Weekend

We had a very busy weekend. Yesterday was the Creative Arts Spectacular Gala Night. It was a lovely evening, I wore very high heels for the first time in years and had so much fun! My quilt looked very good among the other artworks (or so I thought and quite a few people told me so) and was sold for a nice sum, so I was very happy. It was the only textile art piece, all the others were paintings, so maybe I have introduced the concept of textile art to some people...



This morning my oldest son, Hugo, had a gymnastics carnival. Which is why I got my birthday present a bit early - a Nikon D3000 DSLR (digital single lens reflex camera)!!!!! I had a lot of fun playing with it at the carnival and afterwards at the Creative Arts Family Fun Day.
(There's another pic on my photo blog and more to come on our family blog)

Zebras

My two oldest boys had Letterland Day today at school and both wanted to dress up as ZigZag Zebra. So I made them some pants and t-shirts with the zebra fabric that I have had for years (I made some ATCs with this fabric in 2008). They loved them ;-).

Not much quilting done this week, except the sleeve on the Op Art Quilt which will be auctioned tomorrow at the Creative Arts Spectacular Gala Night. Brrr... scary!
Here it is in my sewing room - if it doesn't sell I'll be happy to take it back and hang it there!

Spoonflower Free Swatch Day

Spoonflower, one of my favourite websites, has a Free Swatch Day today, so this is your chance to try out a fabric design for free or buy a small piece of one of the fabulous fabrics available on the site. I'm thrilled that six persons have ordered a swatch of one of my fabrics!
I ordered the swatch above, based on a Dover design.

And some more exciting Spoonflower news: my Dutch Houses design came third in the Windows and Doors contest!!! How cool is that! Thanks everyone who voted for me!!!

Thanks also for the kind comments on my new quilt. I have come to like the quilt a bit more again myself and have sent the photo to the Creative Arts Spectacular organisation. It will be auctioned on the Gala Night on September 11th - brr, very scary!



And finally, here is a card I received from Jesse in South Africa. She organised a postcard swap a while ago - here you can see the cards she received in return (you won't have any trouble recognizing mine). Do check out her blog, she makes gorgeous prints!

Op Art Quilt

This is the quilt I have made for the Creative Arts Spectacular auction. It's 40 cm square. I haven't been feeling very creative lately and this is all I could think of. Would love to hear what you think of it!



PS Thanks to everyone who voted for my Dutch Houses design in the Spoonflower contest. Much appreciated! (the winner will be named on Friday, so you can still vote if you haven't yet)

Queenslander Fabric Design, and more

To complement my Dutch Houses fabric I have designed a Queenslander fabric at Spoonflower. Do you like it?



I'm not sure about the background colour - would love to hear any suggestions!

It's been a bit quiet on this blog - DH is away again, to South Africa for 2 weeks, so I am quite busy being a single parent... :-(

I am working on the quilt for the Creative Arts Spectacular auction; after a lot of unpicking it is now becoming what I had in mind. But I can't seem to get rid of the holes in the fabric, so it doesn't look very good (I'm using black and white fabrics and it looks especially bad on the white fabric)... Am thinking I should make another version, but not looking forward to making the same quilt twice!

I'm also making some new items for Blue Jacaranda, hope to show them here soon. And doing a custom order, very exciting!

And last but not least, I finally surrendered and picked up the first book in the Twilight series. To my big surprise I quite enjoyed it! I also watched the first movie and rather liked that too - especially the stunning landscape and the gorgeous house of the Cullen family! (read more about it here on this architecture blog!)

Inside the house is a wallhanging made of graduation caps (because the vampires don't age they graduate over and over again) that I thought looked very good, almost like a contemporary quilt! Here is a remake that is hanging in The Cullen House, a (real life) inn in Forks, Washington:


Source: The Cullen House

I'm halfway through the second book and have book 3 and 4 waiting here as well... Could I have a few more hours in a day, please? ;-)

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...

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...