2010

You may remember that my word for 2010 was identity. As I said in my first post of 2010: This year I want to develop more of a personal style in my art quilts, an identity. I think it is already forming but I want to consciously develop it further.

Looking at the most succesful quilts I made this year, and also my personal favourites; Balance 1 and 2 (the first one was sold in the SAQA Auction, the second selected for inclusion in the exhibition Petite Miniature Textiles at the Wangaratta Gallery), I think I succeeded - especially when looking at these two quilts, Speed and Monstera deliciosa, that clearly have the same 'signature'. What do you think?



(I have made another cyclist quilt this year that I am not showing here yet, but am very happy with.)



Another succes story was Grrr Argh, a fun little quilt that won a Highly Commended at the Thread Studio Textile Tantrum Challenge. And the lino printed portrait of my son Ernst is one of my personal favourites.



Here are two quilts of a kind: Forest for Dijanne Cevaal's KISS challenge and The Four Seasons for my mother-in-law, shown here hanging in her living room. I like them but don't feel this is really my style.



I made two optical illusion quilts; Len's Quilt, from a pattern by Lerusisik (which I think will be the last quilt I will ever make from a pattern), and Op Art Quilt, my own design, for the Creative Arts Spectacular Auction for my sons' school. I love optical illusions bot don't think I will make any more of these soon.



Finally I made a traditional baby quilt for our niece and finished the play quilt for Robbie. And I made four quilts for Art Quilts Around the World; (clockwise) A Rose is a Rose, Stone Soup, Doors and my self portrait quilt, Linda Warhol, which will be unveiled today along with the other self portraits.




I also made three bags: the polka dotted backpack for my BFF Hylkia, the bag for the Embellish a Bag Challenge, and the gymnastics bag for my son Hugo. I love bags, and making bags, and am sure I will continue making them!

What else did I do... Make a lot of postcards, a few ATCs and two pairs of zebra pants!

I designed a lot of calligram fabrics and some other fabrics at Spoonflower - something I found I love doing and am actually quite good at, in so far that people seem to like my fabrics and often buy them!

I set up Blue Jacaranda, my online store, which was fun... And I changed the name and the look of the blog. Wow, I had a busy year! But I loved it. Non-quiltwise, it was also a good year, with a trip to a conference in Berlin and a short holiday in the Netherlands, my first paper accepted in a public health journal, DH and our boys doing well... Yes, I am a happy person!

Tomorrow I will tell you my plans for 2011. Now I have to go and do the shopping! ;-)



PS (back from the shopping) Of course I wish you all a very happy, colourful and creative 2011! Thank you for reading this blog, I hope you will keep following me in the new year!

Stamping, rubbing and stenciling

Today DH took the boys to the swimming pool, so I had the afternoon to play with fabric, stamps, stencils and paint! The piece above was made with the stencils I bought at the Textile Art Festival in June. I think I will use it for a cover for the Kindle DH will get on his birthday in January.



This one was made with a rubbing plate and a Paintstick, and the last one with a commercial stamp. Wouldn't that piece make a nice card for a new mum?



I did some more stamping, but the other pieces didn't photograph very well and I'm too lazy to try again...

Tomorrow, on the last day of 2010, I will look back on the past year. Tomorrow is also the day the self portrait quilts will be unveiled at the Art Quilts Around the World blog, so stay tuned!

Cats and dogs

Spoonflower has a Cats fabric design contest this week. I have entered my Cat Calligram design, there are lots of other great designs. You can vote here (just click on any design you like, no need to sign up or register) - I would of course appreciate it very much if you would award a vote to my design!

Last week they had a Dogs contest for which I created this design:



Unfortunately, for some strange reason it did not end up among the contest entries :-(. Too bad, I thought it looked quite good...

Here is the state of the calligram alphabet quilt - it is growing steadily!



And finally, I would like to wish all readers of this blog a merry Christmas (or happy holidays, if you don't celebrate Christmas). I hope you will have a peaceful time with your loved ones.



We had planned to go camping, but the weather forecasts are saying rain, rain and more rain - after the record breaking amounts of rain we have already had this month. So we have decided to cancel this trip and have a quiet Christmas at home. We hope to go camping next weekend instead.

On a roll

I'm on a roll! I have started the alphabet calligram quilt (using my Spoonflower calligram designs) and so far have 15 letters sewn up. Only 11 more to go!

Play Quilt for Robbie

Yesterday I found Robbie's play quilt while I was looking for something else... You may remember that I got these house blocks in a birthday swap in (oops) 2008. I made the quilt top at the retreat in 2009 and started quilting it in June 2010... I used some green polar fleece for the backing, but discovered that it was very stretchy and made the quilt very wobbly. I unpicked some of the quilting and then put it away. Until now - I decided to just finish it by turning the edges and stitch it with a zigzag. I know I am not going to spend a lot of time on making it look better and Robbie (and his brothers) like it anyway!



Robbie even wanted it on his bed when he went to sleep:



Next: the alphabet calligram quilt for Robbie! (he is going to have a proper quilt as well!)

Gymnastics bag - and some shop talk

As always after finishing a quilt, I felt like doing some small projects. Spoonflower had a '2 FQs for the price of 1' action a few weeks ago and I had ordered FQs of my gymnastics fabrics to make something for Hugo. I decided on a simple drawstring bag for his gym clothes. I lined it with a plain white fabric.



I hope he likes it. It may be an 8th birthday present on the 2nd of February - if I can wait that long!

I also made a custom order for Blue Jacaranda: 4 red tags that a sweet Mum wants to use for the Christmas gifts for her children. Isn't that a lovely idea!



Did you know that in my Craftumi shop I have a Christmas Charm Pack for sale? Scoop it up before it is gone! Or have a look at the other fabrics. Remember that Dutch customers can pay in Euros into my Dutch bank account! (1 Australian dollar is currently 0.75 Euro)

You might consider joining my Blue Jacaranda page on Facebook - I have almost reached the 100 fans mark and am considering a small celebration if I reach that point... Thanks!

Enough self-promotion... time for coffee!

Stone Soup

Finally, my Stone Soup is finished. I'm so glad it is done!
Next is the self portrait quilt for AQATW, but I'm still waiting for the supplies I ordered... I really hope they will be here soon.

The cyclist quilt is also finished but I am not going to show it here yet for I may enter it into a quilt show...

Gymnast postcard

I made this postcard yesterday and like it so much that I can't send it away! Maybe I'll give it to my gymnast son on his 8th birthday, in February...



He had a gymnastics carnival last weekend and did very well. I'm so proud of him! :-)

Update

I have finished quilting the bicycle quilt - only need to do the facing now.



And I have made a number of these fabric luggage tags. I've put them up in my MadeIt shop, Blue Jacaranda. If you were looking for a small Christmas pressie this might be just the thing!

Good times

This last week I have been working hard on my bicycle quilt and so far it is looking good, even on the back side!

Apart from that I have nothing to show here (I have an idea for the self portrait quilt for AQATW, but am waiting for the supplies I ordered), so here is a pic of the bag I bought in Berlin:




Is it scrumptious or is it scrumptious??? (I love that word!)



PS Remember how I whined a while ago when my TB paper and my quilt were both rejected in the same week? This week my paper was accepted in another journal and I also had a very exciting email about my quilts... but I'll tell you more about that at a later stage!

In the mail

Home again! It's great to be back with my boys (big and small).
It was also great to find a lot of mail waiting for me... Especially the big Spoonflower parcel, with two yards of my white on black Dutch Houses design printed on canvas - I'm going to make a bag with it. There were two yards of the black on white design on quilting fabric as well, to use for the lining and some other projects. Can't wait to start!



And here are two swatches: my Len's Quilt printed on fabric (how cool is that? Maybe an idea for some readers?) and my new Umbrella Tree Leaf design - both are now for sale in my Spoonflower shop.



There were also two fiber postcards waiting for me; a gorgeous stencilled postcard made by Tonny and a very cute Hats postcard made by Ellen. Thanks ladies, I love them!



My jet lag is slowly disappearing, so maybe tonight I will start up my sewing machine again... So many projects to work on:

- Stone Soup quilt for Art Quilts Around the World;
- Self portrait quilt for Art Quilts Around the World;
- Calligram quilt for Robbie;
- Bicycle quilt;
- Blues quilt;
- Dutch Houses bag;
- Oilcloth bunting for blue Jacaranda, using the new oilcloth I bought in the Netherlands;
- and finally: finish the scarf I started knitting in the Netherlands!

I'll keep you posted!