Waverley Patchworkers Raffle Quilt 2016

The Waverley Patchworkers have their quilt show at the end of May this year and as usual they have made a beautiful raffle quilt. It is called Carnival Constellation.

It was designed by Naomi Hynes and Linda C, Joy and Karen M helped Naomi make the quilt and finally it was quilted by Naomi Hynes of Elegant Stitch Quilting and Design.

Carnival Constellation

Here are a couple of detail photos that show the beautiful quilting.

Hasn't Naomi done a beautiful job with the quilting?

Tickets will be $2 each and all the money raised will go to the Waverley Benevolent Society. The tickets will be available from next month as well as at the quilt show.

Bye for now,
Linda

Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei Exhibition

For our wedding anniversary I decided that I would love to go and see the Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei exhibition that is currently on at the National Gallery of Victoria International (NGV).

As we entered the the gallery we were confronted with a huge sculpture by Ai Weiwei that looked like radiating light.

The photo doesn't do it justice but you can tell from the following photo that it was actually made up of hundreds of silver bikes.

The exhibition was very big and actually took up two exhibition spaces. On entering the second area we saw a beautiful display of bronze statues by Ai Weiwei that were replicas of the Chinese zodiac animal heads that used to be displayed in Beijing. They looked very impressive against the black wall.

I had never really been an Andy Warhol fan but I learnt during the exhibition that his work was not about being high art but it was all about social commentary. Suddenly his work made a lot more sense to me. Ai Wei Wei is a current artist and so his work has taken the social commentary aspect even further.

Here is an icon image of Andy Warhol's soup can screen print.

Andy Warhol self portrait 1986

Here is a design by Ai Weiwei that looked like a pretty pattern in gold but if you look more closely it is actually images of security cameras and hand cuffs.

After viewing the exhibition we walked alongside the Yarra River to find a place to eat lunch. The streets were decorated for the Chinese New Year and had lovely lanterns of the Chinese zodiac signs.

We went into the entrance of Crown Casino because they always have lovely displays in there. This time it was also decorated for the Chinese New Year and at the top of the staircase was a monkey because it is the year of the Monkey.

My husband and I are both Monkeys! I hope that means we are going to have a good year.

They had all the other zodiac animals as well. Here is some of them.

After lunch we went across to the NGV Australian Gallery at Federation Square. There was no particular exhibition on at the moment so we wandered about the gallery looking at some of the paintings in their collection.

We are so lucky to have so many wonderful paintings on display and I get so much more enjoyment seeing the paintings of the artists we have studied in the Waverley Art Quilters.

There were quite a few Fred Williams paintings. Here is Upwey Landscape

Upwey Landscape by Fred Williams

There were a couple of paintings by Jeffrey Smart. Here is Cahill Expressway.

Cahill Expressway by Jeffrey Smart

I saw a couple of paintings that I haven't noticed before but they looked very quilt like to me.

Arrested Development from a Trio by Roy de Maistre

Painting no 14 by Ralph Balson

It was a full day of art and eating. Sounds like a perfect wedding anniversary day out to me. Luckily my husband is happy to go along with my plans!

Bye for now,

Linda

Thread Challenge

The Waverley Art Quilters met again for the first time this year. It was good to see everyone back after the holidays. Everyone looked refreshed and eager to start the year.
When we last met we were given two reels of very fine metallic thread in various colours. Mine were pink and gold.

They sat around my sewing room over the holidays while I was busy making my Life on the Reef quilt.

When it was time to start the challenge, a week before it was due, I decided to keep to my underwater theme and would try and make a Jellyfish quilt.

I was going to use a blue fabric for the background but when I put the threads on it they didn't show up enough.

So I used a black fabric to help the fine threads show up.

I drew up a little Jellyfish and then enlarged it so it would take up the entire A3 size of the quilt.
I used mostly gold organza to give that transparent floaty look.

I tried using the thread in my sewing machine but it was so fine that it was getting tangled even when I was trying to thread the machine.

I ended up sewing a chain stitch by hand and then wrapping thread around the chain stitch to make the line thicker.

I was so busy making the quilt that I forgot to take any progress photos.

Here is the finished quilt.

In the top part I added some tiny pink and gold seed beads to add some texture.

Bye for now,
Linda

Applique

I am back working on my Seasons quilt, I had hoped to have the applique corners finished by now but I dropped everything to create my Life on the Reef quilt. I really have to get a move on with this quilt because I am determined to finish it this year.

I have sewn some Poinsettia in the winter corner.

In the Autumn corner I have made some Pomegranate flowers.

In the summer corner I have put some red roses.

 Down in the Spring corner I made some Granny Bonnet flowers.

The Granny Bonnets looked a bit pale to me and when I looked at photos of them I realised that they needed more colour so I added some with a Fabrico marker.

I was much happier with them after that.
I still have a bit more applique, actually a lot more applique on the summer corner and then I will add some hand embroidery; that should give them all a lift.

I sometimes forget how slow hand applique can be!

Bye for now,
Linda

Blog 2 Print

At the beginning of every year I make all the blog posts that I have done for the previous year into a book. Well, I don't make the book, I use a company called Blog 2 Print. They make it so easy, you just write in your blog address and give them the start and end dates, choose a cover and order. A couple of weeks later a book arrives.

Here is my blog book for 2015.

It is a beautiful hard cover book containing all my blog posts and photos in date order, with an index in the front.

The quality is very nice; Here is one of the pages open.

They are almost like a diary that documents my life and although I don't post day to day personal information on my blog, I have posted major events like weddings and births. My sewing and those major events are the most important things that happen in my life so it is a bit like a diary.

I have actually looked up these books to check on information sometimes. I use the Blogspot platform and you never know, it might close one day or something might happen and all that information that I write could be lost forever. One day my children or grandchildren might like to look at them and get a bit of an idea of how I lived my life.

Here is a photo of all my blog books.

It's hard to believe that I have been writing blog posts for 5 years now! How quickly the years fly by. All the more reason to get the blog posts printed I guess.

Bye for now,
Linda

Making Life on the Reef

I am still so excited to find out that my latest quilt Life on the Reef was chosen to be in the A Matter of Time  exhibition which has been curated by Benda Gael Smith.

As I mentioned in my last post I only had 3 weeks to make this quilt and so I spent every spare minute on it. It did help that I had made a quilt with an underwater theme before so I wasn't starting completely from scratch.

I started by placing some rock fabrics over a suitable water fabric.

I didn't take a lot of progress photos because I had so little time to make the quilt but after I had my rocks in place I started to make the coral using hand embroidery and machine thread painting.

When I thought I had made enough coral I started placing it on the rocks.

I realised that I would have to make a lot more coral to fill the space.

When I had most of the coral in place I started to make the fish but the quilt wasn't working and it took me a couple of days to realise that my fish were too big for the quilt. Reef fish are usually tiny little things flitting in and out of the coral.
The next photo shows you how the big the Blue Tang fish were in the beginning and how much smaller I had to make them.

Here is a photo of how I made the small Blue Tang. I cut out the fish shape in a blue batik and then used a black Fabrico marking pen for the detail.

I stitched around the outside of all the shapes to hold them onto the background and then I had to start adding all the hand embroidery.

You can see what a difference the embroidery makes by comparing the next two photos.

Without embroidery

With Embroidery

At least I did finish the quilt the day before the deadline and cannot wait to see the exhibition when it comes to Melbourne in April. I have seen a few of the other quilts that were selected and they are so different to mine and so creative and there are so many different interpretations of the Time theme.

The A matter of Time exhibition also has a Facebook page and an Instagram page.

Here is a photo of the entire quilt, remember to click on the photo for a larger view.

The quilt measures 40cm x 100cm or 16" x 39".

Bye for now,
Linda

A Great Start to 2016

Well here it is nearly at the end of January and I am finally doing a blog post for 2016. Believe it or not I have not been away on holiday or just putting my feet up doing nothing. I have been working flat out on a new art quilt.

About 18 months ago Brenda Gael Smith announced the theme for her upcoming exhibition and the theme was A Matter of Time- exploring the fourth dimension. As the months went by I thought of all sorts of ideas of quilts I could make that explored the theme. Some ideas were too obvious and others seemed too hard to tackle. I even spent a week working on an idea last October but it didn't work out and certainly didn't look anything like the idea I had in my head. To my disappointment I decided that I would not be making a quilt for the exhibition.

On Christmas Eve I thought of making a quilt about how old the coral reefs were. Bear in mind that this was 3 weeks before the deadline. The only way I could possibly try and get it done on time was because I had made an underwater quilt earlier in the year. I had still kept all my inspirational photos and fabrics in a box on their own. You can read all about my quilt Under the Sea here.

Once the idea took hold I was off and running. The size was the same as my previous quilt but I didn't want to make the same quilt, in fact there were lots of things I didn't like about the first one.

Here is my quilt named Life on the Reef and I finished it the day before the deadline! If you click on the photo it enlarges.

I was so busy trying to get it done that at times I thought I would run out of time, which was ironic seeing as that was the theme.

Here are a couple of detail photos.

The entire time I was making the quilt I was wondering why I put myself under all the pressure, but even though it was a lot of pressure I was also having fun. That's why we do it I suppose, it's because we love it.

Last week I found out that my quilt was selected to be in the exhibition!! I was absolutely thrilled because it is an art quilt exhibition and even though I dabble in art quilts I am known as a traditional quilter. There were 104 quilts entered and only 32 were selected. I have seen some of the quilts that were not accepted and they are fantastic. Brenda must have had such a difficult job to choose the quilts that went together to make a cohesive display.

You can see the other people who were selected by clicking onto Brenda's A Matter of Time Blog, she also has a dedicated Facebook and Instagram page for the exhibition.

The quilts will first be displayed at the Stitches and Craft Show in Sydney and Brisbane and then they will come to the Quilt Convention in Melbourne (AQC) before travelling to other locations. I can't wait to see the exhibition.

Bye for now,
Linda