Where Land and Sea meet...

... you often find a lighthouse!



My goal in making this quilt was to try out a new technique - free-hand quilting a scene on PFD fabric (plus batting and backing fabric) and colouring it in with Inktense pencils. I wanted to do a fairly simple image and suddenly, when I was brainstorming about the theme 'where land and sea meet' I thought of a lighthouse.

Googling 'lighthouse' for images to use as inspiration for my drawing resulted in a wealth of websites on lighthouses, enough to inspire a large series of quilts!



Cross-posted at Art Quilts Around the World

Holiday pics

We are back from our lovely mini-holiday - 4 days in Mapleton, in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland. Here are a few pics (more traditional holiday snapshots to be found on our family blog). The bat sculpture above was hanging in the garden of the restaurant in Montville where we had a scrumptious morning tea on Saturday.



This is part of a building that housed an art gallery - unfortunately there was no time to look at the art. I just managed to snatch a picture of this ... (what's it called??? well lid??) in the yard:



A lily:



And a cheeky kookaburra on the campsite (I love kookaburras! My 3-year old calls them kookabooa):



Stay tuned for the unveiling of the land and sea quilts on the Art Quilts Around the World blog tomorrow! I will have to work hard tonight to finish mine...

Faces

Although I have been quite busy in the last week, there is nothing to show yet - I have mainly been working on the gymnasts quilt but don't want to put it on the blog yet. So I'll show you another drawing made by Hugo, my 6-year old. He has school holidays at the moment and is making artworks by the dozen! I love this big picture of his heroes, Ben 10 (middle), Gwen and Kevin 11. Especially the faces, which I think he has drawn very cleverly (for a 6-year old at least!):



His room is a feast for the eyes!



Tomorrow we are going away for a few days, to camp in the beautiful Sunshine Coast Hinterland. See you next week!

40

Today is my 40th birthday. The 40 years have mainly been good (especially the last 8) and I am looking forward to the next 40!
The postcard above is from Marloes, I sent her a Dutch Houses postcard and she sent me this beauty, just in time for my birthday. Thanks Marloes!



This is a sneak peek of the gymnasts quilt I am currently working on. It's going well, but I still don't know what it will look like when it's finished!

Journal Quilt August

Finally, after a 4-month gap, I made another journal quilt for the Aus/NZ Art Quilters group. The theme for August was Motion and I thought it would be a good way to try out one of my gymnasts screen prints in a quilt. I chose the pommel horse, because on that apparatus the gymnast performs a series of continuous motions. The 'shadow' was made with a Paintstik on a freezer paper stencil.

For the text on the quilt I used some childrens' alphabet stamps. I quilted them with a free-motion zigzag stitch; the first time I have tried that. It works very well for letters!

I am quite happy with this journal quilt. To see the other ones, click on the tag journal quilts at the end of this posting.

Swatches

Remember the Grameldon? A few weeks ago Spoonflower had a free swatch day and I used Ernst's drawing for one of my free swatches (8x8in). It turned out really well. I may make a bag for Ernst out of it.



Here is the other free swatch. Do you recognize it? It's made using this print (scroll down a bit). I think it looks fascinating!

Dutch Quilters Guild

Yesterday I received the latest issue of Quiltnieuws ('Quilt news'), the magazine of the Dutch Quilters Guild. I joined the Guild shortly after I started quilting in 2006 and I still am a member, even though I have been living in Australia for 2.5 years now. I love reading this colourful magazine (that's Joseph's Technicolour Dreamcoat on the front page, I would love to see that musical!) and recognizing names mentioned in it.

Since last month there is a link to this blog on the Guild's website and I have noticed that quite a few guests have come to visit through that link. Welcome to you all! I hope you enjoy my blog and will come back sometime.

On a not-quilty note: as of today I am an official PhD candidate at the University of Queensland! Although it will probably mean less time for quilting I am very excited about this. The title of my proposed research project is 'The epidemiology of tuberculosis in Queensland as it relates to strategies to prevent transmission, particularly in the indigenous population'.

Experimenting

I am experimenting with stencils and Shiva paintstiks. Great fun!

Gymnastics quilt top

And here they are, all 6 gymnasts. This I think will become the quilt. But first I am going to experiment with some painting/stamping/rubbing/stenciling on some of the other gymnasts.

Hugo is very excited because he actually sold one of his drawings after my last posting. Thanks very much, Lynn! Now when we visit the Netherlands next he can say he actually contributed something to the trip. My budding artist!

The last one

Here is the last gymnast (top right). Now I will try to make a pleasing composition with six of the thirty-odd gymnast prints I have made.

And here are some works of art made by my 6-year old, Hugo. This is the brave knight fighting the dragon, while the princess and her father, the king, are watching.



And these are two pterodactyls (flying dinosaurs). I love how he has added the sky, sun and sea.



The first drawing was made for me but the second one is for sale! Hugo said he was going to make a lot of drawings and sell them, so he would have some money. When I asked why he needed money, he said that he wanted to buy plane tickets so we could go to the Netherlands. We have been telling the boys that it will be a long time (2 years probably) before our next visit to the Netherlands, because it is so expensive. And he really wants to go there again... He is happy to work on commissions! ;-)

And 2 more

Are you getting bored with them yet?!



I am making a print of all of the six events in men's artistic gymnastics: floor exercise, pommel horse, still rings, vault, parallel bars, and high bar. Only the vault left to do now - tonight, I hope. And then I will endeavour to make them all into a quilt... maybe in time to enter it in the State of the Art Quilt 2010.

Another gymnast

Just printed - not even completely dry yet (but I have to go now).

Screen printing

I did some more screen printing yesterday (using a freezer paper stencil) - this is the result. Here is the second gymnast, working on the rings. There will probably follow another 2 or 3.



In the end this may or may not become a quilt...

I love screen printing!

Spoonflower fabric

Today my Spoonflower fabrics arrived. I'm very pleased with my Houses of Amsterdam fabric! Do you think there might be a future for me in fabric design? ;-)



I also had 2 swatches (8x8in) printed with a feather design found at this website, for a feather quilt that I hope to make one day. They turned out very well too.

The quilt for the Queensland Quilt Show is almost finished, I only need to hand sew the binding to the back. The selvedge bag for Down Under Quilts is finished too. This week I hope to do some screen printing!

Playing Cards

My online artquilt group, Art Quilts Around the World, organized another postcard swap recently. The theme was Playing Cards. I got a Diamond from Simone, Let's Play from Lynn and the Ace of Diamonds from Marian.



And I made these cards; I quilted the figures first and then coloured them in with Inktense pencils. A fun technique that I may also use for the currrent challenge: when or where land and sea meet.

The Grameldon and my sewing room

I'm very busy at the moment, but nothing I can show here yet - postcards that are on their way to the recipients, selvedge items for the December issue of Down Under Quilts, a quilt that I want to enter in the Queensland Quilt Show - so I will show you a drawing made by my 4 year old son Ernst.

Until quite recently Ernst wasn't interested in drawing/painting/collaging at all, unlike his older brother Hugo (6) who brought home works of art from his child care centre when he was only 1 year old. But in the last few months Ernst has suddenly discovered the joy of drawing. Here is a drawing of a creature called The Grameldon. It is something that Ernst started telling us about a while ago and sounds like a mix of a superhero and a dinosaur - although here it looks a bit cat-like as well ;-). I am thinking we might make a Grameldon-quiltlet...

I tidied up my sewing room this week, so here are a few pics of that too.



The bookcase with my quilting books and magazines, sketchbooks, postcards and ATCs and other things I like looking at (my feather collection, a thread painting made by my friend Mady, a lovely pic of baby Ernst etc).



Here is my fabric collection, in a couple of boxes - not too bad, hmm?



Painting supplies under the ironing board:



And my sewing table looking very tidy indeed!