Silk Journal Cover

Remember the silk paper I made a while ago? I used it to make a cover for an A5 Visual Art Diary.



It is for sale in my Made It shop, here.
The shop is doing very nicely :-) and the fact that Thea wrote an enthousiastic posting about my Dutch Houses card has certainly helped. Thanks Thea!



A while ago I was aked to design a Boy and Girl Calligram design. That led to this fabric, which is now for sale on Spoonflower. I loved doing this commission!



Also for sale is this Tree fabric, based on a photo of a frangipani tree I took a while ago and posted on my daily photo blog. I have ordered a FQ myself to make a bag out of it.




And finally, there are some more new calligram fabrics for sale - not just the ones shown here, but also a Lobster, Moose, Narwhal, Penguin, Swan, Turtle... My calligram alphabet is almost complete! (but I don't think the quilt will be finished in time for Robbie's birthday in September...) You can find them all on my Spoonflower page.

The quilt for Australia Wide 2 is finished and submitted. I'll let you know the outcome. I'm still thinking about the quilt for the Creative Arts Spectacular event...

Irish Chain Baby Quilt

I have just heard that the baby quilt for our niece Josien has arrived at its destination, so here is a pic - the only good photo I have, taken just after I finished sewing on the binding at the retreat.

It measures one by one metre, just like the Trip Around the World quilt I made for her sister Saskia in 2008.

And the winner is...

Thea!

Congratulations! I will send you a little something as a thank you for giving me some feedback on my new shop on Made It, Blue Jacaranda. Thanks to everyone else who went to have a look and left a comment too, of course!

Speaking about Blue Jacaranda, today I have added two more items: a polka dot child's apron and a set of fabric bookmarks:



Maybe you know someone who would be very happy with one of these handmade goodies? ;-)

The quilt I showed you a little bit of in the last posting is finished, yay! Now I'm in thinking mode, to design a quilt to be auctioned at the Creative Arts Spectacular event organized by my sons' school. They will showcase emerging artists from the Brisbane area. Unfortunately, at this point they only accept emerging painters, not art quilters :-(. However, I was welcome to donate an art quilt for the auction to raise funds for the school and I am happy to do that. It needs to be finished in the first week of September, so I will have two months for it, that should be enough...

A new quilt

Yes, I still make quilts! Here is a sneak peek of the one I I started a few weeks ago and all but finished today - I only need to sew back the binding. Hubby took the boys to a playground and I got the day off to work on the quilt (well, I think I earned it after being on my own with the boys for the whole of the school holidays!). It is my entry for Australia Wide Two, Ozquilt Network's travelling exhibition.



I also designed a new fabric on Spoonflower - I started with a photo I made of a Grevillea (in case you are wondering what that is; there is a one on my photo blog too. It's not the same photo but it is the same Grevillea ;-). Do you like it?

You can still leave a comment on my last posting, to go in the draw for a small handmade item. Just give me some feedback on my new Made It shop, Blue Jacaranda. Speaking of which, I had my first sale within hours of opening the shop (yay!) and I am adding new items at this very moment (yes, I always do several things at the same time on the computer). So do go there and have a look. And if you like what you see, please tell your friends! Thanks! :-))

And here it is...

I am very excited to be able to tell you that I have just opened my Made It store:
Blue Jacaranda!

As of today, I am selling my chalk placemats, pencil rolls, gift tags, luggage tags and fabric postcards. More items will follow soon!

I would love it if you would go and take a look at my store, and let me know what you think of it (and of course I wouldn't mind at all if you also bought something!). Just leave a comment here, and on July 22th I will draw one lucky winner who will get a small item as a thank you for giving me some feedback!

More chalk cloth projects - and an idea...

After making the chalk cloth placemats last week I ordered some more chalk cloth and oil cloth and made some more things.

A gift tag:



A placemat for a little girl:



And one for a little boy:



These placemats can be rolled up and tied, so you can take them to a restaurant, waiting room or wherever else you would want to have them to keep a little one occupied. They have a small pocket for a wipe cloth and a piece of chalk.

(I didn't invent these projects myself but found them on the internet - I have mentioned Jackie's blog before and also found a lot of stuff on this wonderful blog; Oilcloth Addict)

I am thinking of opening a Made It shop to try and sell these items - Made It is the Australian version of Etsy. Etsy is so big that I am afraid of 'drowning' there and postage costs to Europe and the US would make most of my stuff too expensive anyway...

I would be glad to receive some feedback on this plan! Do you like these items? Would you consider buying them? Or point them out to someone who is looking for a present?

(I know, it isn't as if I don't have anything else to do... But I like making these small things every now and then, and it might be fun to have an online shop...!)

The Four Seasons, Around the World

The Four Seasons, the quilt that I made for my mother-in-law, has also reached its destination: here it is hanging on the wall in Zutphen, the Netherlands. Here is a close-up:



I took off most off the beads I showed here, they were too much. I added a few simple beading lines:



And in the end I was reasonably happy with the quilt. I have discovered though that I am not a beading person. I was told that MIL likes the quilt.



And now for something completely different: I have entered another fabric design in the weekly contest at Spoonflower. This week's theme is Travel and this is my design, called Around the World. If you like it, perhaps you could vote for it? Just click here; you don't need to sign in or become a member. Thanks! :-)

Speed

The first of the three quilts that hubby has carried to Europe has reached its destination, so I can show it to you now! This is Speed, a small, A4 sized quilt I made for my uncle, who is mad about cycling.



You will remember the screen print of the cyclist I made a while ago (yes, the background is another Lisa Walton handdyed fabric!). I also showed you the shadow I added with a Paintstick;



I then quilted it and finished it with a facing technique:



But felt that it lacked something, which is why I added the second cyclist with another paintstick. I had to give him a shadow as well and used yet another colour paintstick. I wasn't too happy about that choice afterwards, but there wasn't time to do anything about it.



This is the back of the quilt:



I'm happy to be able to tell you that after the last posting here (where I whined about being so tired) things got much better. We had a lovely, sunny weekend and I did quite a bit of quilting on a new quilt! Will show you a sneak peek soon.

Creative moments

As I told you in an earlier posting, hubby is in Europe (in the Netherlands right now), so I am a single parent at the moment. Thankfully the kids are all well again, but as it it the school holidays here it is quite a demanding job to keep them all entertained. So demanding that when the boys are in bed I am too exhausted to do anything creative. I had hoped to do a lot of quilting these weeks, but haven't done anything yet :-(.



However, today we were creative! I had bought sketchbooks and new pencils for the boys, and they all started drawing with gusto! Hugo and Robbie made one drawing each and then went off to do other things, but Ernst (5) kept on going and filled about ten pages of his new book!



And he made some really nice drawings - this one's my favourite:



The boat and car are also very nice:



I took my Sketchbook Project sketchbook and made these (not very good) drawings of Robbie and Ernst:



I also did some 'doodling' (something I never do!) and managed to fill five pages of my book!



Now I am going to crash on the couch and watch a dvd. Somewhere in the back of my mind a quilt called Exhaustion is starting to take shape...!