*Glow*

I am glowing with pride after reading Lyric Kinard's blog post about me!
I did her Freeform Screen Printing class at Quilt University last year which was great fun and has led to my series of gymnastics quilts.

Actually, MAGnificence will be exhibited today for the first time at the Australian Quilt Convention in Melbourne - how I wish was there! (if I was I would also go and see the men perform at the Pacific Rim Gymnastics Championships, and I see now they also have a KLM Dutch Orange Day on Sunday... sigh, wish we lived in Melbourne!)

Anyway - Lyric is teaching her screen printing class again in May and you can sign up for it now. I highly recommend it!



PS It's good that I am not in Melbourne this week - the hospital called that there is a fracture in Robbie's arm after all, so I have to take him in today. Sigh...

New quilt

Last year when we were back in the Netherlands, my mother-in-law asked me if I would like to make a quilt for her, to hang in her living room, over the piano. I said I would love too, and have indeed thought long and hard about it and even started two quilts that I didn't like after a while... The requirements were for the quilt to be 100 cm long wide and 50 cm high and to have some red in it, the colour of our Chinese cupboard that is now living at her house - very much like this one (but not exactly the same) :



I haven't been able to find or dye fabric in the right colour and I was getting a bit desperate, until I was looking for some fabric for another project (the Embellish A Bag Challenge) and found this gorgeous piece from Lisa Walton's Monthly Metres Club. Okay, there's no red in it... but it's the right size, I love it and I just hope MIL will too when she sees it! (I don't think she reads this blog) I immediately sandwiched it and started quilting with a variegated thread:



... and we'll see how it goes. I might even add some beads!!!

I hope showing this here will stimulate me to finish it - I'll be very happy when I will finally be able to present a quilt to MIL!

More postcards, more ATCs

I signed up for two postcard swaps at the Dutch Fibermail group this month. The theme of the first one is Masks. With three little boys in the house this was my first idea - and they loved it. (I'm working on a second, quite different card)

The theme of the other swap is Mosaique and this is what I made:



Here is the Doors card that I received from Mia:



And here are the ATCs that I received after asking for swap partners a while ago. Clockwise, starting at the top left, they are from Linda, Diana in New Zealand, Delia and Nia. Thanks very much ladies, they are gorgeous!



I have made some more postcards and ATCs with my new thermofax screen. If you would like to swap a card, let me know!





PS Thanks for all the kind comments on the last posting. Robbie is doing very well - so well in fact that we have taken off the cast (it was a back slab, not a full cast). I'm sure the arm was not broken after all.
And the bike print is just a print - not a quilt yet! I do intend to make a bicycle quilt, but need to make some more stencils first.

More bikes, and a gymnast

I finally made a freezer paper screen of another biker and printed it - this one is based on a pic of my second son Ernst (5) riding a bike without the trainer wheels for the first time!



It does not always go so well... Robbie, our 3-year old, was riding Ernst's bike (with trainer wheels) on Saturday and fell off - here's the result:



Once his and Bear's arms were set he was quite happy and he is now without pain and doing everything - except riding a bike!

And Hugo (7) had his first gymnastics competition on Sunday - no medals (he was quite disappointed) but we thought he did very well, considering he is one of the youngest boys in his level and it was his very first competition!


(click to enlarge)

I'm very proud of my boys!

:-)

New Thermofax screens

This week my thermofax screens arrived from the USA (Lyric Kinard makes them). So I had a delightful evening playing with them. The Doors print looks great, I think.



I had my Houses of Amsterdam design made into a small screen, to make ATCs. And I also ordered a small screen of this delightful penny-farthing picture (from this free clip-art site) to use in my bicycle quilt.

Balance 2

The next quilt in my gymnastics series. 12 x 12 inches (30 x 30 cm). Screen printed on hand dyed fabric, quilted and discharged. See Balance 1 here.

Doors

The Dutch Fibermail group that I am a member of has a postcard swap each month. The theme for this month is Doors and I first thought of making a card featuring some beautiful old doors, the ones you can find in Europe or Morocco... Then I decided it would be nice to do some Australian doors for a change. Not many really old doors here (for European standards, that is), but beautiful doors, yes!



This is the Queenslander that we live in (it's not ours, but we've been living here for 2 years now and just signed a contract for another year, so it does feel like home). You can read more about these houses on this excellent blog about art and architecture.



Our house has some beautiful doors inside, but I chose these doors on the front deck to depict on my card:



I sent this drawing off to be made into a thermofax screen, but it hasn't arrived yet... so I had to do something else.



I made the same drawing on a piece of tea-dyed fabric, coloured it in with gel pens and fabric markers and cut out the open spaces. I fused it to a piece of wattle fabric (the Golden Wattle - Acacia pycnantha - is Australia's national flower) and ironed that onto a piece of fast-2-fuse.



Then I stitched the outlines, backed the card with some muslin and satin-stitched the edges. And now I can hardly bear to let it go! ;-)

We're off today for a 4-day camping trip, so I'll be back here on Monday!

Ernst and Ernst, again

Remember the lino prints I made of my son Ernst? This is the quilt I made out of one of those prints (I showed a sneak peek here). It was not accepted for The New Quilt 2010, so I can post it here now. After quilting it I discharged the face and neck with discharge paste and discharge-dyed the shirt with discharge paste mixed with fabric paint. I love the resulting green colour! (the original fabric is a commercial dark blue)



In the meantime I have quilted another print, white paint on a handdyed purple fabric. This time I just free-motion quilted the lines and the edges of the print, and satin-stitched the edges of the quilt. I think I prefer this quilt, although it is very floppy because of the minimal quilting. Maybe mounting it on canvas would be an option here... What do you think?

Anyway, I love my Ernst! ;-)

Treasures from the beach

Yesterday we went to the beach in Caloundra. I am not really a beach person but I do love looking for shells. Here are the treasures we found yesterday.


(Does anyone know the name of these shells?)

These are my favourites. Look at the wonderful designs!





PS I just discovered the shells in the second photo are called Patellogastropoda or limpets in plain English (Schaalhoren in het Nederlands).

Historical quilts and kaleidoscope fun

Today we went to the Ipswich Art Gallery. I really wanted to see The Fabric of Society, an exhibition of historical Australian quilts. Although antique quilts are not really my cup of tea, I do admire the creativity and craft of the women who made these quilts, some literally from scraps of clothes, uniforms, blankets etc. Unfortunately (but understandably) making photos was not allowed.

For the kids there was a delightful exhibition as well: The Real Thing: interactive kaleidoscope fun. With a life-size kaleidoscope (do click on the pics to enlarge them!):



and some computers with amazing graphic software that I wouldn't mind having on my own computer, to create gorgeous mandalas and other masterpieces:



Highly recommended if you are near Ipswich (40 km west of Brisbane), with or without kids!

Postcards and ATCs

In the last few days I have made postcards for the winners of my giveaway and a few more. I used selvedges and lino printed fabric, and also finally cut up this quilt (scroll down to the end of the posting) to make it into postcards and ATCs.



The postcards are all spoken for, but if you would like to swap an ATC, please let me know (click on the photo to enlarge it).
The ones with the words (Names and Colo(u)rs) were made because, inspired by the calligrams, I cut up a lot of selvedge strips to get the words. I am planning a small quilt with them... but couldn't resist making a few ATCs.

Happy Easter!