To Be Resourceful...

Having set myself the challenge not to purchase anymore fabric (yeah right, you say.) I have taken a leaf out of Mary Ellen Hopkin's book when she says to pick the scraps up off the floor and put them on the back. Well they weren't on the floor but I did use the fabric leftover after piecing, to widen the backing.
I have made two simple lap size quilts from two charm square packs, two jelly rolls along with a couple of metre lengths from the Ticklish range of fabric. For the first I used the pink, purple and aqua pieces holding over the yellow, green and orange pieces for the second.

Its all about the Pink in Quilt No 1.....

I couldn't keep my commitment for the pinks (favourite colour), I found some of the Ticklish range available in flannel and so I did make a purchase for the backing on Quilt No 1. However I stuck to my guns with Quilt No 2.

I had just enough length of one piece of fabric but the width was narrow. So joined all the scraps from the jelly rolls together to make three long strips. I interspersed a couple of other leftovers and then inserted the pieced section at the 1/3 mark across the width.

Why did I split the piece at the 1/3 mark? I didn't want any seams to fall anywhere near the edge of the quilt top because I want to avoid unseemly extra bulk in the binding. Even if I carefully plan the placement of the seams sometimes the quilting will shrink the quilt and plans can go astray and it is better to be safe than sorry.

Sorry about the yellow piece of paper there, it is a note to self indicating the top edge and how far down to position the top of the quilt so that I also miss the horizontal seams in the strips.

Oh and by the way, contrary to the suggestion I make on my website Pieced Backings I do not have all the fabric grains travelling in the same direction. The Crosswise grain of the jelly roll strips is travelling in a vertical direction  and the crosswise grain of the main piece of fabric is travelling in a horizontal direction. It's okay though because I took care when piecing and cutting, strips are straight and even, the whole backing is laying flat and I'm sure it will work well.

So next time you are thinking what to 'put on the back', try using up the scraps.... it's fun and it works!

The finished quilt.

 

Textile Art Festival- Brisbane

I took the afternoon off last Friday to venture into the Textile Art Festival. It turned out to be a very inspiring afternoon.

Twelve by Twelve

The Twelve by Twelve exhibit was my favourite. It is the result of an online collaborative project where twelve quilt artists from all over the world present each other with a challenge based on a particular theme or colour palette. You can see the quilts on the web but it's not as impressive as seeing them up close.

I was fascinated as I listened to one of the artists, Kirsten Duncan of Pom Pom Rouge, Townsville talk about the ideas, inspiration and techniques used to create these marvellous little quilts. Kirsten sells these neat little colourful cut-out felt shapes. Check out her website and blog, PomPom Rouge.

I also caught Brenda Gael Smith’s photo transfer demonstration using a product designed to remove "sticky spots and goo" and saw some great pieces from the Shibori Dying demo she had given in the morning. Brenda gives more info here at Serendipity.

Resisting Temptation - or not!

I managed to walk past the numerous stalls selling all sorts of wool and yarn, (there just aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything) but I couldn’t resist the colourful display of Lisa Walton’s dyed fabric. I bought some! You can see her range at Dyed and Gone to Heaven.

Down the hole with  Alice...

I went down the hole to see the very imaginative entries in the Alice in Wonderland Art U Wear competition, found an interesting selection of triptychs in the Elements display by the Darling Downs Textile Art Group and saw a stunning piece of freeform crochet produced by Prudence Mapstone. WOW! I ran into a few friends and stopped for coffee. I had a great time and although I had never been to this Festival before I certainly want to go to the next one.

What a wild quilt!

Isn’t this a wild quilt! I just love all these beautiful animal prints.

The quilt was made by Jane Bester for her son Jonathan to celebrate his 15th birthday.


She fussy cut all the blocks for maximum effect from several jungle animal prints. She made three different sized blocks and framed them in different colours to add movement, variety and interest.



Here are some close-ups:

Jane has also pieced some leftover blocks into the backing and in so doing, she has created a double-sided quilt.

When Jonathan and Jane asked me to do the quilting they said they would like the quilting to give the effect of swaying grass.

I used a pattern called ‘Blackberry’ which was designed by Hermione Agee of Lorien Quilting. It added so much movement, you can really get the feeling of the savannah. The quilting is easier to see in the above photo of the pieced back and the one of the border on the right, shows the detail.

Happy Birthday Jonathan and thank you for sharing your quilt with us.

You can see more of Hermione’s digitized and paper quilting patterns at http://www.lorienquilting.com/

The Inaugural AMQA Quilt Show

This was a wonderful show with so many inspirational quilts on display. It was held at the Auditorium at Eventide, Brighton, Queensland, near the edge of the water on the north side of Brisbane. A great venue in a convenient and very beautiful location.
The show ran over the weekend of the 26 - 27 September 2009 and was the very first show run by the Australian Machine Quilting Association in Queensland to focus on machine quilting.

It was a shame that Brisbane was hit by dust storms on the days of the show so fewer people that anticipated ventured out to see it, but even so, it was very well received.


I was very fortunate to win prizes in several categories for quilts I had both made and quilted, and for those some of my wonderful customers had made and I had quilted. They very kindly allowed me to show their quilts. I thought you might like to see these prize wining quilts.

Prize winners

In the Art/Pictorial category quilts I both made and quilted won 1st and 3rd prizes! I was over the moon!

Uluru - 1st Prize	Solutions - 3rd Prize

In the Edge to Edge category Earthy Squares won third prize and Hop, Skip and Jump was Highly Commended. Both quilts were made my Kate Elliott (Scarborough, Qld) and quilted by me.

Earthy Squares	Earthy Squares detail	Hop, Skip and Jump

In the Functional Custom category I entered Burning Desire which was Highly Commended. This quilt is owned by Ann McKenzie but was made for her by her daughter Debbie Morton.

Burning Desire	Burning Desire detail

In the Custom-Heirloom/Traditional section I was fortunate enough to win third prize for quilting Lyndell McDonald's quilt ( Kyogle, NSW) Follow the Path and a Highly Commended for Rosa Mangano's quilt (Gordon Park, Qld) Heirloom Lace.

Follow the Path	Follow the Path detail
Heirloom Lace	Heirloom Lace detail

It was really exciting for me to able share these prizes with my customers and present their ribbons to them.


One of my own personal favourite quilts is Oh My Stars! It was too old to be entered here but I thought you might like to see it anyway.

Information about AMQAS 2010 is now available.

A win at the NSW Quilters' Guild Quilt Show!

The NSW Quilters' Guild Quilt Show is on in Sydney at the moment and one of my clients - Lorna Haigh - won first prize in the Commercially Machine Quilted category! Her quilt is called Australian Wildflowers and is a stained glass style wall hanging that has been machine stitched, hand embroidered and then machine quilted by me. Here is a photo of it.



Congratulations Lorna! A prize well-deserved.

I have had the privilege to quilt some of Lorna's work before. Her quilts vary in style and technique, always something different. I think she likes the fun in challenging me! Check out these:






Visit the Quilters' Guild of NSW website here to see all the winning quilts.

The Sharon Schamber Workshops

Sharon Schamber is an absolute quilting legend. her work is exquisite and she freely shares her knowledge and expertise both through free videos on Youtube and through paid workshops. While her videos are great for those who can't get to a workshop there is really nothing like meeting her and having her guidance first hand.

This photo was taken at Sharon's lecture and that gorgeous quilt is her Spirit of Mother Earth. It's even more stunning up close and personal!

Sharon Schamber in Australia - May 2009

In May 2009 quilters all over Australia were treated to some of Sharon's workshops. Pam Hill of Manly hosted the tour and organised workshops at Tweed Heads, Brisbane, Maleney and South Australia. The Piec-lique class proved very popular but it was the 3-Day Longarm Quilting workshop that was of particular interest to me.

This turned out to be three days of absolute quilting bliss! Pam’s home is located at Manly overlooking Moreton Bay and you can see from the above photos it was just the most fantastic venue, perfect weather (not that rain would have dampened our enthusiasm) scrumptious food and lots of fun in learning.

Quilters travelled from Victoria, Western Australia, all over Qld and Northern NSW and they were not disappointed they made the journey.

The workshops

My good friend Wendy Watkins of Honey Pot Quilting came up from Bendigo (What an excellent excuse for a 3 ½ day leave pass from 2DD’s and DH). Wendy stayed with us at the Aspley Hacienda and as is always the case when we get together, the weekend was a hoot.
We attended Sharon’s lecture at Qld Quilters headquarters on the Thursday night and were just gobsmacked by the display of stunning quilts. Seeing Sharon’s ‘Spirit of Mother Earth’ up close and personal was awe inspiring. Such perfection in the detail. No wonder Sharon has an extensive list of awards and acknowledgements. Wendy and I both hoped some of the creativity would jump over onto us as we almost drooled over the beautiful quilts.

Day One – Wendy hit the shops for some retail therapy (Wuz up with that!) while I headed off to Manly for a day of Trapunto and Beginning Stipples. It didn’t take too long to discover that I was in the company of a very confident teacher. Sharon has a thorough knowledge of her machine which by the way is a Prodigy (that was one tick for me!). Sharon welcomed questions from her audience and was happy for the ensuing discussion to take place. I found her to be a very confident and helpful teacher.

More happy faces.....
L-R Judy Nolan, Robyn Dall, Debbie Cadman, Sharon Schamber and Elizabeth Magagnotti. came over from WA. (Those girls really know how to have fun at work!)

The two days that followed were filled with even more inspiring quilting... we learnt how to ‘Dance with Feathers’ and how to quilt all those creative stipples from ‘Spirit of Mother Earth’. Sharon truly is a very creative artist!

Show and Tell was amazing! This quilt is a stunner and just look at all those stipples and such majestic feathers!

All things considered... it was a fantastic weekend. Thank you Sharon and thank you Pam.

A Day with Barb

Sandy Cunningham of Murwillumbah, NSW, visited my studio recently for an all-day 'watch and learn' session of longarming. What a great day!

Sandy has a different computerised operating system so I only utilised my Intelliquilter to lock a straight line of basting when necessary.

The lesson predominantly involved manual techniques and the variety of pieced borders on this little quilt made it an excellent teaching sample. I was able to demonstrate quite a few techniques and discuss certain choices in building-up the overall plan, including,

• floating the top,


• stabilising the quilt into workable sections,


• why I needed to use different techniques, and


• how to use those techniques to apply different types of quiting whilst limiting the (all too time consuming) number of stops and starts and thread changes.
  

It all worked and 'Flutterby' came together very well. Sandy said she learnt heaps!