Where Land and Sea meet...

... you often find a lighthouse!



My goal in making this quilt was to try out a new technique - free-hand quilting a scene on PFD fabric (plus batting and backing fabric) and colouring it in with Inktense pencils. I wanted to do a fairly simple image and suddenly, when I was brainstorming about the theme 'where land and sea meet' I thought of a lighthouse.

Googling 'lighthouse' for images to use as inspiration for my drawing resulted in a wealth of websites on lighthouses, enough to inspire a large series of quilts!



Cross-posted at Art Quilts Around the World

Holiday pics

We are back from our lovely mini-holiday - 4 days in Mapleton, in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland. Here are a few pics (more traditional holiday snapshots to be found on our family blog). The bat sculpture above was hanging in the garden of the restaurant in Montville where we had a scrumptious morning tea on Saturday.



This is part of a building that housed an art gallery - unfortunately there was no time to look at the art. I just managed to snatch a picture of this ... (what's it called??? well lid??) in the yard:



A lily:



And a cheeky kookaburra on the campsite (I love kookaburras! My 3-year old calls them kookabooa):



Stay tuned for the unveiling of the land and sea quilts on the Art Quilts Around the World blog tomorrow! I will have to work hard tonight to finish mine...

Faces

Although I have been quite busy in the last week, there is nothing to show yet - I have mainly been working on the gymnasts quilt but don't want to put it on the blog yet. So I'll show you another drawing made by Hugo, my 6-year old. He has school holidays at the moment and is making artworks by the dozen! I love this big picture of his heroes, Ben 10 (middle), Gwen and Kevin 11. Especially the faces, which I think he has drawn very cleverly (for a 6-year old at least!):



His room is a feast for the eyes!



Tomorrow we are going away for a few days, to camp in the beautiful Sunshine Coast Hinterland. See you next week!

40

Today is my 40th birthday. The 40 years have mainly been good (especially the last 8) and I am looking forward to the next 40!
The postcard above is from Marloes, I sent her a Dutch Houses postcard and she sent me this beauty, just in time for my birthday. Thanks Marloes!



This is a sneak peek of the gymnasts quilt I am currently working on. It's going well, but I still don't know what it will look like when it's finished!

Journal Quilt August

Finally, after a 4-month gap, I made another journal quilt for the Aus/NZ Art Quilters group. The theme for August was Motion and I thought it would be a good way to try out one of my gymnasts screen prints in a quilt. I chose the pommel horse, because on that apparatus the gymnast performs a series of continuous motions. The 'shadow' was made with a Paintstik on a freezer paper stencil.

For the text on the quilt I used some childrens' alphabet stamps. I quilted them with a free-motion zigzag stitch; the first time I have tried that. It works very well for letters!

I am quite happy with this journal quilt. To see the other ones, click on the tag journal quilts at the end of this posting.

Swatches

Remember the Grameldon? A few weeks ago Spoonflower had a free swatch day and I used Ernst's drawing for one of my free swatches (8x8in). It turned out really well. I may make a bag for Ernst out of it.



Here is the other free swatch. Do you recognize it? It's made using this print (scroll down a bit). I think it looks fascinating!

Dutch Quilters Guild

Yesterday I received the latest issue of Quiltnieuws ('Quilt news'), the magazine of the Dutch Quilters Guild. I joined the Guild shortly after I started quilting in 2006 and I still am a member, even though I have been living in Australia for 2.5 years now. I love reading this colourful magazine (that's Joseph's Technicolour Dreamcoat on the front page, I would love to see that musical!) and recognizing names mentioned in it.

Since last month there is a link to this blog on the Guild's website and I have noticed that quite a few guests have come to visit through that link. Welcome to you all! I hope you enjoy my blog and will come back sometime.

On a not-quilty note: as of today I am an official PhD candidate at the University of Queensland! Although it will probably mean less time for quilting I am very excited about this. The title of my proposed research project is 'The epidemiology of tuberculosis in Queensland as it relates to strategies to prevent transmission, particularly in the indigenous population'.

Experimenting

I am experimenting with stencils and Shiva paintstiks. Great fun!

Gymnastics quilt top

And here they are, all 6 gymnasts. This I think will become the quilt. But first I am going to experiment with some painting/stamping/rubbing/stenciling on some of the other gymnasts.

Hugo is very excited because he actually sold one of his drawings after my last posting. Thanks very much, Lynn! Now when we visit the Netherlands next he can say he actually contributed something to the trip. My budding artist!

The last one

Here is the last gymnast (top right). Now I will try to make a pleasing composition with six of the thirty-odd gymnast prints I have made.

And here are some works of art made by my 6-year old, Hugo. This is the brave knight fighting the dragon, while the princess and her father, the king, are watching.



And these are two pterodactyls (flying dinosaurs). I love how he has added the sky, sun and sea.



The first drawing was made for me but the second one is for sale! Hugo said he was going to make a lot of drawings and sell them, so he would have some money. When I asked why he needed money, he said that he wanted to buy plane tickets so we could go to the Netherlands. We have been telling the boys that it will be a long time (2 years probably) before our next visit to the Netherlands, because it is so expensive. And he really wants to go there again... He is happy to work on commissions! ;-)