Wooyung

This is Wooyung, the quilt I made for the Beneath the Southern Sky exhibition. It has not been selected, which is disappointing of course, but not too much, for it is hanging in our dining room and we all love it. It is a whole cloth quilt, made from another gorgeous handdyed fabric from Dyed and Gone to Heaven. As soon as I saw it I knew I wanted to make this quilt!

I really wanted to add some shells but since that would probably be a problem if the quilt had to travel, I didn't - now however I have started to attach some; will show it here when it's finished. I have been collecting shells with small holes at Wooyung Beach for this purpose!

This weekend I have been quite busy with my first custom order at Etsy - a customer bought the oilcloth bunting I showed here and asked if I could make two more as she wanted to hang them in a cubby house. I will send them off tomorrow - she has promised to send some photos, I can't wait to see them!

Treasures

We spend the last weekend of the summer holidays at Wooyung Beach, where I collected these treasures... I was also lucky enough to 'catch' this osprey with my zoom lens:



Yesterday school started again here in Queensland. I had taken the day off to be there at my youngest son's first day of school. He couldn't wait to join his brothers, but was a bit nervous nevertheless:



Today I went back to work - I am now working 4 short days instead of 3 full days, so I can pick the boys up from school (hubby brings them in the morning). Being home so early means that I can do some sewing/quilting in daylight, which is great! Today I started quilting the new quilt that I can't show here yet...

We were lucky to have a sunny weekend, for on Sunday night it started raining and it hasn't stopped since... Already streets are flooding here in Brisbane and the weather forecasts are saying it will rain all week...

Red Work

The other day I saw some pictures of redwork quilts and I suddenly thought that printing my designs in red ink on white fabric might be a good idea... So on Monday night I did a massive screen printing session at the kitchen table (made 41 prints!) and yesterday at night (I work on Monday and Tuesday) I made a lot of Art Cards...



Today I was at home with the boys (it's the last week of the summer holidays here) and between gymnastics and the library managed to add them to my Etsy shop.



I also made some stretched prints:



... and a red-on-white Robot Calligram t-shirt! (the white-on-red Robot Calligram t-shirt is here)



This Dutch Houses ACEO (ATC) sold within 2 hours of adding it to the shop - wow! (I have added a new one, so it is for sale again)



I will be adding some of these items to the MadeIt shop as well in the next few days, but for now I am concentrating on my Etsy shop as I have almost reached the magic number of 100 items! I am already noticing an increase in sales - I have been to the post office five times in the last eight days!

Aprons, models, silly pics

I am working on a new quilt, but can't show it here yet :-(. I hate that! Since I do want to show you something, here are two aprons I made today and put up for sale in my Etsy shops. The red one with white dots can be found here on Etsy , the white one with red dots here on MadeIt.



I have heard that items for children sell better when you show them worn by a real child. So I asked my boys to model these aprons. They were happy to do that, but would only smile nicely at the camera if I made some silly pics of them afterwards. So here is my 5-year-old, Robbie:



My 7-year-old, Ernst:



And my almost-9-year-old (only 18 more sleeps!), Hugo (who is really too big for this apron but wanted a turn as well):



Gotta love 'em!

Sadly, the 5-year-old is now once more in bed with a migraine :-(. Poor little bugger, wish I could take the pain and nausea for him... And we had such a quiet weekend - what triggered it this time???

I've got mail!

Today I received a parcel... In it was this gorgeous book (available for sale here).
And in the book...



The boys were very excited to see this quilt (that hangs in our living room) in a book!



I was supposed to be back at work today, but since our babysit is sick and it's still the school holidays, I had to stay at home. No problem! I got Robbie to model his Robot Calligram t-shirt and added it to my Blue Jacaranda shops:

Home again

We are back from a lovely, very relaxed holiday at Wooyung Beach. I am still sorting the hundreds of photos that I took, but here is one of a shell that I found.

Today is hubby's birthday. I baked him a Dutch appeltaart (apple cake):



It tasted as good as it looks! The recipe can be found here.

I reopened my Blue Jacaranda shops and made a few small things today to add to the Etsy shop. This week I hope to start on a new quilt...

Happy holidays!

Nothing new to show you - I did make a very small piece for the Art Quilts Around the World challenge, but that won't be revealed until the 31st of December. So here is a photo I took last week at Cabarita Beach in New South Wales, close to our caravan in Wooyung Beach. And that is where we are going tomorrow, for a 2-week holiday. I am so looking forward to it, although I do hope the weather will improve a bit as we have had lots of rain today...

So this is the last posting for 2011. I wish you all happy holidays with your loved ones and a healthy, colourful and creative new year! Thank you for reading my blog, I really appreciate it, and I hope to see you back in 2012!

New print

On Wednesday I screen printed this image. I used a freezer paper stencil based on this photo:


 
















This print is not the best one I made; I'm saving that one for a special project that I will show here sometime next year ;-).


The subject of the photo, my youngest son Robbie (here at his taekwondo grading) today had another migraine attack, just when we were about to leave for a weekend at Wooyung Beach. After sleeping a few hours he is much better now and the new medication I gave him as soon as he said he had a headache prevented him (I think) from vomiting - so that is very good news! And we'll go to Wooyung tomorrow :-).

Robbie's Alphabet Calligram Quilt

Finally finished: the Alphabet Calligram Quilt I first mentioned in May 2010 and planned to make for Robbie's 4th birthday. Here is the proud owner (who turned 5 in September):



It has 26 calligrams, one for each letter in the alphabet. I designed them all myself and had them printed on fabric at Spoonflower. The fabrics are for sale here (Calligrammar collection) and here (Calligrammar 2 collection). I have had quite a few of the calligram designs made into thermofax screens which I use to make art cards and stretched prints (and soon t-shirts as well, I hope) for my Blue Jacaranda shops on MadeIt and Etsy.



I finished the quilt with a thin black binding. I think I will add Robbie's name, the name of the quilt and the date to the empty green squares at the bottom, next to the Zebra.

Robbie loves his quilt! But I realised once again that I really do not enjoy making bed-sized quilts (even if it is a small bed!) so this definitely will be the last large quilt in a long time!

I have done some screen printing yesterday with an exciting new design which I hope to show you soon...

To be continued!

Art Cards

I can't believe it's been more than a week since I last posted here! It is a very busy time, the last weeks before the summer holidays... We have had a Gymnastics Carnival, taekwondo gradings, piano concert, Kindy End of Year Celebration, school disco... And let's not forget our Dutch St Nicholas celebration (it's when we have presents), and a sad event - the 25th anniversary of the day my mother died (read more here). I haven't been feeling well and will be glad when the school holidays start.



As you will understand I haven't been very creative but I have made some new Art Cards to add to my Etsy shop, Blue Jacaranda. The shop is doing quite well, as is the one on MadeIt - something that is making me very happy. It's a nice idea that people like my items enough to buy them.



I have just received some new thermofax screens and hope to make more cards very soon.

Red (and black) Robots

I did a screen printing session today - lots of fabric for art cards and stretched prints. I also printed my Robot Calligram Design on a red t-shirt for my middle son, who has Letterland Day at school next week. You may remember the Zebra pants I made for him and his brother in 2010 - this time he wants to be Red Robot. Of course I printed t-shirts for his brothers as well :-).

Threads

Yesterday we visited the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) in Brisbane. I particularly wanted to see the Threads exhibition; contemporary textiles from Australia, Asia and the Pacific region:



This gorgeous Trip Around the World quilt was made by Tapaeru Williams (Cook Islands/New Zealand):



And this Kapa kuiki quilt by Gussie R. Bento (Hawai'i, USA):



Gorgeous batik cloth made by Tjunkaya Tapaya from Ernabella Arts Inc:



Dowry bags made by Kachchhi women from Gujarat, India:



Bilum garment by Florence Jaukae Kamel from Papua New Guinea:



This painting by Regina Wilson, Warrgarri (Dilly Bag Stitch), was not part of the exhibition but fitted in nicely with the theme! This is a detail:



There was a lot more to admire in the Gallery that I will not show here - if you are interested you can find some photos on my photo blog.

If you are in Brisbane and haven't seen this exhibition yet I highly recommend it. it's on until 5 February 2012.

Small projects

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you know I like to do some small projects between quilts. Here are a few I did this week. Etsy is not just a great place to sell things, it's also a great place to shop - or, if you can't afford to buy everything you like, to get inspired to make your own version. There are quite a few Beach pillows on Etsy, and I really wanted one for our caravan at Wooyung Beach. So I cut up an old hessian shopping bag, stenciled the letters on the fabric, backed and stuffed it, and voilà! A second one is waiting to be sewn together.



I saw an oven mitt made from this fabric in a Dutch shop on Etsy. Both my mother-in-law and my best friend sent me some of this fabric, and I had just rediscovered some Insul-Brite wadding in my stash, so I decided to make one too. My husband said 'If we were still living in the Netherlands I would think it was ugly, but now it's okay' ;-).

Indigo

A while ago I purchased another Jacquard Indigo Dye Kit and yesterday I finally found the time to do some dyeing. I did this large piece of fabric and several small one. It wasn't until I was finished that I discovered my glove had a hole in it...



I'm thinking of making some surfing quilts... Since we have the caravan I am quilte obsessed with the beach. On Etsy I purchased this gorgeous piece of felt and these beautiful buttons made of shells, sea stone and sea glass:



This might become a small piece of textile art to hang in our caravan... I have also signed up for Dijanne Cevaal's Travellers' Blanket Class and plan to make a beach blanket :-).

Update

Sorry for being AWOL in the last week, things have been very busy here! I did manage to finish the quilt for Beneath the Southern Sky - here is a sneak peek. The quilt is hanging in our dining room at the moment and we all like it very much, so if it does not get selected we won't mind!

On Monday and Tuesday I was in Cairns to collect data on multi-drug resistant TB for my PhD. There was unfortunately no time for sightseeing but I did have a lovely view over Cairns and the mountains from my hotel room.



Tomorrow we are going to Straddie (North Stradbroke Island) for a weekend camping with two other Dutch families. Looking forward to that! Next week I hope to do some screen printing again. I need new prints for my Blue Jacaranda shop on Etsy where things are starting to happen... (23 sales in the first two months!!) And I have bought supplies for printing on paper with my thermofax screens (high-quality printing paper etc) - I can't wait to give that a try!



And last but not least: Cycle of Life is a finalist in the Fall Expo at the Infinity Art Gallery. Out of 70 entrants, 32 pieces works of art were selected, so I am quite happy :-).

DUQ and vintage maps

Today I finally got a copy of Down Under Quilts issue 150, which features two of my quilts in the article about Log Cabin quilts: Loca and Len's Quilt.



You can sign up for the digital version of the magazine for free on this website. There's lots of eye candy in this anniversary number!



This morning my youngest son was sick, so I had take care leave and stay at home with him. I took the opportunity to build my network on Etsy and made a Treasury (a list featuring 16 items on a certain theme or colour that are all for sale on Etsy) featuring items made out of vintage atlas pages. To my great surprise this Treasury really took off and it has now had 1073 views! (as a comparison, my most successful treasury before this one had 133 views!)



Here are two of the items I have featured; on the left Large Vintage map stuffed heart from seller Serendipity Child and on the right Origin of the Unit 3 from seller TerrorDome.

Making Treasuries is very addictive, there are so many gorgeous items on Etsy! Please go and have a look at this one, I'm really proud of it! You can find it here: Maps are really useful.