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 s…

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