Be Creative with Workbox Magazine

There's a great magazine called Be Creative with Workbox from the UK. I am a subscriber now but I used to borrow copies of the Workbox magazine years ago from the Embroiderer's Guild library. I assume that Be Creative and Workbox combined into one magazine but I could be wrong about that, they might have just changed the title.

The magazine comes out every two months and it is crammed full of creative textile and embroidery techniques and interviews with artists.

How exciting to find that one of my quilts is in the current issue!

There is an article about the A Matter of Time Exhibition because the quilts are going to be exhibited at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham on the 10th-13th August 2017.

Here's a copy of page 1 and 2 of the article and that is my quilt on the far right.

Here is the 3rd page of the article.

I was thrilled that my quilt was one of the quilts chosen to be featured and super thrilled that my quilt is travelling to Birmingham. The exhibition is also travelling to the New Zealand Symposium on the 4th-10th October 2017 and the Houston Quilt Show on the 28th-5th November 2017.

I wish that I could travel to all those wonderful places and see the quilts there in person.

Here is a better photo of my quilt called Life on the Reef.

If you would like to read more about this quilt, please read my post from January 26th 2016 called Making Life on the Reef


If you are interested in a creative and inspiring textile magazine I highly recommend the
 Be Creative with Workbox magazine. Click on the link to order a subscription. I actually found the magazine in the newsagent a couple of months ago but it was in the art section not with the patchwork and quilting magazines. It is the only time I have ever seen it in Australia though.

Bye for now,
Linda

The Quilter's Color Club part 2

I have the book by colour expert Christine Barnes, called the Quilter's Color Club. It's an American publication and it's really annoying that Australia and England spell colour in a different way. I suppose it's not a big deal really.

I had some time to do a few more exercises in the book. You can see my first post about it here.

Once again I used the King's Crown block as recommended by Christine and I am only using a glue stick to make the blocks so it doesn't take very long.

We started off doing a neutral block, I really love using blacks and greys these days, the value and pattern really stands out and you are not influenced by colour. The dark triangles come forward and the lighter colours recede.

Neutral

Next was a monochromatic block in Blue-violet. Monochromatic uses different values of the one colour and if it isn't working it usually means that you do not have enough value contrast.

Monochromatic

Analogous blocks use colours that are next to each other on the colour wheel and I chose yellow-green, green, blue green and blue. Although all the books say that analogous colour schemes are usually 3 colours, Christine suggests that you may use four and a touch of a 5th colour can make it livelier.

Analogous

Christine admits that she made up the next combination herself, it's called every-other colour analogous. I chose red-orange, yellow-orange and yellow-green. I'm not sure if I like this one very much.

Every-other Analogous

Everyone knows the direct complementary colours, they are opposite each other on the colour wheel and so they really vibrate together, think of the red and green of Christmas.
Christine suggests that the hyphenated colours are more appealing and easier to work with because they contain 2 primary colours in unequal proportions.

I tried red-violet and yellow-green.

Direct complementary 

Split complementary colour schemes are usually everyone's favourite but I have often had an issue with them when I've tried to use them.  They have a good balance of light-dark and warm-cool. I chose yellow-orange, yellow-green and violet.

Split complementary

The next combinations are not as well known. Double split complements uses two colours plus their opposite colours on the colour wheel. I used red-orange, yellow-green, blue green and red-violet. It was hard to use so many colours in such a simple block.

Double split complement

Tetrad uses four colours equidistant on the colour wheel, this can be a very vibrant combination and I could have diminished the tension by using lighter values of the colours. This time I used red, yellow-green, green and blue-violet.

Tetrad

The last one I did was the Triad colour scheme which is as the name suggests three colours equidistant on the colour wheel. It is usually best to make one colour more dominant and let the other colours play a lesser role. Once again it's hard when you only have one block to work with. I chose blue-green, red-violet and yellow-orange.

Triad

This has been a fun exercise to do and I would like to finish the book especially as the next exercises demonstrate luminosity, transparency, stripes and texture. My problem is that I must stop experimenting for a while and finish some quilts that have deadlines looming.

The book will be waiting for me when I get these quilts finished I suppose.

I highly recommend the book for some colour fun.

Bye for now,
Linda

Southern Cross Crazies Round Robin

This year I am participating in the Round Robin with the on-line Southern Cross Crazies group. It's a small but friendly Yahoo group but most of us hate Yahoo so much that we also have a closed Facebook group where it is much easier to keep in touch and post photos.

It is round two and I received Alison's blocks. We all made six 6" blocks and we choose one to embroider and then post them on to the next person on the list. I chose a pretty pink one to embroider.

One block had already been done by Patti; she had chosen a peach coloured block and had done some beautiful work on it. The round robins are a great way to see other people's embroidery up close.

Alison's block by Patti

I started out by choosing my threads, Alison wanted to keep the embroidery in the colours of the base but we could add a couple of other colours like green for the leaves.

Choosing threads

Usually I start in the middle and embroider any motifs first but this time I started on the outside with the seam treatments.

Progress

Here is the finished block; luckily these 6" blocks don't take very long to do.

I have already posted these blocks onto the next person and have received the next lot of blocks, so at least it gives me some hand sewing to do when I go to friendship groups.


Bye for now,
Linda

AQC 2017-Modern Quilts

There was a great display of modern quilts that had travelled from the latest QuiltCon  competition in the USA. Quilt Con is the Modern Quilt Guilds convention and competition.

The exciting news was that Best of Show was won by an Australian named Katherine Jones. Here is a photo of her winning quilt named Bling.

The quilt is foundation pieced and as we were looking at the quilt, Katherine herself came along and so I asked her if I could take a photo of her with her quilt. Katherine comes from Tasmania.

Here are some of the others that were on display

Modern Stepping Stones by Heather Black

Luxe Modern by Susan Clay

Westshire by Julia Williams

Everybody recognised this man, so it must be a successful quilt.

Lincoln by Kim Soper

There were some quilts on display that people have done in classes at past AQC's.
The next two quilts were done as a result of a class with Susan Carlson.

Hummer by Karen Travis

Kookaburra Magic by Denise Griffiths

There were quilts on display from Mexico and Taiwan.

Here are a couple from Taiwan.

Paradise by Li-Chun Wang

Liberation and Freedom by Su-Ping Chang

AQC is over for another year and once again it was a wonderful show, a visual feast with all those quilts, a shopping mecca and of course catching up with all the friends I have made through patchwork and quilting.

I did do some shopping; here is a photo of some of things I bought. I bought mainly fabric, stamps and books.

I also had a very quick catch up with Michele Hill who was working on the Bernina stand. Michele is giving up teaching so it is one of her last appearances but she is much loved and a very popular teacher.

Michele Hill

Bye for now,
Linda

AQC 2017- Best of Australia Quilt

AQC is well and truly over now and last week I posted the photos from the Flora and Fauna Challenge.

The Best of Australia quilt was also announced at the dinner on Saturday night, every state in Australia had an entrant and it was won by Rachelle Denneny from South Australia for her quilt named Modern Movement.

Modern Quilts seem here to stay especially as they are now winning Best of Show in traditional quilt shows.

Rachelle also showed the back of her quilt so we could see the quilting.

I didn't take a photo of all the quilts in the final but I really loved Sue Duffy's quilt from Queensland called Cudgera Creek.

It looked so much better in person because of all the detail.

The entrant from NSW was a bright, happy quilt by Rachaeldaisy, yes her name is one word! Her quilt was called Whizz Bang.

It must have been a heavy quilt because it was layers of fabrics. Here is a detail photo of one of the blocks.

It must have been hard to pick a winner because all the quilts were so different.

AQC run classes and all the tutors had some quilts on display as well.

Here are a couple of quilts by Gloria Loughman, her quilts always glow. The first one is called Butterfly House.

The next one by Gloria was called Rose Seidler House.

I was talking to Gloria and she confirmed that she has a new book coming out later this year all about house quilts.

Angela Walters, a long arm quilter from USA had her quilt in the show named Laurel.

Melissa Sobotka also from the USA had her quilt named End of the Spin, Melissa specialises in super realistic pictorial quilts.

Art Quilter, Alicia Merrett makes quilts that look like maps and one of her quilts was called Seaside Town.

Luke Haynes from the USA makes large bed sized quilts out of recycled clothing and here is one of them from the show called Summer Evening.

It's hard to imagine but the figures are life sized; he makes big quilts.

There was a display of quilts from Beth Miller who lives in Canberra; I loved all of her quilts.
This first one is called Vessels 2.

The second one that I'll show from Beth Miller is called The Drought.

Well that seems a long enough blog post so I'll post the final photos in the next post.

Bye for now,
Linda