Happy holidays!

Nothing new to show you - I did make a very small piece for the Art Quilts Around the World challenge, but that won't be revealed until the 31st of December. So here is a photo I took last week at Cabarita Beach in New South Wales, close to our caravan in Wooyung Beach. And that is where we are going tomorrow, for a 2-week holiday. I am so looking forward to it, although I do hope the weather will improve a bit as we have had lots of rain today...

So this is the last posting for 2011. I wish you all happy holidays with your loved ones and a healthy, colourful and creative new year! Thank you for reading my blog, I really appreciate it, and I hope to see you back in 2012!

New print

On Wednesday I screen printed this image. I used a freezer paper stencil based on this photo:


 
















This print is not the best one I made; I'm saving that one for a special project that I will show here sometime next year ;-).


The subject of the photo, my youngest son Robbie (here at his taekwondo grading) today had another migraine attack, just when we were about to leave for a weekend at Wooyung Beach. After sleeping a few hours he is much better now and the new medication I gave him as soon as he said he had a headache prevented him (I think) from vomiting - so that is very good news! And we'll go to Wooyung tomorrow :-).

Robbie's Alphabet Calligram Quilt

Finally finished: the Alphabet Calligram Quilt I first mentioned in May 2010 and planned to make for Robbie's 4th birthday. Here is the proud owner (who turned 5 in September):



It has 26 calligrams, one for each letter in the alphabet. I designed them all myself and had them printed on fabric at Spoonflower. The fabrics are for sale here (Calligrammar collection) and here (Calligrammar 2 collection). I have had quite a few of the calligram designs made into thermofax screens which I use to make art cards and stretched prints (and soon t-shirts as well, I hope) for my Blue Jacaranda shops on MadeIt and Etsy.



I finished the quilt with a thin black binding. I think I will add Robbie's name, the name of the quilt and the date to the empty green squares at the bottom, next to the Zebra.

Robbie loves his quilt! But I realised once again that I really do not enjoy making bed-sized quilts (even if it is a small bed!) so this definitely will be the last large quilt in a long time!

I have done some screen printing yesterday with an exciting new design which I hope to show you soon...

To be continued!

Art Cards

I can't believe it's been more than a week since I last posted here! It is a very busy time, the last weeks before the summer holidays... We have had a Gymnastics Carnival, taekwondo gradings, piano concert, Kindy End of Year Celebration, school disco... And let's not forget our Dutch St Nicholas celebration (it's when we have presents), and a sad event - the 25th anniversary of the day my mother died (read more here). I haven't been feeling well and will be glad when the school holidays start.



As you will understand I haven't been very creative but I have made some new Art Cards to add to my Etsy shop, Blue Jacaranda. The shop is doing quite well, as is the one on MadeIt - something that is making me very happy. It's a nice idea that people like my items enough to buy them.



I have just received some new thermofax screens and hope to make more cards very soon.

Red (and black) Robots

I did a screen printing session today - lots of fabric for art cards and stretched prints. I also printed my Robot Calligram Design on a red t-shirt for my middle son, who has Letterland Day at school next week. You may remember the Zebra pants I made for him and his brother in 2010 - this time he wants to be Red Robot. Of course I printed t-shirts for his brothers as well :-).

Threads

Yesterday we visited the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) in Brisbane. I particularly wanted to see the Threads exhibition; contemporary textiles from Australia, Asia and the Pacific region:



This gorgeous Trip Around the World quilt was made by Tapaeru Williams (Cook Islands/New Zealand):



And this Kapa kuiki quilt by Gussie R. Bento (Hawai'i, USA):



Gorgeous batik cloth made by Tjunkaya Tapaya from Ernabella Arts Inc:



Dowry bags made by Kachchhi women from Gujarat, India:



Bilum garment by Florence Jaukae Kamel from Papua New Guinea:



This painting by Regina Wilson, Warrgarri (Dilly Bag Stitch), was not part of the exhibition but fitted in nicely with the theme! This is a detail:



There was a lot more to admire in the Gallery that I will not show here - if you are interested you can find some photos on my photo blog.

If you are in Brisbane and haven't seen this exhibition yet I highly recommend it. it's on until 5 February 2012.

Small projects

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you know I like to do some small projects between quilts. Here are a few I did this week. Etsy is not just a great place to sell things, it's also a great place to shop - or, if you can't afford to buy everything you like, to get inspired to make your own version. There are quite a few Beach pillows on Etsy, and I really wanted one for our caravan at Wooyung Beach. So I cut up an old hessian shopping bag, stenciled the letters on the fabric, backed and stuffed it, and voilà! A second one is waiting to be sewn together.



I saw an oven mitt made from this fabric in a Dutch shop on Etsy. Both my mother-in-law and my best friend sent me some of this fabric, and I had just rediscovered some Insul-Brite wadding in my stash, so I decided to make one too. My husband said 'If we were still living in the Netherlands I would think it was ugly, but now it's okay' ;-).

Indigo

A while ago I purchased another Jacquard Indigo Dye Kit and yesterday I finally found the time to do some dyeing. I did this large piece of fabric and several small one. It wasn't until I was finished that I discovered my glove had a hole in it...



I'm thinking of making some surfing quilts... Since we have the caravan I am quilte obsessed with the beach. On Etsy I purchased this gorgeous piece of felt and these beautiful buttons made of shells, sea stone and sea glass:



This might become a small piece of textile art to hang in our caravan... I have also signed up for Dijanne Cevaal's Travellers' Blanket Class and plan to make a beach blanket :-).

Update

Sorry for being AWOL in the last week, things have been very busy here! I did manage to finish the quilt for Beneath the Southern Sky - here is a sneak peek. The quilt is hanging in our dining room at the moment and we all like it very much, so if it does not get selected we won't mind!

On Monday and Tuesday I was in Cairns to collect data on multi-drug resistant TB for my PhD. There was unfortunately no time for sightseeing but I did have a lovely view over Cairns and the mountains from my hotel room.



Tomorrow we are going to Straddie (North Stradbroke Island) for a weekend camping with two other Dutch families. Looking forward to that! Next week I hope to do some screen printing again. I need new prints for my Blue Jacaranda shop on Etsy where things are starting to happen... (23 sales in the first two months!!) And I have bought supplies for printing on paper with my thermofax screens (high-quality printing paper etc) - I can't wait to give that a try!



And last but not least: Cycle of Life is a finalist in the Fall Expo at the Infinity Art Gallery. Out of 70 entrants, 32 pieces works of art were selected, so I am quite happy :-).

DUQ and vintage maps

Today I finally got a copy of Down Under Quilts issue 150, which features two of my quilts in the article about Log Cabin quilts: Loca and Len's Quilt.



You can sign up for the digital version of the magazine for free on this website. There's lots of eye candy in this anniversary number!



This morning my youngest son was sick, so I had take care leave and stay at home with him. I took the opportunity to build my network on Etsy and made a Treasury (a list featuring 16 items on a certain theme or colour that are all for sale on Etsy) featuring items made out of vintage atlas pages. To my great surprise this Treasury really took off and it has now had 1073 views! (as a comparison, my most successful treasury before this one had 133 views!)



Here are two of the items I have featured; on the left Large Vintage map stuffed heart from seller Serendipity Child and on the right Origin of the Unit 3 from seller TerrorDome.

Making Treasuries is very addictive, there are so many gorgeous items on Etsy! Please go and have a look at this one, I'm really proud of it! You can find it here: Maps are really useful.

Back from the retreat

I am back from the quilting retreat organised by Julie - it was a lovely weekend, thanks Julie!

The venue was great - Edmund Park in Thornton, in the beautiful Lockyer Valley region. The food was great too, and the cook very cute ;-).

This was the view from the deck where we had our meals:



And what did I do? Well, I was a bit disorganized - I finished quilting the Alphabet Calligram Quilt (see first photo) but forgot to bring fabric for the binding. I also finished quilting a small ice skating quilt but forgot the fabric for the facing... I sandwiched the printed fabric I showed you in the last posting, but spend all Saturday and today quilting the quilt for the Beneath the Southern Sky exhibition. I finished it just in time and now I only have to do the facing. I won't show it here yet though as I am not sure if that is allowed. I will show you the Calligram Quilt and ice-skating quilt soon!

To make up for the lack of quilt photos here are a few other photos I took this weekend. There were lots of wallabies:



The whole complex, with gorgeous jacaranda tree:



I love how the container lids have the same colour as the jacaranda flowers!



The sun shining on the deck:



A gorgeous little flower:



Purple seems to be the colour of the weekend!



And last but not least - on Friday we visited a Christmas Craft Mmarket in Gatton, where they had this sign:



LOL!

New prints

Yesterday (my once-in-a-fortnight day off) I did some screen printing. The print above is the start of a new quilt - I wonder if anyone recognizes the design? The background fabric is a Lisa Walton handdyed fabric.

I will work on the new quilt this weekend, as I am going on a quilt retreat with my Dutch friend Rens. Yay! I also hope to finally finish the Alphabet Calligram Quilt for Robbie and make a start on the quilt for the Beneath the Southern Sky exhibition.



I tried something new yesterday: printing my thermofax screens on paper. The Robot Calligrams turned out very well - I'm thinking this could become a bunting.

See you next week!

New items @ Blue Jacaranda

I have just added some new items to my Blue Jacaranda shop on Etsy. Apart from the Dutch Houses, the Hippo Calligram is my most popular fabric design at Spoonflower and I finally had it made into a thermofax screen.



The Elephant and Bicycle Calligrams also continue to be favourites on Spoonflower so they are now available as Art Cards as well. Stretched prints will follow soon.



I tried something new - screen printing with three colours ink. It worked very well! I will definitely do that more often.



And last but not least, I have added this art quilt, Art in Motion, to the shop (find it here). Much as I love it, I really do not have enough walls to hang all my quilts in our house!

Back from Adelaide

Yesterday hubby and I came back from our 5-day stay in Adelaide. Together we visited the Art Gallery, the South Australia Museum and the Botanic Gardens, and we went on a wine-tasting tour in the Barossa Valley. On my own, when hubby was at his conference, I explored the city and made lots of photos. I love public art!



Very close to our apartment, in Hindley Street, was this transformer station. I used Picasa to transfer the picture to black and white. Love how it looks! (thermofax screen?)



More architecture photos on my photo blog, and more public art photos will be added in the next few days. Here is one more, a detail of a glass house in the Botanic Gardens:



This week is going to be very busy with work, PhD and family - my middle son has his 7th birthday next Monday (Halloween!) and his party is on Sunday morning. Sunday afternoon I will be at Inspired with my shop Blue Jacaranda - but more about that later this week.

Next week I really hope to make a start on a new quilt...!