Blue Rose

My Barcelona quilt Blue Rose is inspired by Gaudí's Rose Window in the Sagrada Familía church:


(source: www.barcelona.de)

The quilt is made using the reverse applique technique, with turquoise handdyed cotton sateen from Dyed and Gone to Heaven behind black cotton. It is machine quilted and has a facing finish.





(cross-posted to Art Quilts Around the World)

Busy

It has been a busy week here. It's the school holidays and all the boys, hubby and I have been sick with a horrible gastro bug. Everyone was sick for only one day, but the whole thing took almost a week and I was of course the last one to get it. Haven't felt so bad in years! But today I was well again and made these two cushion covers for our caravan. The zebra is one of the prints I made a while ago for the Animal Kingdom Challenge quilt - it looks good, doesn't it?



This newsprint fabric was a birthday gift from my friend Yasmin. I think it makes a great cover!



The boys did some painting today, and I decided to join in. Ernst (6) made this wonderful painting, called Electric Attack:



I polka dotted my canvas - inspired by the Polka Dots Forever Treasury List I made on Etsy today (please have a look, it really is fun!).



I am still figuring Etsy out - it is fun, but eating up a lot of my time! I have added quite a few new items to my shop, joined teams, formed circles etc... And become quite addicted to making Treasury Lists, which are collections of 16 items currently on sale at Etsy centered around a theme. So far I have used these themes: Zebra (surprise!), Rainbow, Blue and White, Stylish Screen Prints, Bicycle, Turquoise and Birthday Bash (wow, so many already!). There are so many original and beautiful items on Etsy! (and I try to add some Australian and Dutch items to every Treasury List)

On Wednesday we are going on a short holiday, to our caravan at Wooyung Beach of course. Looking forward to that! After the holidays I will start on a quilt for the Beneath the Southern Sky Challenge.

Art or Quilt?

I haven't shown this quilt yet, even though I finished it a few months ago. I thought I would enter it in the Queensland Quilters show in October, but DH and I will be in Adelaide that week (the grandparents will be here with the boys) so I am not going to enter any quilts.

This one was meant to be a fun take on the issue of 'art quilts'. The 'quilt' part is pieced, the 'art' part is the fabric I showed here - rubbed with a paintstick on a bath mat bought especially for this purpose! The size of the quilt is 43 x 56 cm / 17 x 22 in.



The letters ART and quilt are made with appropriate words cut out of selvedge strips. (click on photos to enlarge)



Initially I didn't plan to include or and the question mark. When I decided I wanted them I didn't have any selvedge words left, so I used discharge paste to stencil them.



The final (art?) quilt somehow isn't quite what I had in mind when I started it... I think it is too straight - I really have trouble making quilts without straight edges! But I had fun making it and that is what matters. Would love to hear what you think of it!

Happy days

After the last posting I received an email from Cherilyn Martin, an English quilter living in the Netherlands. She had read the article about me in the Dutch Quilters Guild magazine and asked if I would like to meet with her as she was flying to Brisbane two days later! Of course I would, and I found Kate and Alison willing to join us, so we had a lovely lunch with some show and tell on Friday at South Bank. Thanks ladies, I enjoyed it very much!



Cherilyn is now teaching a workshop in Townsville and will be in Sydney after that.



Today, on my birthday ;-), I received an email congratulating me with the sale of my Balance 3 quilt in the SAQA Benefit Auction. It sold for $150 - I am very proud and happy!

Blue Jacaranda now on Etsy!

I am happy to tell you that I now sell my handmade items on Etsy too! You can find my Blue Jacaranda shop here. I have just added The Owl Quilt to the shop - my very first quilt for sale! (apart from the quilts that have been auctioned) I will be adding items to the shop in the next few days (weeks). If you would like to be updated please 'like' Blue Jacaranda on Facebook. I am planning a giveaway when I reach 300 'likers'.

I am still exploring Etsy - there's so much to discover! My first Treasury is here, do take a look!

Some more fun news to share: the Dutch Quilters Guild's magazine has started a new series of articles, featuring Dutch quilters living abroad. I was the first person to be interviewed and here is the article:



And finally, I have been wanting to share my new business cards with you:



Aren't they cool?!



I got them from MOO and can highly recommend this company!

Russia

I have never been to Russia, but would love to go there one day. The first thing I would go and see would be St Basils's Cathedral in Moscow. You may remember I had a thermofax screen made of the drawing I did of this cathedral a while ago. I used this print in a Russia journal quilt for the Australia and New Zealand Art quilters group - I printed it on the red part of the Russian flag (white, blue, red - very similar to the Dutch flag, which I used in my Netherlands quilt). I stenciled the word Russia in Cyrillic script on the blue part. It was quilted simply with horizontal lines. Here is a close-up:



I consider this the second quilt in my series of country journal quilts. The Morocco quilt I regard as a failure and it will probably be cut up to make a postcard ;-).

I also finished the Barcelona quilt for the Art Quilts Around the World group and will post a sneak peek there soon.

Only one week now

... until SAQA's Benefit Auction 2011 takes off!

On the SAQA website you can now find eight pages of 'dream collections' - collections of nine auction pieces, curated by SAQA members. My dream collection, Colourful, can be found on page 8. And I'm proud to say that my quilt, Balance 3, features in three dream collections: Threes, curated by Linda Boone Laird on page 4; Carolyn Ryan's collection of pieces that create a strong mood through use of color or theme on page 5, and Feminine Figures, curated by Wen Redmond, on page 8.

Tuberculosis

I have entered my Tuberculosis piece into the Political and Social Art exhibition at the Infinity Art Gallery, an online art gallery. You can view it, and read my artist statement, in Gallery 2.
I encourage you to take a look at both galleries; there are some very interesting art works.

I have finished my diving quilt and called it Synchronicity. It's hanging on the wall in our living room now - I love it! But I'm not showing it here yet, as I am thinking of entering it into a show... Sorry!

Quilting again!

I just checked - it's been more than a month since I last worked on a quilt! No wonder that I really itched to get going again. Yesterday was a rainy day here in Brisbane and the boys were over at a friend's house, so I finally started on that pile I dug out on Wednesday (see photo above; there are three sandwiched quilts - a blue one, a red one and another blue one).

I finished quilting the little skater quilt and made a good start on the other two. Today I managed to finish quilting another one. Here are a few sneak peeks:





I already love this quilt!

I have cut the strips for the facing finish of these two quilts and hope to sew them on tomorrow.

I also did some stencilling on the top of a new journal quilt. Love the smell of Shiva Paintstiks!

Oh, why do I need to go to work tomorrow... Wish I could stay at home and make art quilts!

More cushions

Today was my once-in-a-fortnight day-off - not at work, oldest two kids at school, youngest at Kindy - and I had a ball. Made two more cushion covers; another Dutch Houses one and a Brisbane Tram Scroll one; made from two tea towels that I bought a while ago at a little shop in Clayfield. I intended to make a bag out of them (never understood why you would make tea towels out of lovely fabrics) but really, I have enough bags...
Here's the other side:



(For overseas readers: all these names are Brisbane suburbs)

I also cleaned up my studio (trying to get used to calling it that) and found a number of projects that I started in the last few months (divers, skaters etc). Got very inspired to get going again!

I also googled some Barcelona images to find inspiration for the next Art Quilts Around the World challenge. And I found it! Looking forward to starting on that quilt soon.
I created a Gaudi board on Pinterest for my collection of photos. Pinterest is such a useful website!

Dutch Houses Cushion

Yesterday I made this Dutch Houses Cushion cover. It has a hidden zip that I am very proud of - I never inserted one before (always steered clear of zips) and sort of just figured out how to do it (well, it's not rocket science), and it worked!

The fabric is a leftover from the Spoonflower linen-cotton canvas I used for the Dutch Houses Bag. There's enough for another cover and both will go to our caravan.

I have added lots of new stuff that I made for the Kerbside Lane Markets to my Blue Jacaranda shop on MadeIt - Vintage Atlas Cards, Vintage Bookcover Cards, Chalk Cloth Gift Tags, Pencil Rolls and lots more. And I made and added this polka-dotted apron, modelled here by my almost-5-year-old:



I have also started on a design for a new quilt. I seem to be stuck in this small project mode - it's so easy to work on these things that are finished in a few hours or less, but much harder to start again on a large project that involves enlarging designs, screen printing etc... I long to be back in that flow, but there's so much else going on. (my PhD Confirmation has been postponed until September 6th...) However, I do hope to start on it this week. To be continued!

What's new?

Well, not the quilt, but the quilt stand is - I bought it at Design Matters and love it. Very useful too in a rented house where you're not allowed to hang anything on the wall!



Because of the Ekka holiday in Brisbane we were able to go to our new caravan at Wooyung Beach for two days. The new curtains give it a very fresh look!



Hugo agreed to bring his Aussie Quilt to the caravan - it's really too big for his bed and fits perfectly on this bed.



The Kookaburra and the other small bird quilts are now at Wooyung too! (yes, I will make some new covers for these dark cushions)



And here is another Grevillea. I can't stop photographing these funky flowers!

To market, to market

Today was the long awaited event - my first market! Around noon hubby dropped me off at Kerbside Lane to set up my stall, while he took the boys to the Queensland Museum. A few hours later they came back and manned my stall for a while:



It was a small market with a good vibe:





Music too:



I sold enough to make a profit (including a few of my Callies, which is encouraging), but all in all I think this market is not quite the right place for me - most visitors are young people looking for vintage clothes and accessories, not for the stuff I sell. I need a more family-oriented market!

However, I enjoyed being there - until suddenly around 4 pm it started to rain; for the first time in Brisbane in weeks! :-( And it didn't stop, so everyone quickly packed it in, and my boys came to collect me:



Now it's back to work for two days, then we're off to our caravan for two days (because of the Ekka holiday here in Brisbane) and after that, on Friday, my Confirmation. I'll be very happy when it's Friday night!



PS Spoonflower has a Free Swatch Day on August 18th! I think I'll order a Hippo Calligram swatch to make another Calli...