Blogger's Quilt Festival Fall 2014

Amy from Amy's Creative Side is once again hosting the Blogger's Quilt Festival. In 2013 I entered my favourite quilt, Cycle of Life, in the Art Quilt category. Now I have a new favourite, so I am entering this one, Fly Away!



Regular readers of this blog have seen it here recently, for I made it only a few months ago. It is inspired by a photo of my eldest son Hugo (11), taken at the Australian Gymnastics Championships in Melbourne in May 2014, by a photographer of WinkiPoP Media (you can see the original photo here).



This is the largest art quilt I have made so far - it measures 95 x 131 cm (37 x 51.5 inch). It was densely machine quilted on my small Janome, which was quite a struggle!



The image is made using raw-edge appliqué on a whole-cloth background. For a detailed account of how I made this quilt (including all the unpicking I had to do!) click here.



This is Hugo with the quilt:



He started doing gymnastics in 2009, when he was 6 years old. He is now training six times a week and this was the first year he was selected to represent Queensland at the national championships in the Under 12 age group (the youngest category). I'm so proud of him! Here is a video of his rings routine - the photo was taken at the dismount:



Do check out the other quilts in the Art Quilt category and don't forget to vote for your favourite in the first week of November!

Wordless Wednesday

Lavender bags

A few weeks ago I received some lavender branches when I bought something at a market stall. I dried them and digged up some of the leftover squares from my Lilac Baby Quilt (which has been sold to a customer in Canada, how exciting is that?!). Using plain calico for the back, I made some lavender bags:



They smell divine and look so pretty!



Sadly I've now run out of lavender. May try to grow some in our garden!



Meanwhile there is a lot of purple everywhere you look in Brisbane at the moment, as we are in the middle of the jacaranda season. Here is a collage of some photos I made in the last few days. Enjoy!

The making of Fly Away

Today I visited the Queensland Quilt Show, and was thrilled to see my quilt Fly Away hanging there!
I promised to write a bit more about the making of this quilt, so here goes. As you know, it started with this photo, made by the photographers of WinkiPoP Media at the Australian National Championships in Melbourne in May 2014:



I enlarged the photo using Block Posters and printed it:



Then I traced the different parts of the image and searched for matchings fabrics in my stash:



I used fusible webbing (Vliesofix) to iron the fabric pieces onto the background fabric:







With all the pieces fused in place the quilt was ready to be sandwiched. No sewing done yet!



Choosing the threads - I always use Aurifil threads for quilting:



And finally the sewing machine gets a workout! I started on the leotard:





Next some heavy free-motion quilting on the hands:



And on the rings:



Hmmm, not a good idea to do a lot of free-motion quilting before the surrounding area has been quilted.... Here a lot of unpicking was done:



After quilting the body and the rings I started on the background quilting. Again some unpicking was in order:



But finally I got it right:



I had been putting off quilting the hair as I didn't really know how to do that. Finally it couldn't be avoided any longer, and after another good look at the photo I decided to use two fabrics, to depict the light falling on Hugo's hair:



I am quite happy with the quilting I did here:



After finishing the background quilting (which took many, many hours) the quilt was ready to be cut to size:



A facing finish and a hanging sleeve were added:



Finished! Or not?



I wasn't happy with the the body and decided to add the sign on the back after all. I cropped the photo and printed the image below on fabric:



I cut out the sign and fused it to the quilt, then quilted it. I also added some more quilting to the body.



Finished!

Holidays

On Saturday we came back from a camping holiday in Girraween National Park - a beautiful place well worth a visit. We did a lot of bushwalking and climbing:



On the last day we drove home through Warwick, where there just happened to be a quilt show (no, that wasn't a coincidence!).



There were beautiful quilts on display, craft stalls and home-made treats. What more can you ask for? Well... fabric, of course! I bought this lovely bicycle fabric:



And some beautiful Aussie fabrics:



Today, back home, I worked on a new project; a baby quilt for a new niece or nephew expected in December:



This is the view from my sewing room today. Yes, the jacarandas are in bloom! The best time of the year in Brisbane :-)



Looking forward to my visit to the Queesland Quilt Show on Wednesday!