Quilting retreat July 2010

I attended the Coorparoo Quilters annual retreat at Mt Tamborine last weekend.  We all arrived on Friday afternoon and left on Sunday afternoon.  The theme was "Christmas in July" and we each had to make a block with the challenge fabric.  The blocks were divided into groups of 6 blocks and I was lucky enough to win one lot of blocks (the best group, I think!).  We also had to bring Secret Santa gifts - I made a little jewelry roll and also a pencil roll out of pretty pink & green batik.  I received a nice table topper in Christmas fabrics in a log cabin design.

All in all, it was a fun weekend.  We all worked on whatever projects we wanted.  I took along a foundation pieced table runner - a pineapple design with lots of small pieces (what was I thinking?)  I didn't finish it over the weekend - got through 10 blocks and have 4 more to finish off.

Sudoku quilt - reverse side

Here is the reverse of the Sudoku quilt - obviously in black & white. 

Now I just have to put the two sides together! 

I'm thinking of tieing the quilt in case each side is different in size. 

small projects

Last weekend, I finished off two small projects - a bag and a cushion.

The bag is made from 4 fat eights of book theme fabric.  I had bought the fabric a long time ago, intending to make a bag from it.  A librarian I worked with is retiring tomorrow, after 44 years in our library service.  She is a very lovely gentle person and so I have made the bag as my gift to her.  I only used the four fabrics - it is about 30cm square, fully lined and padded with fusible pellon.

The cushion started as a project in my quilting group a fortnight ago.  To participate, we needed to bring in our buttons, plus a piece of fabric lined with pellon, or an item of clothing.  We then drew the hearts and sewed buttons in the heart shape.  I wanted my button heart to look sumptuous.  I had a collection of leaf buttons from a Button shop in The Rocks, Sydney.  The fabric is left-over scraps from Tegan's Year 12 Formal outfit.  The buttons are mostly plain shirt buttons - I've used pearl buttons on the leaves and also several fancy flower buttons.  I finished it off with ruching and it is for our spare bedroom.

Painting fabric

I bought some textile inks in spray bottles at the Textile Fair last year - the brand is Moon Glow. These iridescent inks are in powdered form and are mixed with hot water.                                             I bought several bottles, not knowing quite what I'd do with them. I bought 2 Starburst Sprays: Cathedral Pine Green and Red Hot Poker Orange.  When sprayed, they leave a starburst, as seen left and below.  I really liked these effect, especially as they dried very glittery.                                          Anotherer type I bought was Moon Shadow Mist: Moonlit Mulberry.  I was disappointed in this brown colour.

I also tried using the spray inks on a quilt top I had made from a birthday block swap.  I was bored with the quilt top and wanted to see if I could jazz it up.  Here is the quilt top before any colour went on.

You can see some of the starburst colour on a block below, but overall I wasn't fussed with the result.

Next I'm going to use some of my iridescent PaintStiks on the quilt top as well as the other fabric piece, to see if that will be more interesting.

The fabric and quilt top got caught in a heavy downpour and some of the colour came out.  Then the ultimate disgrace - one of my daughter's puppies decided that pulling the quilt top off the clothes line would be a fantastic game.  So now one border has got chew holes in it.......

Business card holder

I subscribe to the Quilting Daily email from   http://www.quiltingarts.com/ . One recent email had a link to a free downloadable ebook "Five small quilting projects".  
One of the projects is a business card holder which slides out your business cards when you pull on a ribbon or cord. The cord/ribbon loops under the business cards.

I've made one with some fab geometric fabric and put a few interesting beads and square sequins on it.  I also couched over blue glitter cord around the outside with brown thread.  Fun! 

I'm thinking of making a whole bunch of these to give away.  This business card holder is very easy to make.

Conference Services| Annual Conference |

Conference Services Annual Conference

L is for...

You know how an idea can swirl around in your head for a long period... and then you can see part of it clearly... then it swirls around again while you need some more inspiration?

Several months ago, I read an article (in Quilting Arts, I think) about making fabric book pages with a Letter as the theme. I thought about using this idea to make something for my sister and brothers for Christmas. The ideas certainly didn't gel enough in time for Christmas, but an idea stuck in my head for my sister, Lee.

Lee is our family historian, who has done an enormous amount of genealogy research. The image that kept popping into my head was of a glittery letter L that had an old tree growing around it. (Possibly fueled by a wonderful photo we have at work of a Moreton Bay Fig tree growing around a park bench in New Farm Park, Brisbane.)

It got to the point where I had to sketch the design to get it out of my head. I used to draw a lot when I was a teenager and have not done a lot since. But it was wonderful to pull out a sketch pad and pencil and get the design to a more concrete state.

In my vision, a person is standing at the top of a cliff and can see into a distant valley. This symbolises looking into our past, particularly to the green rolling hills of Britain, where most of our family line is from. The old tree is in the foreground, with a large L firmly entwined.

And a poem also emerged... a bit basic, but emerge it did.

L is for leaf

L is for Lee

They both fill the branches

Of our family tree

And then the sketch sat on my cutting table. I pulled fabrics - a great sky fabric with clouds, several woodgrain fabrics, lots of greens, some earthy fabrics and a dark purple fabric for branches in deep shade.

Last week, I started putting it together - cutting the background freehand - it didn't really matter if the mountains were a bit different. The tree I traced onto tracing paper and then pinned to the woodgrain fabric, cutting loosely around. I cut chunks for the cabin.

The Letter L is a piece of yellow fabric with gold foiling. My first try of the foiling technique.

The leaves and grass are all free-motion embroidered with wonderful variegated thread.

The branches are also emphasised or darkened with free-motion embroidery. Highlights were added with white Inktense pencil.

The person is drawn on with permanent pen, but the river in the background is sewn.

I've also used Inktense pencils for some shadowing, particularly the mountains.

sudoku quilt

I've finished the bright floral sudoku quilt top.
Nine different fabrics in a sudoku format -
nine in each square and across and down.











This quilt will be reversible - bright florals one side; black & white the other.
Here is the mix of black & white prints in a test block:

Playing with Inktense pencils

I bought a box of 12 Derwent Inktense pencils in 2008, but haven't done a lot with them (besides colouring in parts of a Christmas stitchery). I discovered that Eckersleys art shop in Brisbane has the full range of Inktense pencils available to purchase in boxes or individually. So now I have a whole lot of colours! :-) Plus I now have an outliner pencil (dark grey pencil that doesn't react to water) - good to draw the basic design with.

To use these pencils on fabric, you need to use textile medium with them. You can either paint on the textile medium and then draw over with the pencil, or draw with the pencil and then paint over the textile medium. I traced a few leaves and hearts with the outliner and set about colouring them in. Then I used textile medium (1 part medium, 2 parts water) with a fine brush and painted over each coloured area, cleaning the brush in water between each colour. I also did some very fine lines surrounding the leaves, creating a halo, and painted over. Colouring first and then painting with the textile medium keeps the colours lighter, as seen in this photo:

Next I experimented with doing both methods to see the colour difference. The red flower on bottom right was done by painting on the textile medium first, then colouring in with the pencil. Much more intense colour this way. The top left flower was done by colouring first, then painting over with textile medium. The photo on the right shows how the colour intensifies as you paint on the textile medium.

Here is the finished block with the two techniques used. The colours in this block generally are brighter, as more of it was done by painting first.

I think the damp cloth draws more colour out of the pencil as you use it. You do need to be careful that the cloth isn't too wet (esp if you go over your line), as it will bleed into that wet area. I also found it harder to have different strengths of the same colour. eg when colouring in on dry cloth, you can put a heaver concentration of colour in different spots (eg as shadowing), but I couldn't do this with the other method. Of course, it may simply be that this is my first experiement! :-)

It has been decades since I played with colour pencils (except helping little girls to colour in). I really need to play some more.....

View from my room

I'm a member of an online quilting group, Southern Cross Quilters. Recent topics have included the view from your sewing room and thread jars.

My sewing room looks out onto the side of our yard - really the side for the 'out-of-sight' things like the bins and the garden shed. We had started a garden bed but never put any plants into it. The main thing I looked out onto was a topiary fig with a wooden fence beyond. So I was inspired to go to the local nursery and buy a few plants to finish off the garden. So now when I sew during the day, I've got more greenery in my view. :-)

For around twelve months, I've been collecting my threads cut when sewing (hand sewing and machine sewing) and putting them into a big coffee jar. It will take a long time to fill!

I'm also a member of Coorparoo Quilters and I take along hand-sewing for our Tuesday night meetings. I've been working on a series of stitcheries by Robyn Allen Waters - The French Collection. Here are the ones I've finished so far - nearly done on a fourth one. I just fell in love with the designs and the hand-made buttons. We visited French speaking Switzerland last year and saw villages similar to these patterns - entrancing!

Here is the link to the designer:

http://www.orangedaisy.com.au/