Europe

After a great conference in Berlin I am now in Groningen, my favourite city in the whole wide world. I'm staying with my BFF Hylkia and yesterday we had a great day, doing a lot of shopping. At the market I bought some funny yarn to make a scarf:



There was a stall with a lot of different oil cloths. I bought a nice one to make buntings for Blue Jacaranda. It was hard to choose just one!



I visited Cordi Atelier, a wonderful quilt shop, and bought some Den Haan & Wagenmakers fabrics (chintzes):



The funny thing is that this shop is in the street behind the one I used to live in when I was working in Groningen (and has been for many years, so it was there when I lived there) and I never knew it!
This is the little house I owned at that time:



It's great to be here but I do miss my boys and will be glad to see them again in 4 days!

Off to Europe!

I am off to Berlin today! And next week I will be in the Netherlands - I'm so looking forward to that!
Of course I haven't done any quilting in the last week, so I'll leave you with some inspirational photos taken at Mount Glorious on Sunday.
I am taking my camera and computer, so may do some blogging in Europe - although more likely on my photo blog and our family blog than here.





And here's a pic of my men - I will miss them!

Blues

At play...

Hats

After a very busy week (work, tax return, birthday Ernst) I finally found some time to play and made this postcard for this month's Fibermail swap; Hats. When I saw the theme I immediately thought of this photo:



(posted on my photo blog on May 20, 2010). I used an old hat and shirt of Hugo to make the card, so it is very authentic ;-). The light blue on the card is actually more grey.

The next project is to finish the Stone Soup quilt for Art Quilts Around the World (I should have finished it before Nov 1st, but there just wasn't time...) I hope I will manage that this week, for next Tuesday I am flying to Berlin! I'll spend 5 days there at the Tuberculosis Conference and then I will take the train to Groningen, the Netherlands, yay!!! I'll stay with my BFF Hylkia (aka The Apple Tart Queen) for 3 days and after that visit some family and friends in the western part of the Netherlands, before flying back to Brisbane on the 20th of November. I am really looking forward to that trip, and the same time a bit apprehensive about being so far away from my children... (if something happens it will take me 2 days to get back! )

If any readers in the Netherlands (or Germany) would like to buy something from my online shops at MadeIt and Craftumi but haven't done so until now because of the postage costs, this is your chance! If you let me know what you would like I can bring it with me and save you a lot of shipping costs! :-)

Postcards

I had a great day on Sunday at the Queensland Quilt Show! Did a lot of sewing (on a brand new Bernina, but was glad to realise that I am very happy with my simple Janome DC 3050 and have no wish to replace it yet), a little talking to visitors (it was fairly quiet), a little shopping :-) and saw some gorgeous quilts. Sign me up for next year!

Here are a few pics of postcards that I made - they should look somewhat familiar to long time readers of this blog!

Flow

Now that I have my groove back, I am going with the creative flow ;-). I have finished the top of the bicycle quilt, sandwiched it and hope to start quilting it tonight!



This weekend the Queensland Quilt Show is on (view the winners here) and I have been asked to demonstrate some artsy stuff at the 2QAQ table. I think I will make postcards and ATCs and have prepared some fabric. Since I still have lots of gymnasts cut out of freezer paper (I used the 'negatives' for my gymnastics quilts) I used them with a Paintstick to make these:



And using some of the stencils from this book I made these:



I'll bring some thread and Fast-2-Fuse and hope to have a few cards ready to send at the end of the day! In between demonstrating there will be time to look at the quilts (my Forest quilt is hanging there) and do some shopping :-).

Photography Class

This weekend I did an Introductory Digital Photography class here:



It was a lot of fun with a small group (6 students):



I've learned a lot about aperture, shutterspeed, ISO, white balance, depth of field etc etc etc...







... and a bit about working with Photoshop - I manipulated this photo that I made during our holiday in Noosa:



into this one:



More pics on my photo blog!

Yay!

I got my groove back!

Blue Jacaranda now on Craftumi as well!

I'm still in a bit of a 'quilt-dip'... I have enough plans for new quilts and also quite a few projects that need to be finished, but I just don't seem to be able to do it at the moment :-(.

However, I have been sorting my fabric stash and decided to put some of it up for sale on Craftumi (MadeIt's sister-site, where you can buy craft supplies). Have a look at my I Spy charm packs - and there are also some gorgeous children's fabrics. I reckon I won't be using them anymore.

I did buy some fabric for the sashings in Robbie's calligram quilt, maybe I can start cutting that and get back into the swing...

Jacaranda!

It's October - jacaranda time in Brisbane! If you have been following my blog for a year or longer you will know how much I love these trees!



This is what I have been sewing this week: an oil cloth bunting, now up for sale in my online shop Blue Jacaranda (hey, there's that jacaranda again!).



I have also made a few cards for the birthday list at the Fibermail group. (I used leftovers of the fabric I made for the Embellish a Bag Challenge - see here; scroll down a bit)



And here are all the cards I got for my birthday in September. Aren't they pretty?

I hope to go to my local quilt shop this weekend to buy fabric for the sashings in the calligram quilt. And for the Stone Soup quilt, because that one needs to be finished this month as well...

Back

We are back from Noosa! We had a lovely and very relaxed holiday - I read 5 books and made more than 600 photos ;-). The photo above is my favourite - don't you just love these kookaburras? (more photos can be found on my photo blog and our family blog)

On coming home, I found the samples I had ordered at Spoonflower. The alphabet for Robbie's calligram quilt is complete now; here you see them all laid out:



I'm thinking about what fabric to use for the sashings - a plain one (blue?) or maybe an alphabet fabric? Suggestions very welcome!

Thanks everyone for your kind coments on my last posting. I know rejections are part of the game (the art quilting game as well as the PhD game) and I have put them behind me now. A holiday helps too!