Melbourne Malaise

 I can at last show my latest quilt called Melbourne Malaise. 

The theme for this years AQIPP art quilt competition was 'Where in the World'. AQIPP stands for Australian Quilts in Public Places and it is on every two years.

I was going to do a quilt about Japan and the ideas were going about my head but I just couldn't get started on it. All I could think about was Covid and all our lockdowns. I really wanted to try a more collage style quilt after I had been playing around with it earlier this year.

I was absolutely thrilled to have my quilt accepted, I thought they might want something more exotic than our home town.

The quilt was supposed to be about me and my Covid experience, going for a walk every morning. On a whim, I asked my daughter Bec, if I could take a photo of her in a mask. Here is the photo and it was my starting point. I thought the quilt would be improved with a younger version of me!!

Photo of my daughter

I started on the face first, it made it a bit easier with a mask.

Making the face

Then I added the clothes using different black batik fabrics.

Making the clothes.

I am really sorry that I deleted all the step by step photos as I made the quilt. I took so many but thought they were clogging up my phone and deleted them. To tell you the truth I was really concentrating and out of my comfort zone making this quilt and I couldn't think much further than actually trying to make it work. 

I used my photos that I took on my walks around the neighbourhood and at the closed up shopping centre. Even the 3 kookaburras at the top were from a photo on my walk.

For the background, I used a large piece of white PFD fabric that I painted with my Sun Dye paints in various greens and sun-printed it. I also used stamps and stencils, applique, hand and machine embroidery and digital printing.

I am happy with the result and really must try it again before I forget how I did it. I wish that I hadn't deleted those photos though.

Here is a detail photo.

Melbourne Malaise detail

The Exhibition is on at the moment at the Box Hill Town Hall in Melbourne, Australia.

The opening times are Tuesday to Friday10am-4pm and Saturday 12-4pm. It is open until the 24th December and because of the restrictions the exhibition has been extended and is also going to be on January 11th to February 12th 2022.

Unfortunately, there was no opening night last week and so I don't know who won any prizes but the organisers are hoping to be allowed to have one in early December. I haven't seen the exhibition myself yet but I am looking forward to going soon.

Bye for now,

Linda

Exhibition news

 There is not much happening exhibition wise in Australia, here in Melbourne we are currently in our 6th lockdown, where there are only 4 reasons to leave within 5k of your home. Everyone is getting pretty sick of it.

However, exhibitions overseas are starting to open up.

There is a travelling exhibition curated by Brenda Gael Smith called Open Borders, they are travel inspired quilts from Australian artists. We cannot travel but our quilts can!

There was a lovely advertisement featuring my quilt, Magical Coral Reef.

The exhibition will travel with the Mancuso shows this year.

The World Quilt Show is currently an on-line exhibition and that is on at the moment.

The quilts will be on show in person at

The Pennsylvania National Quilt Exhibition 16th - 19th September

Pacific International Quilt Festival 14th -17th October

Quilt and Sewing Festival of New Jersey 17th - 20th November

There is also going to be a Portrait exhibition at the same shows and my quilt was selected to be in that too. This exhibition was curated by Phyllis Cullen, I did a on-line portrait class with Phyllis and we continue to meet monthly via zoom for a critique session, which really helps to keep everyone motivated. 

My quilt of my grandson Jack climbing a tree will be in that exhibition.

Jack 

Another exhibition called the Wonder of Eyes was supposed to be on show all over Australia in 2020, then all shows got postponed to 2021. Unfortunately, now most of the shows have been cancelled this year as well. The little quilts are going to be returned to us. I did a peacock and there was a lovely post on Instagram showing some of the postcards and my peacock was in the front.

We are still wondering if the Australasian Quilt Convention will go ahead in December and our Victorian Quilt Show in November, but it is starting to seem unlikely.

Bye for now,

Linda

Portrait Quilts

 This year, I had decided that I wanted to get better at making portraits. The trouble is that it is hard to make portraits when you are also doing other quilts for various shows.

In our Art Quilters group, we are continuing to work in a series. Our recent topic was Grace Crowley, an Australian abstract artist who was born in 1890 and died in 1979 ages 89.

I did my first quilt inspired by one of her paintings from 1951.

When I was in Adelaide earlier this year, I spent a couple of hours at their Art Gallery. I was thrilled to come face to face with a Grace Crowley painting.

Abstract by Grace Crowley 1953

When it came to making the second quilt in the series, I decided to include a portrait of Grace Crowley. That way I could fulfill the brief of working in a series and practice my portraits as well. I used four values to make the portrait and I used the painting that I saw at the gallery as my inspiration.

Grace Crowley 2

I was going to use a transparency method to make a portrait for my third quilt, but I somehow forgot my intention and made another fabric portrait! I did use a collage method though. It was a much more time consuming method to make a portrait but I was happy with the outcome.

Grace Crowley 3

It was only when I had finished quilting the third one that I realised that I didn't use a light enough value for her face; it came out too dark. Oh well, I just keep learning and trying!

Here is a photo of all three quilts together.

Grace Crowley Series 

Last year, I had done a portrait class with Phyllis Cullen on-line and she is having a travelling portrait exhibition in the USA with the Mancuso group. She invited us to submit one of our portraits to be considered for inclusion. 

I remembered a photo that I had taken of my grandson Jack last year. We were just coming out of a four-month lockdown and the playgrounds were being opened up. We still couldn't meet at our houses but we could catch up at a playground. It was such a happy day and the children were just as thrilled as the adults to be out and about.

I dropped everything and spent all my time making the quilt, the deadline was approaching and the pressure was on. I was absolutely delighted when my quilt was accepted for the exhibition.

Jack

I posted it the day that I finished, I just hope that it gets there in time, the post is so erratic at the moment.

I was happy with it; my family weren't that impressed though. I suppose a quilt can never look as good as a real photo. Probably a good reason to try a more artistic approach than realism. My daughter thought he looked like a scary doll from a horror movie, oh dear!

Anyway, I am not discouraged and want to make more and improve.

Bye for now,

Linda

Collage with fabric

 I am still wanting to get better at portraits and want to find the method that I enjoy the most. So far, I have used the 4 or 5 value method that Phyllis Cullen teaches and it is very successful. I used the lightweight fusible web, Misty Fuse to create them. Here is the first one I did of my son, Adam.

4 value portrait

After doing a few of them I tried a collage method using Steam a Seam fusible web as the backing and tulle over the top to control all the fabrics for quilting.

Cat collage

The cat collage was fun to make but all those layers of fabric plus the heavier fusible web made the quilting less enjoyable.

Then, I remembered that Susan Carlson uses a collage method using glue and no fusible web at all. She says that the quilt remains really soft and easy to quilt.

I had actually cut up some fabrics to try the method out many months ago and had never got around to trying it out. At the end of last week I came down with a cold courtesy of my grandchildren. I didn't feel as if I could do anything taxing or creative. I found the fabrics over the weekend and got started on a spiral design.

Spiral beginnings

I drew a very rough spiral on some white fabric and started placing the fabrics.

When the spiral was done, I used blue fabrics for the background.

Finally, I had the spiral finished, it only took an afternoon.

It was a fun and easy thing to do, a perfect project when you are not well. Susan Carlson recommends gluing down the edges with Aleene's tacky glue and I had even bought a bottle of it a while ago.

Putting glue on all the edges is where the fun stopped for me, it was really tedious. I didn't do a very good job really, luckily I have a lot of experience with machine quilting and managed to quilt spirals without lifting the edges.

Here is the spiral quilted.

spiral collage

I used batik fabrics because they are tightly woven and the edges don't fray very much. I remembered why I love batik fabrics, I love the texture and the little bits of other colours in them. Although I made the spiral in yellow and orange fabrics, there are little bits of blue, pink and green that makes it  livelier.

I don't think gluing fabrics down is going to be in my future, even if it is a lovely soft effect.

So, I have decided that my next portrait will be a collage method but with Misty fuse behind the fabrics and I will try hard to keep the layers to a minimum. The test will be how I enjoy quilting it. 

Now I just have to find a photo to use. I will wait until I am over this cold though!

Bye for now,

Linda

More Fabric Portraits

 I have done a couple more fabric portraits since my last post about them in early February.

This time I tried to do a self-portrait. I chose 5 levels of fabric and left them out on my table overnight.

First choice of fabrics

When I looked at the fabrics the next morning, I thought I was being too safe and needed to challenge myself a bit more. I pulled out some more fabrics to work with.

Final choice of fabrics

Here is what the portrait looked like after I had used the 3 lightest fabrics.

3 values done

You can still see it's a face but it really shows how important those darker values are.

Here is the portrait with all 5 values.

Portrait of me.

When I showed my portrait to our on-line group, someone thought that my second value was too light. I must admit that there is a lot of light values in it because my skin is quite pale.

I considered making it again using a lightly darker colour but then I couldn't be bothered and used a fabric pen to darken the value!

Here is the portrait with the pink darkened.

portrait changed

I wish that I hadn't done it now, it looks too pink. One of my friends said that I look sunburnt!! Oh well, just another lesson not to jump into changing things too soon. 

I think that I will do another one now, but maybe I 'll find another photo to use. Next time, I'll stay away from pink.

I also did another portrait of my cat, Misty. Here is the first one that I did.

Cat portrait 1

This time I used the collage method, where I cut up little pieces of fabric in 3 different values. I laid the fabrics down on a line drawing that I drew on a piece of Steam a Seam 2 fusible. When I had all the pieces of fabric in place, I ironed them down. Because there were still lots of loose bits of fabric, I put a layer of black tulle over the top.

Cat Collage

This is what it looked like after quilting.

Cat Collage

Quilting definitely improves a piece. I liked doing both methods but I didn't enjoy quilting the last collage one as much. There were quite a few layers of fabric and the machine had to really work hard to quilt it.

I prefer it if quilting is smoother and freer. I put tulle over the entire top instead of just the cat and it did darken the background a bit, if I did it again, I would try just having the tulle over the cat.

I must get on to doing some more portraits so I can improve and not forget how to do it. I have been distracted lately doing some surface design techniques. There are only so many hours in a day and you can't do everything.

Bye for now,

Linda

Portraits in Fabric

 I have been doing an on-line class via Zoom with Phyllis Cullen from America. The class is all about creating portraits in fabric.

I wanted to work on portraits last year but I got too involved with my circle series and never got the time for portraits. When the opportunity for a class with Phyllis came up, I jumped at the chance. The advantage of signing up for a class is that it makes you actually do the work instead of thinking about it.

There are only 6 of us in the class so we can be free to ask lots of questions and she doesn't mind us contacting her at all.

This is the first portrait I made from the class pattern. We all made this one first. All the portraits I have done are A4 or 8" x 11"

Class pattern

We used four fabric values and I used batik fabrics.

Next, we had to use our own photo and Phyllis checked the pattern that we made to make sure it was ok.

I used blue batiks this time for my portrait of Adam, my oldest son.

Adam

It looks like him and I thought it was pretty good for a start.

Then I found a photo of one of my daughters to use.

Bec in Fabric

It does look like her but I used ordinary quilting cotton and it was much harder to get the fine detail, there are little bits of fayed fabric on her face. She wasn't very impressed because she thought she looked fat! I must admit she was 6 months pregnant, but it is really hard to get a photo to use. My family do not appreciate me coming up to them with a camera, snapping photos.

Next, I tried my grandson Jack and went back to using batik fabrics.

Jack in Fabric

I tried something different his time, I used coloured variegated thread for his hair. Once again, it does look like him but I am starting to understand faces and portraits better now and I know there is room for improvement.

Phyllis thought I was being too safe with my fabric choices and encouraged me to be more adventurous. She suggested that we do a pet portrait because pets don't complain about what colour we make them.

I couldn't find a photo of our cat so I had to take one. Poor Misty is 16 years old and has kidney disease and not really feeling her best these days, but she let me take a photo.

Misty the cat

Here is Misty's portrait and I think I was very adventurous with the colour.

Misty in Fabric

I am really enjoying making the portraits, we only have one lesson to go and we are going to learn a collage technique next, it's where you use lots of different fabrics instead of 4 or 5.

So, I have decided to continue making portraits this year and see where it takes me!

Bye for now,

Linda