Images from school 1 - SEASONS

After madly stitching, ignoring kith and kin, and dust bunnies, and sleep, and hmmmmming and hawing about whether we'd captured what we intended to, and whether we'd executed our stitches well, and whether we had truly represented our chosen subjects, we presented our pieces to our teachers for a mini exhibition in our school library.......and some of my classmates agreed to share their pieces on my blog.........except they don't know of my photography 'skills' so if all of a sudden you see 'photo unavailable', you know why......

The 3 pieces up for assessment were:

• 'Seasons' - a stitched representation of one of the seasons
• 'Folio Cover' - a textile folder cover based on any of our drawings (or part thereof) in our art class
• 'Lucious Fruit' - a textile representation of lucious fruit

Lots of photos, so enjoy.....except Blogger is taking umbrage with the number of photos so I'll do a couple of posts.......

Carol has captured summer in her back garden beautifully - from the soft tones of the painted background to the glorious floral display next to the pool - so well in fact that I might have to cajole her into sharing that space for a class barby under the umbrella next summer :)

From one extreme to the other - Sherryn introduced a touch of frosty storms to her stitching - love the use of the chain stitch which insinuates roiling clouds as well as the straight stitch and french knots blowing in snowflakes and sleety rain

Margaret's piece was full of the joys of Spring - warm and balmy but tempered by a capricious wind

Kristen gave us the lazy, hazy days of summer with a beautifully (french) knotted blossom tree and a carefree swing - and a perfectly poised dragonfly amongst the flowers

Carolyn depicted Spring bursting out all over - fresh green, birdies and a gorgeously wrought tree

This is mine, representing Autumn - a grape vine in front of what kinda looks like Uluru (Ayers Rock) with falling leaves turning into a brown mush beneath the branches

More to follow, over.......

AQC 2012

As mentioned in my last post, I went off to AQC (the Australian Quilt Convention) with friends and had a wonderful day - this the 8th AQC event and it has come a long way.  There have been shows in the past that were a little disappointing, in fact last year, I decided I wouldn't attend again; however, early onset of Alzheimers ensured I had forgotten my decision and I'm glad I did!

The show was much better managed this year - the lighting was better (there is still some room for improvement), there was a lot more variety from the stall holders (still a lot of Japanese fabrics about though), the heating/cooling was better (in previous years it was way too hot) and the skills of the quilt makers were of a very high standard.  The quilts were traditional - the Modern movement is yet to make significant inroads - but I found myself looking at them differently (maybe because of the course I'm doing or that I'm teaching now??)  In previous years I would look at a quilt and decide whether I liked it, or not.  There wasn't much thought as to why I liked it and for those I didn't, I dismissed them and moved on (such a quilt dragon!!)

This year was different - I looked at the overall composition and the individual elements.  I looked at the methods used and the execution of same.  I looked very closely at the quilting, whether it was by hand or by machine and tried to work out why I preferred one over the other...it's a personal thing, obviously, but the following photos are either full quilts or close-ups that I enjoyed.  All of these photos were part of the 'Beneath the Southern Sky' exhibition and we were encouraged to take photos ;)

Close up of 'White Cockatoo' by Julie Haddrick.  The feathers were amazing - close machine quilting as well as organza added.

'Antipodean Adventure' by Debra De Lorenzo.  Loved the Shibori dyed cloth that Debra created.  It was added to commercial fabric and machine quilted to represent the earth, ice and sky of the Antarctic Circle

'Traversing the land' by Dijanne Cevaal.  Not usually a fan of Aboriginal Art, but the dyed cloth along with hand embroidery really made this piece call out to me to step in a bit closer.

'Staircase to the moon' by Stephanie Knudson.  This really captured the full moon rising over Cable Beach in Broome, WA.  There was hand and machine stitching and couching all on silk.  Really beautifully done.

There is more, so later I'll share images from the AQC Challenge.........

A weekend of quilty goodness

On the weekend I went to the Australian Quilting Convention - and I won a ticket to the Gala Dinner in saturday night, courtesy of the very generous (and very lovely) Cecile of Unique Stitching - so my weekend was filled with lots of quilty goodness!

Now despite me telling myself I really DON'T need any more fabric (especially as the Tokyo Rococo range arrived and I have to make up some quilt kits...), I simply couldn't resist this little bundle...

Some Transfer Artist Paper for my arty farty endeavours, a jelly roll of Half Moon Modern, a layer cake of Malka Dubrawsky's Metro and a little assortment of fat quarters that caught my eye...

Gawd knows when I'll get a chance to make any of these up - I've still to finish an Occupational Health and Safety report (almost there), an autumnal hand stitcheries for a mini exhibition at school (almost there), a bowl of lucious fabric lemons (only just started) as well as organise a family get-together to celebrate my eldest son getting engaged - CONGRATULATIONS ADAM AND DANA  :)

....oh, and my husband and I (with a Queenly wave) are celebrating 30 years of wedded bliss (??!!?) today - happy anniversary dear!

I'll do a seperate post on some of the photos I took of the AQC - gordon bennett there is a lot of talent out there.

I was featured on the Name Game :)

It was very exciting seeing this post at Cindy's - I was invited to play the Name Game and Cindy picked out some photos of my work - excellent!!  It's always really interesting to see what catches the eye of other people so I asked Cindy to chose what photos to use - and I have to say I've finished those socks and they kept my feet wonderfully warm when we went camping over Easter!

I've been a follower of Cindy's blog since pretty much I dipped my toes into the waters of Blogland - exceptionally talented - go and take a look around Cindy's blog - the scrap quilts she makes, as well as her Farmer Wife blocks are fantastic.......her use of colour and tone ensures her work always looks 'right'  (so many superlatives running around my head that really, 'right' doesn't explain exactly how well she does it) - hopefully the course I'm doing will point me in whatever direction is required to replicate her skills.

Thank you so much Cindy - I enjoyed being part of the Name Game.

I really must add that button to my side bar - I feel a bit like a 'star' !!!!! - I know, I know, I need to get out more....

arty folio cover

I feel I should be wearing red lippy and saying 'yar, yar' a lot - I've got my 'arty' on and finished my folio cover for school - it's a bit late (should have been handed in last week) but apparently arty types don't run to schedules very well - suits me to a 'T' then ;)

The folio cover started with this frighful 'still life' rendition (explained here)....

and ended up as this:

there's a bit of 3D with the gerbera on the right....

a little FMQing....

and it even stands up....

I've recorded my process and included references to the elements and principles of design, as instructed - that's all inside the folio in presentation order - so that can be crossed off my list.......next item on the agenda is a 'Lucious Lemon' out of panne velvet and some stuffing - hmm - think I might go and pack some more of the camper trailer and cogitate a while...

fresh sewing day

I'm linking up to Lily's fresh sewing day - and I really need to update the button on my sidebar too - but I digress...

I had an outage with my sewing machine for 2 weeks so I didn't do too badly - there's a bit of hand stitching for school and a few farmers wife blocks - there'll almost done - woo hoo!

Not getting to Blogland very often these days - so much work involved with school but we're now on a break for Easter, we're going camping (so I can do my outstanding hand-stitch assignments) and we've just finished daylight savings which means I have an extra hour to play with in the morning - so all good.

Hope you have a wonderful Easter break - I know I intend to.......

farmers wife-ing

In between demonstrating making market bags on the weekend, I was able to complete a few more farmers blocks..

from top left, spider legs, spider web, single wedding star
bottom, snowball and spool

I've now completed 84 of the little darlings....27 to go, 27 to go......

Then this morning I finished the next monthly project for my classes - a zipped cushion cover..

the back has a zip with a concealing flap

Don't you just love gigantor stitches!!  I used a fabulous new product that I've been told about to mark the spacing - it's an erasable felt tip called Frixion by Pilot.  I simply drew on the fabric then after I'd sewed my stitches, I quickly pressed with the iron and all the marks disappeared - just like magic.  apparently they will re-appear if the temperature gets below -20c and there's little chance of that in Oz, so we're all good :)....although Melbourne these last couple of days seems to have been hit with an icy blast from somewhere....we've had the open fire going!

Right-i-o then, back to my assignments - have a great week