Christmas Greetings

My best Christmas Wishes to you all, my sister made this for me and wisely gave it to me before Christmas so I have had it hanging on my wall. She loves patchwork but does not enjoy quilting. She hands all her quilts to a domestic machine long armer to quilt. I still prefer the "hassles " of quilting as I like to see the quilt come alive by my work.
Plus she does not have the spare time at this stage in her life to do her quilting. Most of her patchwork creations end up being given away to her family. Thank you dear sister for carrying on the traditions.

Free Motion Quilting

After a week at the beach for some much needed rest, the body feels a bit rejuvenated and now back to work. While I was away my purchases arrived from Sharon Schamber's website. A quilting colleague won a trip to Houston with her quilt in the Spotlight competition and gave us an entralling talk at the last Bundaberg Quilters meeting mentioning the magic bobbin washers recommended by Sharon Schamber.
I ordered some and a free motion slider teflon sheet plus a DVD and pattern on free motion couture feathers. Unfortunately I have to do some real work at the day job before I will get much chance to play with these.
The Mt Perry girls had great fun learning more about free motion quilting on Fri Nov 30. 2007.
I think we will go further with this in 2008.
Will keep you informed as to my progress with these new aids.

A Busy Life

As a member of the Mt Perry Quilters I attended our "annual shopping trip for Christmas" to various patchwork shops. We travelled to Maryborough and Hervey Bay in Queensland for our top up of supplies. A great day was had by all and our bank accounts severely depleted. I have bought supplies for 2 new projects. We also purchased fabric for our charity raffle quilt we hope to make for 2008. I have just been too busy to sew lately.
I am teaching a free motion quilting workshop for these members Friday 30 November.
After hearing about the work that some long armers are producing in USA one feels sadly inadequate at this quilting stuff. We can only learn I suppose and dream about machines and what can be produced.

Workshop Update

I had a busy time teaching colour connectors to the Bundaberg group last Saturday 3 November. As usual I had 2 students ( both past school teachers) who had to deviate from the course. Hopefully their creations will inspire others. I got some new ideas from their efforts.
I went home feeling satisfied with the day but feeling a bit bereft as I had no sewing to show for the day. We learnt a lot about colour and I learnt a lot about how people can interpret spoken words differently.
One thing they all learnt was how to insert a narrow strip into anything.
Next project for me is finishing off my cherry blossom quilt. I am currently sewing seed beads onto it.

Colour Connecting Workshop

I am teaching a Connecting with Colour Workshop in Bundaberg for my group The Bundaberg Quilters. I had hoped to have my quilt back from The Australian Quilt Show but this was not to be. Luckily I had some strips left over when making this quilt. They are still actually pinned to my de facto design wall, so I can take this as a demonstration model. I will have my collection of connector quilts anyway to hopefully inspire them.

I have been playing around with the dye pots again for the first time in 2 years. I have organised myself this time and have faithfully recorded all the dyes used, what amounts of dye and have made a laminated colour chart from all pieces. I will repeat this again with another 2 dyes of each primary colour. I seem to like 4 dyes of each red, yellow and blue.

I really felt like I had reached "home" when I was out measuring dye in cups on the verandah last week. It's been 2 years since I last had a really long dyeing stint. Now the challenge will be on to USE the fabric again.

Latest Work

This is a small section of what I've been busy doing lately. I am teaching a dyeing,using dyed fabrics, and free motion quilting workshop in Jan so have been organising some class samples. I have always liked Japanese quilts so I decided to use their cherry blossom as a raw edge applique. I have free motioned a leaf motif to make the flowers float. I use small motifs to escape the "death by stippling" routine. I used a 50wt variegated valdani thread . I am currently finishing off the stamens in the rest of the blossoms. For the first time I have used iron on pellon and have used some of the embroidery as quilting. Trying to use time saving techniques as the workshop is not long.

I also used free motion satin stitch as I felt the wider feed dogs up satin stitch too chunky and straight looking.

Drought Quilt 05

Australia has been suffering a drought in most places that are prone to drought for years now so I named this Quilt "Drought has come to the Coast"
I attended another dyeing workshop in Bundaberg and somehow chose turquoise as my blue colour . I ended up with an electric combination of colours. I continued experimenting with format etc for this quilt . I wanted some of the connector strips to stand out in places with others blending.
This quilt reminded me of the red soil areas around Gayndah where I spent quilte a few holidays as a child on my relatives peanut/ grain farm getting very dirty.
I entered this quilt in the Australian Quilt Show in 2006. It is a lot smaller than the previous connector quilts I have shown.
A good size for a one day workshop. You only need a fat eighth for most fabrics and a skinny quarter for the border pieces.

Colour Connector Quilt 2

After the success I had with my first abstract landscape quilt using colour connectors I decided to try another colour scheme and format. This time I kept one strip series level and waved the other one.

This quilt format is based on 2 sets of fabrics joined together then cross cut into strips and arranged in a bargello manner.

I am teaching this workshop to some Bundaberg Quilters members in November. I am really looking forward to it as I have not played around with this for awhile. Might even need to dye more fabric agin.

The photography could be better as this photo was taken hanging in the gallery at Gin Gin.

Favourite Quilts

In 2001 I attended my first fabric dyeing workshop. As a result of that new addiction I ended up with a huge pile of dyed fabric to play with. I had been inspired my some quilts made by Judith Larzelere.

Here was a style I felt could use some of my fabric with.

I entered a quilt made in about 4 weeks into the inaugural RNA Quilts Across Queensland with a theme of The Outback being 2002- The Year of The Outback.

I was lucky to receive 2nd prize in the contemporary section.



Since then I have continued exploring this technique. Changing the format, dyed fabric styles and quilting on the surface.

I have been teaching this as a workshop called
Connecting with colour for a few years. I do not have the opportunity to teach much because of work commitments but when I do, I really enjoy it.

Quilts and Blogs

I responded to Robyn's post from quilt antics about online quilting and groups. She has responded with what is it about these aussies. My experience with patchwork and quilting is it can be a solitary hobby/ passion unless you make /take the opportunity to mingle with like minded people. Same story applies to life really.


I belong to Bundaberg Quilters being their publicity officer. We are a group consisting of about 140 members but I live 115 kms away so do not get to group functions much. This would probably be a similar story for many Aussie quilters. The other informal group I am a member of is the Mt Perry Quilters. About 8 of us. We use our blog as our newsletter. Why waste paper when you can post photoes in colour etc and your friends anywhere can see them.
Our Mt Perry blog is mpquilters.blogspot.com if you have not found it already.

We all have internet access. Most of us have satellite broadband because of our remoteness from urban areas. This has allowed us to "meet " so many people and now is allowing us to purchase supplies much easier. We still love driving the long distance to the local patchwork shops when we can for our shopping trips though. The blog world has allowed us to view trends and tips so much easier and makes us feel like we belong somewhere.


Australia is probably different to the USA as quilting groups here are only about 25 to 20 years old, not like some long established ones in USA. Bundaberg Quilters celebrated their 20th this year.





I have been teaching workshops for QCWA Piecemakers since doing a tutors course for them in 1999. They are a far flung group of members across Queensland. They are also in the process of setting up a blog for their members as well. They currently have a section on the QCWA website.


I have been busy working on my next workshop in January. I purchased a free motion feathers DVD from Patsy Thompson 2 weeks ago and yesterday successfully produced my first sample of free motion feathers without marking the quilt top first. Now I am doing these in the outside border of a queen size log cabin bed quilt. I would not have been able to progress so quickly to doing this without the blogs that I read.


This is the actual piece scanned . A sample of hand dyed fabric with 35wt valdani variegated thread. On my bed quilt I am using an aurifil thread 50 wt cotton mako thread. The thinner thread is beautiful to use for traditional style quilting.

The only downside to all this blogging is interrupting the sewing sessions.

Kaliedoscope Quilts at the Gallery

My 2 kaliedoscope quilts are now hanging in the Pat Augustine gallery in Mt. Perry along with the other quilts by the Mt.Perry Quilters. Amazing what setting a deadline does for the reduction of UFO's. The entire group all finished their quilts.It's quite an achievement for such a small town to have an accomplished lot of quilters living nearby. Not one of us actually resides in the town. We are all from rural properties in the area. Shows our dedication to our passion doesn't it.
Yesterday, Thursday I spent doing gallery duty and had the pleasure of speaking about quilts to 5 visitors.

Now that this deadline has passed, I can resume "working " on another project.
I am going to be teaching a workshop on dyeing fabric, using your own hand dyed fabric and free motion quilting for QCWA in January 2008.
I have been working out the program and requirements lists for the class. Wow what a lot of preparation. I still have to fit this in around everything else I "have " to do.

I have been putting together some quilting samplers using small dyed pieces.This is a before piecing photo. The block pieces give me natural borders to experiment with different FMQ motifs. It is simply designed as I believe dyed fabrics work better with simple designs and lots of decorative quilting. I use varied sizes of hand dyed variegated threads for my quilting.
During gallery duty I also managed to cut out a second small quilt using some "ugly" dyed fabric.

Kaleidoscope Quilt 2

As a member of the Mt Perry Quilters I participated in their recent kaleidoscope workshop. I have already showed you the second quilt made using this technique.
The first one was from a japanese print. I am currently enthralled with japanese quilts and subscribe to Quilts Japan magazine for my access to viewing their quilts.
Japanese ponds however usually have a bridge, The bridge pieces just would not have "worked" in this quilt.
The little boxes are tricky to make but well worth the effort.
This quilt will be hanging in the Mt Perry Gallery nrxt week.

Welcome

Welcome to the blog of a passionate quilter. Passionate about colour and everything associated with textiles.
I have been making quilts for about 30 years. My family think I do nothing else but think about quilts. They always seem to be fed, clothed and delivered to their appointments on time so they must be wrong.
I have been blogging for the Mt Perry Quilters for approximately one year. A friend has started her own blog as a result of us blogging for it , so I thought why not for me.
I teach some patchwork workshops when time permits. I will endeavour to show some of my colourful quilts on these pages.
I am currently working on some quilts for The Mt Perry Quilters Exhibition in September 2007. So I will start with one of them.
This a kaleidoscope quilt using some fabrics my mother purchased years ago. 2 different co-ordinating prints. I finally discovered a way to cut them up and turn them into something different. It will be displayed in the Mt Perry Pat Augustine Gallery during September 2007.