Dye Painting and Quilting

It has been a while since I last found time to blog. Not that I have been standing still until this last week. A viral illness has forced me to slow down for a few days.
A visit to the Ekka in Brisbane was not the most enjoyable due to some kind of virus. Left me a bit drowsy and with very little energy to fight the crowds etc.
Once home though I had some time off from work which enabled me to do " my things".

This is my very first dye painting effort. Considering I have hardly ever painted pictures before, I thought my effort was not too bad. I have moved onto the quilting phase. It certainly adds texture to the picture.

I have also prepared a sample chart of dye colours, found an Australian Supplier of Print Paste
and generally am prepared for my teaching workshop of dye painting in September at Proston. Now I must get the house in order. Got my new ladders to reach up to the top of the veranda and have slowly started on the paint stripping again. That is until this last week. Maybe in a couple of weeks I can get back to a day of that every now and then.

Just been TOOO BUSY!!!!

Yes I know it has been awhile since I last posted to this blog. Life has a knack of getting in the way sometime. The most exciting thing happened just before Proston showday. Phil the woodchopping builder decided he just had to come for the show and install an upstairs shower in the bathroom for us. I think his wife also enjoyed spending our money on all the fittings. She certainly does a good job for her clients. This first photo is of the existing wall in the very corner of the house. Perfect spot for a shower don't you think.


After a few hours of measuring, cutting holes in the tongue and groove, packing to make it all square , we then had a shower base on the floor and slots for some taps.

A few more hours went by and the adhesive applied , the plastic backing installed, then the figuring out of the doors and hey presto, we now have a corner unit shower. The photo is a bit distorted due to the small space. 3 days later the plumber turned up and installed some new pipes downstairs. Came back 2 days later and it was finally functional. No more showers downstairs with the toads and the breeze coming under the wall.

The door opens into the middle of the room. The next thing to purchase will probably be some sort of blind for the window. The electrician is supposed to be coming back and installing a ventilation unit sometime. I bought a small heater to take the chill off the air in winter.

Sewing wise I went to Yeppoon and spent a weekend teaching kaliedoscopes in March. The girls were busy as usual. I then spent a lot of time preparing for my venture to Coffs Harbour in NSW for 2 workshops with one of my quilting heroes Hollis Chatelain. If you google her you will see her Precious Water quilt. This was the first quilt of hers I ever saw in a magazine. I would love to see it in real life.Another quilt of hers I love is the one with Desmond Tutu with the african children in it.She dye paints then quilts. Her idea of quilting is YOU MUST SEE THE THREAD. Some of her quilts are just a dye painted background with the images constructed solely from thread.

I spent a day learning to paint with dye, I think I did well considering I have not painted pictures since Primary School. It is certainly a different medium to work with.

The second day was a huge discussion on threads, quilting and design. I would now love to join her 10 year class, where you go once a year and learn from the design up. Hope the dollar stays high so I might get there for the colour class.

Just to show it was not a dream, here is a photo of me and my teacher, standing in front of her

"The Gift " quilt. The stitching is awesome, photos do not do it justice. The quilt is about a philipino girl working on a cruise ship ( that Hollis was on ) as a masseur and she had to send all her earnings home to her family. Hollis could feel the tension in her and said she had an amazing rapport with her and ended up making a quilt from the experience.

I managed to bring home my 2 artists palettes with my leftover dye paints in and now have 3 small dye paintings to wash out in synthrapol after curing. Off to patchwork again tomorrow. I need a bit of a break from the work routine as I have been involved in too many "Massive Blood Transfusions" lately, with some not good outcomes happening.

Will try too post a bit more frequently also. The next renovation work is replacing the windows at the back and installing the second wood heater. I had to remind the tradespeople AGAIN today for the quotes.

It Has been Awhile, I Know

It has certainly been awhile since I last did a blog post. Well one can never underestimate the forces of nature. I was stranded by flood waters for a week from home and spent most of my time watching the events in Toowoomba, Lockyer Valley and Brisbane areas on the television as they unfolded. Then of course we had to have Cyclone Yasi devastate North Queensland.

We have made preparations to get three of our dams repaired and fences fixed. We consider ourselves very lucky with the damage we received compared to other areas of Queensland.

Then we also saw the floods in Victoria, bushfires in Western Australia and today more earthquakes in New Zealand. The snow storms across the USA added to the world's misery. I may be called a climate change sceptic, but I tend to think the Earth's poles are going for a bit of a tilt instead. I won't be alive in thousands of years to learn what really is happening though.

Back to the house renos ------- called to a halt for awhile. A wrist injury from work halted my activities a bit. Got that sorted now, blame the replacement centrifuge that needs a 10 ton force to close both lids on it, and my wrist has been xrayed, ultrasounded and it is perfectly normal. Does not hurt when I use the centrifuge in a different manner so that must have been the cause.

BUT I HAVE BEEN SEWING. Yes!!!!!!

My Yeppoon workshop was delayed until March due to the floods, so have been playing with the 60 degree triangle ruler for some samples. I must apologise for the photoes taken with the quilts hanging on the clothesline as I did not have time to set up for a real photo shoot.

I like the movement created across this quilt. Technically quite difficult to sew as there is lots of seams at some intersections. I love the narrow contrast colours and how they all interlock.

This green heaxgon was started using the same principle as the interlock one but to use up more of my green fabrics. This one has 2 photos showing the changes I made in progress. I used the camera as my design wall and have about 8 pics from beginning to end.The best part of making this one was the time spent arranging the blocks.

This is it finished with a narrow dark border frame. It somehow reminds me of a cyclone tracking map.

Finally I got the UFO out of the cupboard and have sewn it up. My Strips n Curves Demo from October 2009, not sure about a border/frame or what yet. I hope to take some of these with me to my Hollis Chatelain quilting quilts workshop at Coffs Harbour in May 2011. I think they need a bit of spicing up with some thread.

I have also continued with another idea from the green quilt, but using my stash of orange/pink/purple fabric. More pics when that is finished. Off to Mt Perry Wednesday for another patchwork day so I hope to get some more strips sewn.

Workshops

More workshops are in the planning stage. We are having an overnight retreat in Mt Perry soon. We will be doing the strips and curves pattern by Louisa Smith. I have made a poppies quilt and a hand dyed version in pinks and purples as class samples. The photo shows the pattern pieces quite well in the hand dyed fabric.

The girls are all having fun collecting their fabrics. We will be dyeing some fabric over the weekend as well. It certainly seems full steam along. This is a practice session for my workshop at Yeppoon in 2010.

I have finished quilting the Citrus Fizz quilt from this years Yeppoon workshop. I used Glide polyester thread available from Fil-Tec in USA and found this to be a wonderful polyester thread to use. I have even stocked up supplies of this thread as the dollar keeps rising. I can get 5 times the amount of a better quality thread for the same price as a less superior thread including the high postage cost. It really is amazing what you can learn and source via the internet. I have also sourced another book ( yes I know I vowed to declutter) which has some wonderful ideas for leftover strata from strips and curves. That is for a future project.

Back Again Stranger

Looks like it's time to check in again. Lots has been happening in my world. Some sewing , some work and lots of family things. Some days are spent sewing and walking the dogs etc. Other days are frantic getting from place to place and meeting deadlines. The new car is now not so new( 7 months) and has clocked up 15000 kms averaging 4.7 litres diesel per 100 km so I am pretty pleased about that. Mind you I have not taken a photo of it yet. My camera is back from its trip to Sydney and Monto. I had resurrected another camera in the family and purchased a card reader. It certainly makes dealing with digital photos easier. Editing them is now on the learning curve agenda soon with photoshop when time permits.

I have sewn 2 kaleidoscope quilts and have been dyeing backings for my workshop quilts. I am off to Brisbane soon to teach another dyeing workshop. Then onto the Textile Festival at Southbank.

The photo above is a section of where I would like to explore next in my quilting world. A step on from strip insertion. First though I have to finish my kaleidoscopes. Now that my camera is back I plan to rephotograph all of my quilts as I thought I had saved a copy of that file to disc before my computer was reformatted in November but never did. I was talking to another quilter and she is wondering why do we lurch from one deadline to the next???? Are we the type of people that always have to be busy.

More contemporary thoughts

I went along to patchwork today for a break from Microbiology at work. I took along my latest blocks I have been working on to do some more planning for our contemporary workshop. I asked our resident artist ( now quilter) about contemporary and modern definitions. She reckons that contemporary is more abstract and agreed that my latest blocks were in the contemporary area. I am still getting no responses as to how long is something modern for?

Now I have to keep making a few more to blend them all together. Looks like I still like my narrow strips of colour. I found the idea in an old block collection in a QNM . I narrowed the middle strip so that the 3 pieces were no longer the same size. I have even managed to make 1 mirror image block by accident when I did not think it was possible to do that with such a simple block. I really love the luminosity of my hand dyed fabrics. It was amazing that 3 of us currently share the same favourite block. ( The middle red one).

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.