Poinciana Seed Pod

Yesterday was a productive day: I played tennis, finished a book (Watching You by Michael Robotham - have read all his books in the last few weeks and loved them) and made this small quilt, my submission for the SAQA 2014 Anniversary Trunk Show (and all this while it's school holidays!).
I have used a Poinciana seed pod as a stamp before, to make fabric cards, and have wanted to use it in an art quilt ever since.



Here's a detail pic. I like the combination of the organic shape of the seed pod and the straight background quilting. What do you think?

Handprinted Schoolhouse Fabric and Postcard Giveaway

Ever since I made my hand-stamped Dutch Houses fabric I have been thinking about other designs to print on fabric. A while ago, it suddenly struck me that it would be fun to create a stamp of one of my favourite traditional quilt blocks; the Schoolhouse. And yesterday I finally found time to do it:



I started stamping, and really liked it:



Here is the first fat quarter of Little Red Schoolhouse fabric - now for sale in my Etsy shop:



I also made a fabric postcard (10 x 15 cm / 4 x 6 inch). Because it's almost Christmas I am giving it away to one reader of this blog. If you would like to win it, leave a comment here and let me know which quilt block you think I should make into a stamp next. I'll pick a winner on 5 January 2014, as we are going away to our caravan in Wooyung Beach this weekend for two weeks. Good luck!

Handprinted fabric swap

Yes, these are Dutch Houses, but not the ones you know! These are stamped, not screenprinted. I made this fat quarter for the third handprinted fabric swap organised by Leslie Keating. But first I did a stamping workshop with Lisa Walton at the Stitches and Craft Show here in Brisbane on Friday:



We each got a square of this soft, easy to carve material and a fat quarter to play with. I carved a Dutch house and made a rubbing with an oil pastel stick:



I liked the process and the result, so I bought a large block and at home I made this stamp:



It is loosely based on this photo, that I took in November 2010 in Groningen, my favourite city in the whole wide world:



And then I just stamped and stamped!



For the swap I had to make four fat quarters, in the preferred colours of my swap partners:



This morning I folded them and bound them with a scrap of my Dutch Houses wrapping paper (Spoonflower offered wrapping paper for a short while last year):



And here they are, ready to be send off!



At the bottom of the pile is my quilt for the SAQA Benefit Auction 2013, which I also finished this weekend. (yes, I am feeling quite smug!) I am not showing it yet, as it will be part of the SAQA Oceania collection and we plan to do a blog hop later in the year where we will show the quilts.



I took this quilt, The Final Round, home on Friday; it was part of the State of the Art quilt 12 exhibition and returned to me by Suzanne, the curator. I gave her my SotA13 quilt in return - yes, one of my quilts was juried in! More about that soon.

The Final Round is now for sale in my Etsy shop; you can find it here. I like it, but I just don't have enough walls to hang all my quilts!