Crafty

I'm surprising myself by being very crafty this week. Today I made this felt ghost. Hugo (6) confiscated it and made a felt skeleton (with some help), and both went into his 'McDonald's happy pack' (he wants to go there to get some toys, but we're not keen... so he decided to make his own Mac pack. That's my boy)



I made some more luggage tags - the Friesian cow tag is for our Dutch nanny, the sailing boat one for DH. I actually made another three for the other nannies, but forgot to make a picture...



There are three half-eaten gingerbread men now - I made two more while camping at Fingal Head on the weekend (pics of the beautiful scenery on our family blog)



And I made this kangaroo for our christmas tree:



Dear readers, I wish you all a happy Christmas! We are off camping again tomorrow until the 28th, at Tamborine Mountain in the Gold Coast Hinterland. I'll be taking along some more felt!

Oh dear...

If you are a long-time follower of this blog you will know that I am not really into making Christmassy stuff. However, I couldn't resist making this unhappy-looking guy (and who wouldn't be unhapppy if he was half eaten!) The pattern can be found here, with thanks to Elsie Marley.



Here is the little man in our small Christmas tree (on top of our small television), among other creative stuff made by the boys.

We are off camping this weekend, at beautiful Fingal Head. I might take some felt, buttons, ricrac and thread to make a few more of these gingerbread men...

Lutradur

This week I have been very busy looking after my two youngest boys, who both caught a nasty bug that caused a high fever and a lot of vomiting. Poor little guys. In the evenings I was glad to find a little time to experiment with the lutradur I bought quite a while ago. I made this postcard (41/2 " square), do you like it? I may make a small quilt using this stuff.



On Tuesday I finally had the opportunity to visit the Paddington Antique Centre here in Brisbane. It is a collection of antique shops in a wonderful old building (the Plaza Theatre, built in 1930). I bought this lovely box and some old books, among them a geography school book printed in 1938. I want to try some mixed media pieces and thought I might use these books. Click on the photos to see a larger image.

Good news!

After the sad posting on Tuesday I have some great news today!!!
I got a letter yesterday... It said:

Dear Linda

We are pleased to inform you that your quilt “MAGnificence” has been selected by our jurors Helen Sanderson, curator/multi-media artist and Dianne Firth, internationally renowned art quilter, to be part of the STATE of the ART quilt 10 touring exhibition. From the 32 entries received, our jurors have selected 25.

STATE of the ART quilt 10 will be on display at the Australasian Quilt Convention, Melbourne April 29- May 2 and the Textile Art Festival, Brisbane June 25 -27, 2010.

YAAAYYYYY!!!!

I explicitly asked if I could put a photo of the quilt on my blog and that was not a problem. So here it is! I really think think this is the best quilt I have made so far. This is the information about the quilt and the artist statement:

Quilt size: 65x76 cm
Materials used: Hand dyed fabric, paint, paintstiks, thread
Techniques used: Screen printing, stencilling with paintstiks, machine and hand quilting
Artist’s statement: My son recently joined a boys' gymnastics club. Watching the senior members of his club at their training inspired me to make this quilt. I have depicted the six events in men's artistic gymnastics (MAG): still rings, floor exercise, pommel horse, parallel bars, vault and high bars, and tried to capture the movement, grace and sheer power of the gymnasts.

Some other good news this week was that the December issue of Down Under Quilts came out, which has my selvedge quilt, some selvedge items and, most importantly, my selvedge bag project in it! Also very exciting. Here are a few photos (click to see them bigger)






















I'm off to work now - but I just had to share this with you!

Mama

Twenty three years ago on this day, December 1st 1986, my mother died. She was 44 years old and I was 17. It makes me sad that I have already lived much longer without her than with her. I so wish she could have met my husband and my children...

This is my favourite photo of her, me and my grandmother (her mother). It was made on my third birthday. My father left us before I was born and I was raised by these two women. My mother had a progressive disease and when my grandmother died (when I was 15) she moved to a nursing home. I lived with two foster families until I finished high school and started university in another city. Those years were not the best of my life, but I have fond memories of the first 15 years. As you can see they loved me very much.

Busy

I haven't done any sewing in the last week, as I have been (and still am) very busy turning our emigration blog into a book, using this website. It's a lot of work but it will be great to have the whole story of going to and living in Brissy in a book!

I did some fabric dyeing today though: two series of FQs in five gradations (yellow and purple) and two half metre pieces (purple and green).

International Art

Yesterday I received these beautiful cards from Andrea in Paris - so I did get some international art after all! Thanks Andrea, I love them.

Meanwhile Gunnel in Sweden has received my mandala and told me she really likes it (see her comment on the previous post). This international art exchange really is great fun. (let me know if you would like to join and I'll send you the email! I still haven't found 6 participants.)

The Dutch Quilters Guild has put an interview with me on its website - you can read it here. Well, it's in Dutch so most of you will probably not be able to read it... but you can have a look at my quilts. They look very nice there, if I say so myself!

International Art Exchange

Last week I got an email from Emmy in the Netherlands, inviting me to an International Art Exchange. It was a chain letter in a nice form (or so I thought), asking me to send a small work of art ('a little drawing, a print, card, small stitched item, a comic or an art zine, or whatever you think is a good idea') to the number one on the list (the sender was number two), and to send the email on to six other artists. In that email you should of course make the original sender number one and put yourself as number two.

I thought it was a nice idea and made the mandala above for the number one in my email, a lady in Sweden (I'll reveal her name when she has received it. I'm quite sure she doesn't read this blog though). I used the mandala stencil from the book I bought at the Queensland Quilt Show, a silver Paintstik and some handdyed fabric, fast-2-fuse and a blue metallic thread. The diametre is about 15cm.

I sent the email to six of my online art quilt friends/acquaintances. Four of them replied that they were too busy, the other two did not reply. I sent it to six others - four replied that they were too busy, one said she would join in (yay!), one didn't reply... I sent it to five more persons - two replied that they were too busy, the others did not reply...

I guess I may not receive anything, but I had fun making this little work of art and just hope that the recipient will like it too!

Giveaway at Dye Candy

Fellow AQATW member Chris has another giveaway at her blogs Dye Candy and Greetings from the Shady Grove. If you leave a comment on these blogs before Sunday 6 pm (her time) you have a chance to win some of her lovely handdyed fabric!

Small quilting projects

Last week I received the Quilting Daily email, with a link to the 5 Small Quilting Projects from Quilting Arts. Just the sort of thing I felt like doing - small projects that can be finished in one evening, with scraps of my favourite fabrics. I started by making the Pencil Roll:



For the pencil pockets I used my own handdyed fabrics. Doesn't it look gorgeous!



Then I made the Magical Card case, with a piece of painted and stamped fabric.



When you pull the ribbon, the business cards pop up! Too cool.



And finally I made a Luggage Tag - something I have been wanting to make since our trip to the Netherlands in June. I'll have one now when we fly to Melbourne in January!



DH liked it so much that he asked me to make one for him as well, in a more masculine fabric. I offered him a tractor fabric but that wasn't wat he had in mind! Haha. I probably have some sailing boat fabric scraps somewhere...

Colours of Africa

I finished the three quilts I started last weekend at the retreat for Colours of Africa (read their blog here). I only meant to make the elephants in black on a red background, but of course after cutting them out I had the reverse as well and I actually prefer the quilt with the red elephants!



The beads on this quilt are from a necklace I bought in Kenya when I was there in 2002 with my husband (boyfriend at the time). I love it but never wear it; it's just not my style. But the beads go very well with this quilt, I think.

Quilt retreat at Lake Moogerah

Last weekend I was at a quilt retreat near Lake Moogerah. I had a wonderful time (it is great not to have to cook for a whole weekend!) and have been very productive. On Friday evening I finally put together the top of the play quilt for Robbie, with the blocks I got for my birthday two (!) years ago:



On the green fabric in the centre I am going to applique some roads for Robbie to ride his cars on. I think I will use a world map panel for the back, as I did with Hugo and Ernst's quilts - so he can see where we live now (in Australia) and where we are from (the Netherlands).

On Saturday I made a bag with the fabric I bought in the Netherlands:



When the bag was finished I worked on three small quilts for Colours of Africa, a Belgian/Dutch initiative to raise funds for an early childhood centre in South Africa. I will show them here when they are finished, which should be later this week.

There were about 25 ladies at the retreat - and this one male visitor!



It was a great weekend - thanks Julie for organizing it! I'm already looking forward to next year's retreat.

Gone reading

Nothing new to show you today - I haven't done any sewing or quilting in the last week. My in-laws gave me a belated birthday present: the first book in the Millennium trilogy. So I have been reading every free moment and once I finished the book I went off and bought the second one! I'm halfway through that one now and have ordered the third book already...

I love reading, always have, and still read about one book a week, now mostly on the train to and from work, 3 days a week. I read a lot of thrillers (Val McDermid, Minette Walters and Robert Goddard are a few of my favourite writers) and I must say that these books by Stieg Larsson are among the best I have ever read. Highly recommended!

On a quilty note; this weekend I am going to a quilting retreat at Lake Moogerah with Rens. Looking forward to that very much! (I was at that same retreat 2 years ago) I don't know yet what I will work on there - I feel like doing a more traditional quilt after recently finishing a few art quilts. Maybe a quilt for Robbie, he really should have a bigger one...