Paul Klee

Last night I met with the Waverley Art Quilters. We have been studying the work of Paul Klee (pronounced Klay). The picture above was the little A3 sized art quilt that I made.

Paul Klee 1879-1940

Klee was born in Switzerland but spent most of his life in Germany. He was a skilled illustrator and teacher and is known for his watercolours. Klee was heavily influenced by cubism and I think his work is very like patchwork.

This is his painting named Castle and Sun. I tried to use similar colours. I drew the pattern up in EQ7 and then I fused the different squares and triangles to a brown background fabric.

Everyone in the group chose a different painting to study and there was such a variety.

Next month our theme is Doors and Doorways and we can use whatever technique we want.

Bye for now,

Linda

Margaret Olley

The art world was saddened last week with the death of Margaret Olley. Margaret Olley was born 24th June 1923 in NSW and died 26th July 2011.

She was known for her colourful still life paintings and intimate interiors.

I belong to a group called the Waverley Art Quilters who meet every month to study a different artist or technique. Last year we studied Margaret Olley and I made the small still life art quilt that is pictured above. Looking again at her paintings, I should have made it with much more saturated colour.

Ben Quilty painted Margaret Olley and won this years Archibald Prize with the painting.

Victorian Quilters Showcase 2011

The Victorian Quilters Showcase is over for another year. I was lucky enough to be the Profile a Quilter this year and so I spent all four days sitting in front of my quilts. I had a wonderful time meeting friends, students and fellow quilters. It was heartening to meet so many beginner quilters as well. I still remember the excitement of making my first quilt, which was on display at the show.

Desley Maisano won Best of Show with her quilt Ruled by Chocolate. Desley is a professional long-arm quilter and is known for her wonderful quilting. Desley has recently been married and used to be known as Desley Regan for those who don't recogise her new name. Desley has a blog and has some more photos and details about her quilt. http://addictedtoquilts.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

My lovely two daughters came and visited me at the show and were inspired to buy a couple of cross stitch kits, so you never know, they might be quilters of the future.

My photos are never very good at quilt shows, so go to the Victorian Quilters website to see all the names of prize winners and some photos as well.http://www.victorianquilters.org/index.php

Thank you to all the quilters who took the time to come and say hello to me at the show.

Bye for now,

Linda

Vic Quilters Set Up

I have spent the day at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre setting up my retrospective quilt show. I am honoured to be the Profile A Quilter at the Victorian Quilters Showcase this year. I arrived at 9am and we managed to finish at about 2pm. We were able to spend some time after that looking at all the other quilts on display. My very first quilt is the quilt on the far right in the photo above.

Here is a picture of my two wonderful helpers, Jill and Heather hard at work. I couldn't have done it without them. They were so patient and efficient. All the quilts had to be pinned onto carpet walls, so it wasn't an easy job like just hanging them onto quilt stands.

Here is a picture of us after we had finished, very tired but still smiling.

I will be at the show everyday in front of my quilts, so please stop by and say hello.

All the details of the dates and opening times can be found on the Craft and Quilt Fair Website.www.craftfair.com.au

Bye for now, Linda



                                                                          

Watercolour Class

I have recently finished an online watercolour class with Sue Bleiweiss called Watercolor Explorations for the Fibre Artist. I have done a little bit of watercolour before so I already had some paints and paper to use. It was only a three week course so it wasn't a big committment.
Every week Sue randomly picked out someone to receive a prize. My name was picked on the first week and I won some of Sue's beautiful hand dyed fabric.

The fabric was so soft and had a suede feel to it. Sue uses sand washed cotton for her dyeing, so I am going to buy some to try.

I enjoyed using the watercolour especially beacause the clean up is so easy compared to acrylics.
On the third week we had to make a journal using one of the designs we had created.
I used some of the fabric that I won and decorated it with some of the stitches on my sewing machine that I never usually use.
Sue taught us the proper way to make a book but I took a shortcut and sewed my pages on the sewing machine.

Cover Quilt

I have just received the latest Vic Quilter Magazine and my quilt Scottish Dance is on the cover. They have put it on a background of pale pink and I think it looks really pretty. My quilt has made the cover because I am having a display of many of my quilts at the Victorian Quilt Show this year. I will have the very first quilt I made on show as well as my latest quilt and many more in between.

The Victorian Quilters Showcase is on at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre, Southbank.(fondly known as Jeff's Shed. It will be open from Thursday July 28th to Sunday July 31st.

I will be there everyday sitting by my quilts, so I would love it if people came up and spoke to me. It will surely make the days go faster.

Fabric Dyeing

A couple of months ago I spent the day dyeing some cotton and silk fabric. They have been sitting in my sewing room so I could admire the beautiful colours but I must pack them away.

I used a different colour combination than I have used before and I really like them. I used Procion dyes, Fuchsia Red, Lemon Yellow and Turquoise. I had some dye left over so I added some black to the colours to get a darker version. It is amazing how different the fabrics look with the black added to them.
The fabrics on the top row are the cottons and the fabrics on the bottom row are the silk.
The second photo shows just some of the pots of dye, I had another set as well.