More Herons, and a tease of Ungainly Grace

There is another heron quilt I didn't include in the last blog post.  It was one created for the SewEzi Aotearoa Quilters Flight Challenge, which is being exhibited as part of the Great NZ Quilt Show, the first weekend of May, in Rotorua.

I got very good news yesterday that my quilt, titled Ungainly Grace (recognise the reference to the quote in the last blog post?), was chosen as one of the twenty finalists!  Yay!

Here is the drawing I started with:

It is a sketch from one of my own photographs of a white faced heron:

Unfortunately I can't show you the full quilt yet, but I can tell you it is 75cm square, as they all will be, and I can tell you that working in a square format is difficult for me! 

 I was discussing it with my mentor (Lisa Call, in case you are looking for a wonderful teacher/life coach) and she suggested that a landscape or portrait format has instant expressiveness without even adding the art.  Think horizontal = calm, portrait = power.  But a square makes you work harder to convey the feeling you want.  You can only work with the images and layout within the square, you can't rely on the shape of the frame.  Interesting.

I can also tell you that there was hand-dyed silk and much free motion quilting on my Bernina 440 domestic machine.  

There was also much thread tying in.  Ho hum.

And there may have been a last minute dash to sew on the label in my car on the way to drop off the quilt (not while driving - just waiting for carpooling!).

But I was very happy with the final result.  It is subtle and my aim was to work with tones and get them right rather than relying on colour to do all the work.  I think I got there, but you'll have to wait till the show to see if you agree with me.

For now, this is just a glimpse.

See you at the show!

Here is a link to a great blog post written about the upcoming show - I'm biased 'cause I wrote it!