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!