Len's Quilt Top

Today is DH's birthday (39!) and his quilt top is almost finished. I want to add a wider border in a black and white fabric, but do not have time for that today. However, the most important part is finished - and you can be sure I will not ever make this quilt again!

Tomorrow DH and I fly to Melbourne, while the grandparents mind the boys. We will be there until Tuesday and look forward very much to a weekend strolling around the city, having leisurely meals at restaurants, visiting museums etc! On Sunday we are having lunch with the Melbourne members of Art Quilts Around the World at the Observatory Cafe at the Botanic Gardens. I'm really looking forward to that as well!

2010

We have visitors from overseas, so it took me a while to write this posting, but here I am. My plans and goals for 2010... I have been thinking about it a lot in the last few days.

A few months ago I joined the Quiltart mailing list. This is an American group, but there are lots of members in other countries. I really enjoy the discussions on this list, sometimes they provide a different look at things that can be very refreshing. For instance, a while ago there was a discussion about 'thinkers' versus 'feelers' and someone wrote 'I am definitely a thinker. I do not have a sketchbook because my ideas never appear as visual images. When I write down ideas, they are always in words'.

I was so relieved by these words - I feel almost guilty for never using my sketchbooks, but I am just not a visual person! (strange, for an art quilter!)

But I digress. In the last few days, there has been a lot of talk about 'the word for 2010'. What is your guiding word for this year? As a word person, I felt attracted to this idea and I have thought hard about my word. It is identity. This year I want to develop more of a personal style in my art quilts, an identity. I think it is already forming but I want to consciously develop it further. (does this sounds terribly pretentious?)

Some more concrete goals:
- make at least one quilt to enter into a juried art quilt exhibition;
_ participate in Dijanne Cevaal's KISS challenge;
- make 4 quilts for Art Quilts Around the World;
- make a traditional quilt for our new niece or nephew (expected in February);
- finish the Lens Quilt for DH and the play quilt for Robbie.

I have more plans; like making a journal quilt every month on a theme that is relevant to me at that time, and practice my drawing skills regularly, but they are not set in stone.



The photos in this posting were made at the Brisbane Botanic Gardens at Mt Coot-tha, that we visited on December 30th.

2009

Quiltwise, 2009 was a very good year for me. Three of my quilts appeared in Down Under Quilts, one (the optical illusion quilt) as a Creative Process article, and my Selvedge Shopping Sack featured as a project.
Very recently I heard that my MAGnificence quilt was juried into the State of the Art Quilt 2010 exhibition; for me the highlight of the year!




Here are the quilts I made in 2009 (except for Hugo's Rainbow Bird Quilt) - interesting to discover that I have made three 'traditional' quilts featuring squares (I love squares, can you tell?) and three pictorial quilts. I like making both sorts; after finishing one sort I usually want to make a quilt of the other sort.




And here are my five journal quilts for 2009. I would have liked to make some more, but hey, I do need to sleep sometimes!



And finally, here are the four quilts I made for Art Quilts Around the World: Brave New World, Connexion, Where Land and Sea Meet and MAGnificent Mandala. The last one has been unveiled today, together with the mandala quilts of the other members, on our AQATW blog. Do go there to have a look at the quilts and read about my mandala!

I also made lots of ATCs and fiber postcards, a few bags and some other small projects, but I will not bother you with all of that now!

Non-quiltwise, 2009 has been a very good year as well - I had the opportunity to visit the TB outreach clinics in the Torres Strait Islands; we had a wonderful holiday in our home country, the Netherlands; I started a PhD traject (it's going well, thanks, I'm busy working on my literature review); the boys are all doing well and DH had lots of publications this year (he is a public health researcher at the University of Queensland).

Tomorrow I hope to post a little about my plans and goals for 2010...
Meanwhile, I wish you all a happy, healthy and creative New Year!

A new quilt

I have started a new quilt - I couldn't resist this optical illusion! You can find the whole quilt here. It is quite the rage at my Dutch quilters mailing list at the moment. Isn't it brilliant?!
It is called a Log cabin with a Lens, or simply a Lens Quilt, and when I saw it I knew I had to make it for my DH Lennert... I always call him Len and this is Len's Quilt, isn't it!
I don't think I will be able to finish it in time for his birthday, January 8th - but perhaps the top, although the blocks around this central part are very tricky...

We were washed away from the campsite at Mt Tamborine (pics on our family blog) and came back a day earlier than planned. You won't hear me complaining about that! Here in Brisbane it is raining a lot as well, so we keep busy by baking choc chip cookies and banana bread, and making mango jam and chutney with mangoes from the tree in our garden. Yum!

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!