Haven Catalogue

 I received a lovely surprise in the mail today. SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) sent me the catalogue for the Haven Exhibition.

I was thrilled to be accepted for such a prestigious exhibition because I know that people try for years  and can never get accepted. The downside for getting accepted is that the quilt is on tour for three years and so it's a while before you see the quilt again.

I found my page in the catalogue.

I clearly remember taking that photo of my daughter, Rebecca last year. I had the idea for a quilt and tried taking a photo of myself but I didn't like them at all. I asked if I could take a photo of her in a mask and she agreed. It was a cold, wintery day and I took a few photos but only the final photo was the right one. I asked her to look down and try to look sad.

This is actually the second time that I have been accepted, my quilt called Grief was accepted into the SAQA Connections Exhibition.

Grief by Linda Steele

The first outing for the Haven exhibition will be at the Houston Quilt Show later this year. I am not going but I would love to see it. 

Bye for now,

Linda

Playing with paint and Collage

 The time is flying by and although I am busy all the time, it's hard to remember what I have been doing. I might have to start keeping a record or a diary!

I have recently finished an improv quilt but it cannot be revealed yet, but here is me putting on the binding. Although binding is not my favourite part of making a quilt, at least it means that it is nearly finished.

I have also been playing around with collage, paint and paper. I really enjoy it and hope that I will eventually do something that I love. At the moment I am allowing myself to experiment.

I bought an online class (actually I have bought a lot of online classes during and since lockdowns) with a French artist named Laly Mille. The class is called Soulful Abstracts and she asked us lots of questions about the things we like and we had to quickly answer them and then find a picture on Pinterest that looks like the answer to each question. We weren't supposed to take much time, just go quickly and then take a screen shot of the pictures that we collected.

I was so surprised to see them and how the colours went together. Apparently that is a colour palette that we should try and work with. I printed out the photos and pasted them into my sketchbook.

I was shocked to see all those blues, dark pinks and golds. Then I remembered a photo that I took a few months ago of a scene from a TV show because I liked the colours and it happened to be the same colours.

The next step was to just paint a page of those colours.

Now I have  to try and use those colours and prompts from the photos to see what happens. I still haven't done that, it's on my do-do list.

I did do some little abstracts using some other colours.

I wasn't that happy, so I added some mark making and I liked them better.

I hope I will be able to translate these ideas to fabric eventually.

One of my daughters wanted to make some cushions for her new house, so she asked me to teach her how to make them. We had a lovely afternoon making them. She sent me a photo with my granddaughter Anna admiring them.

The world has had the sad news of Queen Elizabeth passing away, I feel a bit flat and sad about it. I remember lining up in the city to see her drive by on one of her visits to Melbourne. I think it was in the 1970's.

Bye for now,

Linda