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.