Farewell to my friend

My dear friend Sue recently passed away and I can hardly believe she is gone.

We moved across the road from her and her family in 1984 and my 3 year old son saw some kids playing over there and went right over there and started playing with them.

Sue and I bonded over the kids and our love of Jane Austen books. We were busy bring up children and it wasn't until 13 years later that Sue introduced me to patchwork.

Here is a photo of us from 2 years ago, we spent so much time together that we didn't take many photos of each other.

She was always there on the end of the phone or email. We emailed daily. As soon as something happened, be it a major event like an engagement or new baby or just an annoying experience from a trades person we would contact each other about it.

Back in those early patchwork days we would travel to different patchwork shops on a weekly basis and often get lost because we were both hopeless with directions. So much fun and laughter though.

I rang Sue the day before she went into hospital for elective surgery and we were discussing our next outing and planning our trip to Uluru in August.

Unfortunately she didn't revive well from the anaesthetic and developed pneumonia and just couldn't recover.

Sue, Me and Annemarie in 2006

Sue loved applique quilts and was always making lovely soft quilts with flowers on them. 

Our family spent many a Christmas lunch at her place and Sue was such a good cook and prepared a magnificent feast every year. We were at all her family events, like birthdays, weddings and engagements and she and her husband Bob were at all our big occasions as well.

I found a couple of old photos of us. Here is one from 1991 when she had her red hair.

Here is another photo from my 40th birthday

Sue changed her hair style a lot more than me.

Our lives were so entwined and I miss her so much. She was a life changing friend for me, she introduced me to patchwork, she decided that we would join Waverley Patchworkers and of course quilting has become such a major part of my life.

Treasure your friends, life goes by so quickly and can change in an instant.

Bye for now,

Linda

Australian Patchwork and Quilting Magazine

The latest Australian Patchwork and Quilting (AP&Q) magazine is in the shops at the moment and it has a lovely 2 page article about me.

It is Vol 38 No 3. Jessica Harlow interviewed me a few months ago and asked for some photos of some of my quilts. I think she has done a good job with the article.

It never gets old seeing my quilts in a magazine, thank you AP&Q for the invitation.

Bye for now,
Linda

Marimekko Exhibition

Last week a couple of friends and I drove up to Bendigo to see the Marimekko exhibition at the Bendigo Art Gallery Marimekko is a  design company from Finland which began in 1951 making fabrics for ready to wear clothing.

Now they design fabrics for clothing and decorating.

Here I am at the entrance to the gallery.

There lots of displays of fabric and clothing from over the years and I clearly remember the shift style dresses of the 1960's that my mother used to make for me. I enjoyed looking at the exhibition from a design perspective and it was interesting to see that the following fabric was inspired by rain.

I liked this knitwear maybe because I love striped and spotted fabric these days.

They make fabric in different scales, smaller sized for clothing and larger for curtain material. One of the fabrics on display is what I recently bought as a cushion but the fabric was a smaller scale than the fabric on display.

Most of the designs were very abstract with a lot of black and white featured but I liked seeing this more organic screen print.

I  especially liked the display in the last room.

They often had the large scale fabric on display as well as the same fabric in a dress.

Most of the fabrics were cotton but they also produce silk fabric such as in the dress in the following photo.

The main reason I had for going to the exhibition was that we are studying Marimekko with the Waverley Art Quilters this month. What a coincidence that I picked Marimekko to study long before I knew there was going to be an exhibition.

The exhibition is on until the 11th June, so there is plenty of time to get there.

Now I have to work on my Marimekko challenge piece in time for our next meeting.

Bye for now,
Linda

Bleaching Map

Last month our topic for the Waverley Art Quilters was Maps.

I struggled with this at first as I was looking at maps of my suburb but it wasn't inspiring me and then I thought about doing a map of the places where I've lived but still I didn't feel any enthusiasm. I started to wonder how I could do a map that tied in with my coral reef series and suddenly I felt a stirring of interest. I was Googling maps of the Great Barrier Reef when I found an article and illustration of where the coral bleaching was occurring up in Queensland.

Apart from being dismayed at the large bleaching area I knew I had found an idea for my map challenge.

I found a perfect hand dyed fabric for the water but didn't have a hand dyed fabric with enough interest for the land so I decided to do some sun printing and make my own fabric.

Here is the first layer of sun printing. I used a black Sun dye called Currawong.

When it was dry, I heat set it with the iron and sun dyed a second layer with magenta and orange.

That made an interesting fabric but would have been too distracting and obvious if I used it as it was, so I cut it up into squares and rectangles and pieced it together.

That made it more interesting.

I painted some Lutradur, which is a polyester cross between fabric and paper, but it is more fabric like and takes paint very easily and doesn't fray. I wish I had taken more photos but I was rushing to get this finished before AQC.

I left some Lutradur white and painted another piece two shades of orange to represent how good or bad the bleaching is.

Over the top of the Lutradur I free motion embroidered some star shapes to look like coral.

Finally I added some stamping and thermofax screens with some fabric paint.

Bleaching Map

You can see how badly the coral bleaching is in the north of Queensland and down in the south where the temperatures are a bit cooler there is no bleaching.

It is very distressing when I see how beautiful the coral reefs looked 20 years ago compared to what they look like now.

I can't think of what to call this little A3 quilt, Bleaching Map doesn't seem very creative!!

Bye for now,
Linda

AQC 2018 part 2

I have well and truly recovered from the quilt convention but it took a few days, I really should learn to pace myself a bit more.

I took so many photos of the quilts but I will just show the ones that particularly caught my eye.

I loved Delightful Daisies by Bernadine Hine, she painted the quilt and it really glowed.

Delightful Daisies by Bernadine Hine

I also loved this heron quilt.

Heron by Janelle Northcott

There was a display of 12 quilts by Jo Wearing, they were all big quilts and the patterns were designed by Judy Niemeyer, my favourite one was Paradise in Blooms

Paradise in Blooms by Jo Wearing

There were 3 quilts called Royals by Sarah Fraser, they made a striking display.

Royals by Sarah Fraser

They look like photos but I took a close up of Lady Diana's eye so you can see how it's made of squares of fabric.

Royals detail

I met Carolyn Sullivan a quilter from New South Wales who had a retrospective of her work, she usually works in earthy tones with a lot of hand stitching but recently she has done some bright, graphic work that really appealed to me. I love the texture she achieved in the background.

Abstract trees by Carolyn Sullivan

There was also a huge display of work by a quilter from the UK named Gillian Travis. I really liked the screen printing and stamping that she has done to add detail to her work. Gillian was also a tutor while she was here.

Gillian Travis

Gillian Travis

Gillian Travis

Another tutor was Meri Vahl from the USA, I went to her lecture and it was very interesting. She has won the Best of the World quilt 2 or 3 times and I never appreciated how good her quilts were from photos. They are fantastic in person.

Free Tibet by Meri Vahl 

Now look at the wonderful detail

Meri Vahl detail

Meri Vahl detail

There was also a SAQA exhibition called Turmoil and Tranquility and two of my favourites were from Suzan Engler and Donna Deaver.

The following quilt looks as if the middle square is sitting forward but the quilt was completely flat, it was all done with clever shading.

Winter Silence by Susan Engler

I have always admired photos of Donna Deaver's sea quilts and was glad to see one up close at last.

Morning Walk by Donna Deaver

Even looking at her quilt up close, I still don't know how she achieves such wonderful movement in the sea.

So that's AQC over for another year, I feel so lucky to have it held in Melbourne so I can go every year. I suppose that's how the quilters who live in Houston must feel.

Bye for now,
Linda

AQC 2018

AQC (Australasian Quilt Convention) is over for another year. It was very successful with crowd numbers up and many saying that the quilt displays were the best ever.

It started with a cocktail party which was a great way to have fun after a tiring day of setting up the quilts. Here I am meeting up with friends at the cocktail party.

Cocktail party

The winner of the Borders and Bridges challenge was announced and it was won by my friend
 Sue de Vanny with her quilt Bordering Extinction.

Bordering Extinction by Sue de Vanny

Here is a detail photo, she gets such realistic and amazing detail in her work.

Bordering Extinction detail

I had another friend in the competition with her beautiful machine quilting.

West meets East by Linda Crouch

I also met Shirley Drayton and she allowed me to take her photo

Echuca Moama Road Rail Bridge by Shirley Drayton

I loved putting faces to names at the show.

Another quilt that I liked was by Marie Mitchell.

Bridge to Extinction by Marie Mitchell

There were so many wonderful quilts in the challenge and they were so different, luckily they will be travelling around Australia to all the quilt shows so they can be seen by many people.

At the entrance to the quilt show was the Cherrywood Challenge 2017, they had so many entries for the Van Gogh challenge that they divided them up into 3 different exhibitions, we had the Dutch display. Cherrywood fabrics are an American company that sell hand dyed fabrics and they seem so saturated and rich.

Cherrywood Van Gogh exhibition

I took photos of many of the quilts but I noticed a crazy patchwork one and so chose that one to show.

Tori Trevino

I decided to buy the book which has all three exhibitions in it.

I liked the book because it had close up details of all the quilts as well.

Inside the Van Gogh book

On Friday I spent the day in the classroom being a class helper for Denise Griffiths who was teaching a three day flower class.

Waratah by Denise Griffiths

I didn't go to the Gala Dinner but my friend Sugy Kim won Best of Australia with Colourful Retina.

Colourful Retina by Sugy Kim

It was a very busy show for me especially seeing it was my first as the coordinator. It all went really well and I enjoyed catching up with friends from all over Australia. I spent a lot of time talking and meeting people as well as having meetings with sponsors so I didn't buy as much as I was planning to but I really wanted some Magnifico thread by Superior and so I bought a few colours. Hopefully they will work well in my machine.

AQC purchases

I took lots of photos and there was a good mix of art and traditional quilts but they will have to wait for the next post.

Bye for now,
Linda

Preparing for AQC 2018

The Australasian Quilt Convention or AQC for short begins on Thursday and it looks as if it is going to be just as wonderful as always. If you click on the link you can get a sneak peak of the wonderful quilts that will be displayed.

I was lucky enough to have a quilt in the final of the Bridges and Borders exhibition. I called it Mangrove Nursery and it is about how the mangrove roots form a bridge shape and create a border that stops the large fish from entering allowing the small fish a chance to grow.

Mangrove Nursery ©2018 Linda Steele

It was the first time I have entered the AQC challenge and was thrilled to be accepted because I know they get a large number of entries.

Another quilt of mine called The Bleaching will also be on display.

I love AQC because quilters from all over Australia gather and we see get to see some of the best quilts from around the world. This year there are art quilts from SAQA, the modern quilts from
 Quilt Con and the Van Gogh quilts from the Cherrywood challenge as well as many others.

Of course there are all the shops with all that merchandise to tempt us as well.

I will be there every day and hope to catch up with many friends over the four days.

AQC is held at the beautiful Royal Exhibition building in Carlton Gardens Thursday to Sunday 10am to 4.30pm.

Bye for now,
Linda