Penciled Stone Soup

I used my Derwent Inktense pencils to make the quilt top for the current AQATW Challenge - actually sat down and joined my 3-year old at the kitchen table!



A few details:



I am quite proud of my tomatoes! ;-)



Do go over to the group blog to see the other quilt tops!

Silk paper and chalk placemats

After finishing a quilt (or as in this case, several quilts) I usually feel like doing some small, fun projects. So yesterday I made silk paper (there's a good tutorial in the first Down Under Textiles) and today some chalk pacemats:



I got the idea at Jackie's blog - I did have a small piece of chalk fabric and of course I will have to make three placemats, which is why they have this size... I used the Dutch oilcloth for the back.

Robbie loves his mat and demonstrates how to use it!
First you work very hard to make a beautiful drawing:



Then you wipe it off:



And finally you turn the mat to have your dinner!



It was just him and me at dinner, for hubby is in Athens (Greece), Hugo has a sleepover at a friend's house and poor Ernst is sick and spent most of the day in bed. I should have been at work, but stayed home with him while the nanny took his brothers to the park (we had been at home all day yesterday because Ernst was sick, so they did need some fresh air and exercise), and made the placemats while he was sleeping.

And to end on a happier note: remember the video I showed here a while ago? Here's another one in that series! I found it on Sandy's blog.



We could really use one of those stairs here in Brissy...

Textile Art Festival

I had a wonderful day today! At nine o'clock I was there when the Textile Art Festival opened its doors, and the first thing I did was run to the stand of The Thread Studio to answer Dale's question! And so I won a bag of gorgeous goodies - great start of the day! The Textile Tantrum quilts were around the corner and I was thrilled to see the Highly Recommended star next to mine - especially when I realised how many entries there were!



I went on to see the Twelve by Twelve exhibition (the quilts are beautifully displayed and well worth a visit!) and have a chat with Brenda and Kirsten. Then I had a look at the State of the Art quilt 10 exhibition - and came face to face with my own quilt MAGnificence:



Which was quite strange after almost five months... and I found I didn't like it as much as I used to. I think my two more recent gymnastics quilts are better (see here and here).
I did very much like some of the other quilts though!



Here are some of the finalists of the Embellish a Bag Challenge, and this is a close-up of my bag:



I used a piece of multicoloured fabric from Dyed and Gone to Heaven for this bag.



Of course they were at the show and since I have used so many of their fabrics lately in my quilts I decided I could sign up again for their Monthly Metres Club ;-).



I made these postcards-to-be in a transfer painting class by Susan Pietsch from Essential Textile Art. I liked the process enough to buy a kit and some white lutradur to play at home. I also bought some coloured lutradur and snowflakes stencil:



And this book that I have been wanting to buy for quite a while now:



A few colourful impressions - there's another one on my daily photoblog:





In the afternoon I needed some fresh air and decided to walk to the Queensland Art Gallery and visit the Hats exhibition:



It was very good but unfortunately no photography allowed. I am not very interested in fashion but I love hats - and I love living in a country (state) where you wear a hat most of the time! (in the Netherlands people only wear hats at weddings)



Because it was the last week of this exhibition there was a discount on all the related items in the museum shop, so I bought the catalogue, and also this book:



It has lots of gorgeous photos of people wearing military, work-related, sport-related and school uniforms, and many more. It also provides a lot of background on uniforms which I find very interesting - maybe because I haven't often worn a uniform. There are no school uniforms in the Netherlands and I have never been a girl scout, or a member of a brass band, or part of a sports team... Actually, the only uniforms I remember wearing are a gymnastics leotard when I was a little girl (yes, I used to do gymnastics too, and no, I was not very good at it! But I did enjoy it) and a white coat/scrubs in the first few years after finishing medical school, when I was still doing clinical jobs.

Anyway, enough about that... As you will have noticed, I had a lovely day today! I will be back at the Festival for a while tomorrow, when there is an informal gathering for exhibitors and sponsors of the State of the Art quilt 10 exhibition. One of our wonderful nannies has offered to come and babysit the boys while I am there - for hubby has left today for a trip to Europe (he will be back in two weeks - when the school holidays are over! They have started today...). In his suitcase are three quilts, for various family members in the Netherlands - I will show them here when they have arrived at their destination.

New fabrics on Spoonflower

I'm happy to tell you that I have some new fabrics for sale on Spoonflower. The Dutch Houses fabric is now available in blue, red, white on black and black on white. The blue one has been for sale for quite a while and is very popular, so I am hoping the other colours will be so too.




There are also some new calligram fabrics for sale; the elephant, ibis, jellyfish and kookaburra.
They are part of a growing collection called Calligrammar. Remember, my aim is to make an animal calligram for every letter in the alphabet and use them in an alphabet quilt for Robbie.

I have started another collection called Pictogrammar. Here are the first four fabrics, now for sale:




Would love to hear what you think of these!

And finally, here is a fabric made from the screenprint of Ernst riding a bike without the trainer wheels for the first time. I love it and am thinking hard of a project to use it for!



All fabrics in this posting are shown in a fat quarter size. It is possible to order fabric in swatches (8 inch square), fat quarters, yards and multiple yards, and in quilting weight cotton, organic cotton sateen, organic cotton interlock knit, upholstery weight cotton twill, linen-cotton canvas and cotton lawn.

If you would like one of these fabrics in another colour, or would like me to design another calligram or pictogram fabric for you, just let me know!

Sketchbook and giraffes

A while ago I signed up for The Sketchbook Project (after hearing about it on the Quiltart mailinglist). Last week I received my sketchbook and on Saturday I started drawing in it. The theme is Storybook, so I made a title page and wrote the beginning of a story. I used my Derwent Inktense pencils, but discovered that the pages are too thin to use wet pencils :-(. Oh well, it's all part of the artistic experience... I hope this will force me to practice some more drawing.



One of the things I drew was a giraffe. My Dutch friend Heleen alerted me to the One Million Giraffes website - set up by a Norwegian guy who has a bet with a friend that he can collect one million giraffes before January 1st, 2011. These giraffes need to be hand made, not on a computer or store bought. So far he has collected 855,315 giraffes, so he only needs 144,685 more!



Hugo, Ernst, hubby and I drew about ten giraffes and I also made a giraffe calligram. I've uploaded it to Spoonflower, it's not for sale yet but will be in a while:



Speaking about calligrams, here are the first eight for Robbie's quilt:



I'm thinking of making it a quilt-as-you-go quilt, like my selvedge quilt. Then the back could be an I Spy quilt, with lots of novelty fabrics...

I am looking forward to Friday, when I will visit the Textile Art Festival here in Brisbane. Can't wait to see my MAGnificence quilt exhibited, and the Textile Tantrum quilt, and my embellished bag! I will also be sure to attend one of the floor talks on the Twelve by Twelve exhibition and say hi to Brenda, who created my blog header.

This and that

I've finished the top for the Art Quilts Around the World challenge and sent it off to Melbourne. Time for a new project! Yesterday I took one of my bicycle prints and added the shadow with a paint stick. That has to dry now for 2 days, so I took a try out piece of painted and quilted fabric that has been laying here for months (since October, acutally - I posted it here when I had just painted it) and made it into a new case for my sunglasses:



I just saw that my Robot Calligram fabric won the 6th place in the fabric contest at Spoonflower - out of 116 entries, that's not bad, is it! Thanks to everyone who voted for me, I appreciate it! Next week the contest theme is Nautical - I might design something for that...

And finally, here is a very amusing video that I found on a gymnastics blog (no, it's not about gymnastics). Go and have look, you'll love it!



I wish they had one of those slides at Brisbane Central Station!