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.

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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/

Craft show

Wow, it's been 2 months since I blogged... and what have I done in that time, quilt-wise... well not much at all. I seem to skip from project to project, without finishing much. Mind you, our younger daughter and her husband have moved back home to save a deposit to buy a house. They have brought two puppies with them, who sleep in the laundry. Trouble is, the laundry is close to my sewing room and I'm being careful not to disturb them. And probably another factor is the rotten flu I had several weeks ago, that I'm still getting over.

I've put together the bali pop blocks into a barn-raising set and now am stuck on what to do next. It definitely needs something... got some embellishments that I'm mulling over... So that quilt top is sitting in a corner for now.



I loved the Sudoku quilt pattern shown in a quilt magazine recently, so I've cut out 2 colourways- one big bright florals and one in black & white. I plan to make it a reversible quilt, so will do QAYG to match the sides. I've got 3 of the bright blocks sewn together.. still heaps to go.



The Craft show in Brisbane recently just gets better, particularly as there are more stands for textile craft. I did a class in felting and made this groovy felted flower from wool with silk strands on top.




I also bought two pieces of beautiful velvet along with a bag frame, to make a handbag for a Masquerade Ball this weekend. It's to go with a dress that I made years ago - luckily I still had some of the fabric, so lined the bag with the fabric (seen in the background).

At the same stand where I bought the velvet, I also bought a wonderful selection of sequins - a bit different, they were square or flower shapes! They come from Colour Stream Sequins: http://www.colourstreams.com.au/


I've also done some sorting out of my scraps into strips, trimmed some to various square shapes and left others in scrap piles. Great to get it done.