Blue Rose

My Barcelona quilt Blue Rose is inspired by Gaudí's Rose Window in the Sagrada Familía church:


(source: www.barcelona.de)

The quilt is made using the reverse applique technique, with turquoise handdyed cotton sateen from Dyed and Gone to Heaven behind black cotton. It is machine quilted and has a facing finish.





(cross-posted to Art Quilts Around the World)

Busy

It has been a busy week here. It's the school holidays and all the boys, hubby and I have been sick with a horrible gastro bug. Everyone was sick for only one day, but the whole thing took almost a week and I was of course the last one to get it. Haven't felt so bad in years! But today I was well again and made these two cushion covers for our caravan. The zebra is one of the prints I made a while ago for the Animal Kingdom Challenge quilt - it looks good, doesn't it?



This newsprint fabric was a birthday gift from my friend Yasmin. I think it makes a great cover!



The boys did some painting today, and I decided to join in. Ernst (6) made this wonderful painting, called Electric Attack:



I polka dotted my canvas - inspired by the Polka Dots Forever Treasury List I made on Etsy today (please have a look, it really is fun!).



I am still figuring Etsy out - it is fun, but eating up a lot of my time! I have added quite a few new items to my shop, joined teams, formed circles etc... And become quite addicted to making Treasury Lists, which are collections of 16 items currently on sale at Etsy centered around a theme. So far I have used these themes: Zebra (surprise!), Rainbow, Blue and White, Stylish Screen Prints, Bicycle, Turquoise and Birthday Bash (wow, so many already!). There are so many original and beautiful items on Etsy! (and I try to add some Australian and Dutch items to every Treasury List)

On Wednesday we are going on a short holiday, to our caravan at Wooyung Beach of course. Looking forward to that! After the holidays I will start on a quilt for the Beneath the Southern Sky Challenge.

Art or Quilt?

I haven't shown this quilt yet, even though I finished it a few months ago. I thought I would enter it in the Queensland Quilters show in October, but DH and I will be in Adelaide that week (the grandparents will be here with the boys) so I am not going to enter any quilts.

This one was meant to be a fun take on the issue of 'art quilts'. The 'quilt' part is pieced, the 'art' part is the fabric I showed here - rubbed with a paintstick on a bath mat bought especially for this purpose! The size of the quilt is 43 x 56 cm / 17 x 22 in.



The letters ART and quilt are made with appropriate words cut out of selvedge strips. (click on photos to enlarge)



Initially I didn't plan to include or and the question mark. When I decided I wanted them I didn't have any selvedge words left, so I used discharge paste to stencil them.



The final (art?) quilt somehow isn't quite what I had in mind when I started it... I think it is too straight - I really have trouble making quilts without straight edges! But I had fun making it and that is what matters. Would love to hear what you think of it!

Happy days

After the last posting I received an email from Cherilyn Martin, an English quilter living in the Netherlands. She had read the article about me in the Dutch Quilters Guild magazine and asked if I would like to meet with her as she was flying to Brisbane two days later! Of course I would, and I found Kate and Alison willing to join us, so we had a lovely lunch with some show and tell on Friday at South Bank. Thanks ladies, I enjoyed it very much!



Cherilyn is now teaching a workshop in Townsville and will be in Sydney after that.



Today, on my birthday ;-), I received an email congratulating me with the sale of my Balance 3 quilt in the SAQA Benefit Auction. It sold for $150 - I am very proud and happy!

Blue Jacaranda now on Etsy!

I am happy to tell you that I now sell my handmade items on Etsy too! You can find my Blue Jacaranda shop here. I have just added The Owl Quilt to the shop - my very first quilt for sale! (apart from the quilts that have been auctioned) I will be adding items to the shop in the next few days (weeks). If you would like to be updated please 'like' Blue Jacaranda on Facebook. I am planning a giveaway when I reach 300 'likers'.

I am still exploring Etsy - there's so much to discover! My first Treasury is here, do take a look!

Some more fun news to share: the Dutch Quilters Guild's magazine has started a new series of articles, featuring Dutch quilters living abroad. I was the first person to be interviewed and here is the article:



And finally, I have been wanting to share my new business cards with you:



Aren't they cool?!



I got them from MOO and can highly recommend this company!

Russia

I have never been to Russia, but would love to go there one day. The first thing I would go and see would be St Basils's Cathedral in Moscow. You may remember I had a thermofax screen made of the drawing I did of this cathedral a while ago. I used this print in a Russia journal quilt for the Australia and New Zealand Art quilters group - I printed it on the red part of the Russian flag (white, blue, red - very similar to the Dutch flag, which I used in my Netherlands quilt). I stenciled the word Russia in Cyrillic script on the blue part. It was quilted simply with horizontal lines. Here is a close-up:



I consider this the second quilt in my series of country journal quilts. The Morocco quilt I regard as a failure and it will probably be cut up to make a postcard ;-).

I also finished the Barcelona quilt for the Art Quilts Around the World group and will post a sneak peek there soon.

Only one week now

... until SAQA's Benefit Auction 2011 takes off!

On the SAQA website you can now find eight pages of 'dream collections' - collections of nine auction pieces, curated by SAQA members. My dream collection, Colourful, can be found on page 8. And I'm proud to say that my quilt, Balance 3, features in three dream collections: Threes, curated by Linda Boone Laird on page 4; Carolyn Ryan's collection of pieces that create a strong mood through use of color or theme on page 5, and Feminine Figures, curated by Wen Redmond, on page 8.

Tuberculosis

I have entered my Tuberculosis piece into the Political and Social Art exhibition at the Infinity Art Gallery, an online art gallery. You can view it, and read my artist statement, in Gallery 2.
I encourage you to take a look at both galleries; there are some very interesting art works.

I have finished my diving quilt and called it Synchronicity. It's hanging on the wall in our living room now - I love it! But I'm not showing it here yet, as I am thinking of entering it into a show... Sorry!