And 2 more

Are you getting bored with them yet?!



I am making a print of all of the six events in men's artistic gymnastics: floor exercise, pommel horse, still rings, vault, parallel bars, and high bar. Only the vault left to do now - tonight, I hope. And then I will endeavour to make them all into a quilt... maybe in time to enter it in the State of the Art Quilt 2010.

Another gymnast

Just printed - not even completely dry yet (but I have to go now).

Screen printing

I did some more screen printing yesterday (using a freezer paper stencil) - this is the result. Here is the second gymnast, working on the rings. There will probably follow another 2 or 3.



In the end this may or may not become a quilt...

I love screen printing!

Spoonflower fabric

Today my Spoonflower fabrics arrived. I'm very pleased with my Houses of Amsterdam fabric! Do you think there might be a future for me in fabric design? ;-)



I also had 2 swatches (8x8in) printed with a feather design found at this website, for a feather quilt that I hope to make one day. They turned out very well too.

The quilt for the Queensland Quilt Show is almost finished, I only need to hand sew the binding to the back. The selvedge bag for Down Under Quilts is finished too. This week I hope to do some screen printing!

Playing Cards

My online artquilt group, Art Quilts Around the World, organized another postcard swap recently. The theme was Playing Cards. I got a Diamond from Simone, Let's Play from Lynn and the Ace of Diamonds from Marian.



And I made these cards; I quilted the figures first and then coloured them in with Inktense pencils. A fun technique that I may also use for the currrent challenge: when or where land and sea meet.

The Grameldon and my sewing room

I'm very busy at the moment, but nothing I can show here yet - postcards that are on their way to the recipients, selvedge items for the December issue of Down Under Quilts, a quilt that I want to enter in the Queensland Quilt Show - so I will show you a drawing made by my 4 year old son Ernst.

Until quite recently Ernst wasn't interested in drawing/painting/collaging at all, unlike his older brother Hugo (6) who brought home works of art from his child care centre when he was only 1 year old. But in the last few months Ernst has suddenly discovered the joy of drawing. Here is a drawing of a creature called The Grameldon. It is something that Ernst started telling us about a while ago and sounds like a mix of a superhero and a dinosaur - although here it looks a bit cat-like as well ;-). I am thinking we might make a Grameldon-quiltlet...

I tidied up my sewing room this week, so here are a few pics of that too.



The bookcase with my quilting books and magazines, sketchbooks, postcards and ATCs and other things I like looking at (my feather collection, a thread painting made by my friend Mady, a lovely pic of baby Ernst etc).



Here is my fabric collection, in a couple of boxes - not too bad, hmm?



Painting supplies under the ironing board:



And my sewing table looking very tidy indeed!

New foot

This is my new free motion quilting foot. A lot better than the much smaller darning foot I used until now. The background quilting on the current quilt was a breeze with it yesterday. I'm very pleased with this quilt so far!

Sneak peek

Okay, here is a sneak peek of the new quilt... Anyone recognize it?
I am going to pick up the new free motion quilting foot for my Janome DC 3050 this afternoon and get on with the quilt tonight! Can't wait.

Postcard

As was to be expected, I made a postcard out of the screen printed fabric, and sent it to Lyric Kinard to thank her for introducing me to screen printing ;-).
I am making some more - one is for Marloes, but the others aren't spoken for yet, so if you would like to swap a postcard, let me know.

There are some other projects going on at the moment - the first is a new selvedge bag. Down Under Quilts have asked to include the selvedge bag I made last year as a project in their December issue. Although I still love that bag, there are a few things I would do differently now, so I decided to make a new one. It makes writing the instructions easier as well.

And the other project is a new quilt... At this stage I don't want to put any photos on the blog, but here are a few hints: it involves raw edge applique and a lot of free motion quilting, and the observant reader of this blog may guess what it is! So far it is coming along nicely, although at the moment I am a bit stuck... I will leave it for a few days to work on the selvedge bag and then look at it again. It needs to be finished before September 11th, for I want to enter it in the Queensland Quilt Show.

Fabric designer

Remember that I recently discovered Photoshop? Today I discovered Spoonflower. And those two sites make a great combination! I designed my own fabric and ordered a FQ of it. Can't wait to get it! Have a look at my designs here.

Thermofax printing

Yesterday I got the thermofax screens I ordered from Lyric, so of course I played with them for hours! I am really pleased with the Houses of Amsterdam screen. I saw something like it here and asked Marion if she made the screen herself. She did not answer (I guess she's away, it's the summer holidays now in the Netherlands), so I decided to try and design one myself. Using a photo of some houses in Amsterdam, I made this drawing and send it to Lyric to have it made into a thermofax screen. And hasn't it turned out beautifully!



I ordered a medium and a large screen. The medium image will be great for making postcards.
Here I tried to make a row of houses:



Printing on a piece of painted fabric:



I also had some thermofax screens made of my gymnast image - a solid one and an outline:



I made this t-shirt for my gymnast son Hugo:



I love screen printing!

:-))

A final posting about the selvedge quilt...

In my haste to show you the finished quilt I completely forgot something in the last posting. I meant to acknowledge all the quilters who sent me selvedges and thus made this quilt possible.

So, a big thank you to:

Pam, Jennifer, Kerrie, Jean and Shaaryn from Australia;

Bernadette, Marleen and Jeanette from Belgium;

and Jelly, Merel, Ariane, Shirley, Marianne, Erika, Jantine, Anita, Lilou, Truus, Petra, Margeeth and Marloes from the Netherlands!

Also many thanks to everyone who commented on the blog or sent me an email. I got lots of suggestions for a name. And this is the one I liked best:

(drumroll)

Salvaged Selvedges!

Thank you Anne from Newport who suggested this name. If you let me know your address I will send you a selvedge item!



PS Stay tuned for the next posting, which will appear shortly - I have had great fun playing with some new toys!

Oh yes

It is done.



At last!



This is me, yesterday night, just after finishing the quilt.



And here it is on our bed. I have just heard that the article on selvedge items will be in the December issue of Down Under Quilts, so it does not need to be in Sydney until September 18th (my 40th birthday!). I'm glad we can have it on our bed in the cold August month after all.



It will be the last queen sized quilt I will be making for a long time! But it does feel good to have finished it. And just in time to show it tomorrow at the meeting of the Brisbane ScQuilters.



PS It does not have a name yet - I can't seem to think of one. Suggestions welcome; I'll make a selvedge item for you if you come up with THE name for this quilt!