Simply Moderne Magazine

I sometimes buy the Simply Moderne Magazine and I noticed a new issue was out when I was at the Newsagents. I was innocently flicking through it when I found a full-page picture of my quilt, Magical Coral Reef!

Simply Modern issue 18, page 13

Well I had to buy it. The article was about the Sydney Quilt Show and this quilt of mine was on display there with the AQC Magic Challenge. How wonderful that they picked my quilt to put in their magazine.

This is the front cover.

Simply Moderne issue 18

I had more news today. On a whim I entered my quilt, Connections-The Teenage Years into the USA Art Quilt Exhibition, Art Quilt Elements 2020. All the top art quilters enter so I didn't have any hope of being juried in.

I was selected!! The email said that the jury looked at 762 images and they selected 48 entries.

Connections-The Teenage Years by Linda Steele

Connections- The Teenage Years detail

This quilt has just returned from being exhibited in New Zealand this year and it nearly killed me to get it done in time for the deadline. It's really big, 2m x 2m or 79" x 79".

Bye for now,
Linda

Windows

The final challenge for the Waverley Art Quilters was Windows. I had lots of ideas of the various ways to depict windows but as usual time was against me.
I was doing the workshop with Maria Shell and started piecing some little squares that looked just like windows to me. You can see my blog post about it here.

Here is a photo of my starting point.

After I made a few components, I tried to make a composition out of them.

Well, that wasn't working very well! At last I just pieced them together in rows and I was much happier.

Windows by Linda Steele

Speaking of Maria Shell, after she finished teaching in Australia, she went over to New Zealand to teach at their Symposium. While she was there, she visited a quilt exhibition that featured one of my quilts. You can read her post here. I didn't get over to see the exhibition so it was lovely for me to see the photos.

Bye for now,
Linda

Waverley Patchworkers Retreat 2019

Last weekend I went away for a couple of days with the girls from Waverley Patchworkers. They have been going to Forest Edge in Neerim East for 10 years because it is such a lovely spot.

Some of us actually stopped sewing, eating and talking for a little while and went for a walk.

The theme this year was Down on the Dairy Farm or something like that? We were asked to make a Churn Dash block with an animal in the middle. Here is the one that I made. I haven't made a block for a long time because I don't do traditional quilts now, it only took an hour.

Churn Dash block

When we arrived, we had to pin them onto a design wall in the dining room.

 I took the photo in the morning but more were added as the weekend went on. They are going to be put together for our gift quilt program.

On Saturday night we could dress up in the Dairy farm theme. There were a lot of farmers. I am dressed up in a rather unflattering outfit as milk!

After dinner Val taught us a couple of line dances and then she taught us how to make paper flowers.

Here's my flower.

Val was so organised and made little kits for us with the papers all cut to the correct size. When we had made one flower, we put them together for a photo. They are all made out of cheap wrapping paper, but look fabulous.

Here is one that Val had made to sit on a table. You need 6 flowers glued together to sit on the table and 12 to make a ball.

It was a lovely get-a-way with absolutely perfect weather.
We had two large rooms for sewing by hand or machine. I was in the hand sewing room. It was lovely sewing and chatting for two days.

Well actually, I didn't do very much sewing, I was mainly cutting out components for another Coral Reef quilt.

There's one more thing that I have to mention, I have been getting some really annoying spam on my blog despite having the captcha program enabled. The spam comes through in the middle of the night and it is in Arabic looking writing so I don't know what it says, but it's a very unpleasant thing to wake up to in the morning. So now I have enabled comment moderation because I had read that it stops the spam. Sure enough I haven't had any spam since I did that!

Bye for now,
Linda

Houston Silent Auction 2019

Every year the people at the Houston Quilt show invite previous winners to donate a quilt to their silent auction to help raise funds for the wonderful show that they put on every year. I try to donate one every year because they put on such a great show and do so much to encourage quilters from all over the world.

Once again, I was invited but knew that I didn't really have any spare time to make something. Then I remembered the little crazy quilt I did for the Crazy Quilting calendar last year. You can read my blog post about it from 9th October 2018 here.

I added a red silk border to it.

Adding the border

The deadline to have it arrive in time was looming and even with the fastest postage from Australia, it takes a week to get there. So, I quilted the border with a feather pattern which didn't take very long.

Crazy about Christmas by Linda Steele

Here are some detail photos.

I received the news that it has arrived in Houston and now I just have to hope that someone bids on it and buys it.

It is the only quilt I will have in Houston this year; I didn't get one done in time. Hopefully I can get my latest quilt done in time for next year's show!

Bye for now,
Linda

Maria Shell's Visit

Waverley Patchworkers were very lucky to have Maria Shell teach a 2-day workshop recently. Maria Shell lives in Alaska and writes an informative Blog called Tales of a Stitcher. We had a full class and were lucky enough to have a table each so we had plenty of room. She was also our guest speaker the following evening. Maria Shell is a contemporary quilter and has become very popular lately so we were lucky to have her teach.

Here is Maria showing a couple of her quilts.

It was a busy couple of days and we were a bit out of our comfort zone as Maria was encouraging us to cut our fabric without using a ruler to achieve a more contemporary look that wasn't so perfect that it could have been made by a computer. I can understand what she means as you do see some perfect work sometimes that doesn't seem to have any life or excitement to it.

Here is our class photo after our busy two days.

Class photo

This is the block that I completed.

I probably won't do anything with it, just keep it as a reminder of the class with Maria Shell.

The following day was a day off for Maria and so a friend and I took her into the city to the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV)

The was a new exhibition of Kaws on. Kaws real name is Brian Donnelly, I was interested to see the exhibition because I had previously watched a documentary on him. He makes little figurines of his large statues and they sell for large amounts of money. The line to get into the gift shop was 1-3 hours long and that was in the morning. Needless to say, we didn't line up!

Here is the huge painted bronze statue that is in the entrance to the gallery.

Gone by Kaws

You can get an idea of how big it is by the person walking behind it in the background. I felt Gone was a very emotional piece as it is his best friend that has died.

Here is another one in the exhibition called Waiting.

Waiting by Kaws

We asked someone to take our photo in front of one of the statues.

Maria Shell has left Australia now and has gone to New Zealand to teach at their biennial Symposium. She says that she has plans to come back though as many people were disappointed not to do a class with her.

Bye for now,
Linda