw the picture, trace, cut and fuse…but I really like it. Maybe it’s because it makes me think about my grandparents. They retired to Yeppoon in the late 70’s. Yeppoon is on the central Queensland coast, where there were lots of pineapple farms. Of course now it is highly sought after coastal property and the farms are being pushed out.

I am going to make a larger version of this piece with some spike pieced blocks to echo the spiky pineapple tops. Naturally there were no ‘just perfect’ colours in the whole 65 metres that we dyed, but I am happy with this choice of colours:

The one on the right is much bluer in real life. I have added some pink to make it feel tropical and bring the other colours out. Will post photos as I go along.

Sorry about the title too, a reference to bad 80’s pop.

November Stall at Craft Market

Yesterday Flo and I launched our hand-dyed fabrics at a local craft market. It was not the resounding success we were hoping for! We sold only enough pieces to cover our stall – which we thought looked pretty good!

Doesn’t that look like the sort of stall that you would want to visit? It seems that most people were looking for ready made items – we had none. The stall next to us made a killing selling pink, glittery items (ghastly) to parents who could not say no to their daughters. Smart lady selling that stuff. You can see a peek of her stall here.

So now the fabrics are neatly piled up on the shelf at my house while I gaze admiringly upon them.

Maybe I ought to put them onto the internet?… Maybe Flo and I should use them! We think they are beautiful.

Quilting

I am pretty happy with my machine quilting at the moment. I have progressed in my free motion to the point where I am forming feathers and swirly shapes as background fillers. This is a client quilt which is soft and pretty and looks great with these romantic swirls. The rose buds that you can see are a Quilters Niche design stitched out with the computer.

Work in Progress and Helpful Husbands

I recently bought the blue and green fabrics in the new Nancy Halvorsen range, Angels Among Us. I love these colours. I have made 4 inch half square triangles, using the fabrics randomly, and cut 4 inch squares. This random layout that you see here took me about two hours to arrange. It reminds me of under the sea. The diagonal lines are the light penetrating the water. My husband listened to this, nodded and asked “So why is the sunlight coming from two different directions?”

So the blocks are still laying on the floor while I ponder whether I will change the diagonals to run in the same direction or just take ‘artistic liscence’.

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.