Giveaway Winner

Today is Saturday - giveaway day!  I numbered the comments you lovely people left for me (missing out Helen's PS comment), wrote the numbers on bits of paper and then got my lovely children to draw one out of a hat a plastic cat food container.

But number three was my sister's comment!!  Urgh!  That smacks of nepotism and I was going to send her some threads anyway (because she's my sister and because it's her birthday soon and because she's much, much older than me....he he he)

So girl child drew another number - number 2 - congratulations to Helen!  I'm going to email you to get your postal address Helen.  Helen said:

Hi Charlotte
Congratulations on your quilt being pictured in the latest issue of Quilt Mania. Well done!
I am hoping this year to get better at using my quilting machine. Actually what that really means is I hope I find some time to use it :-)

PS I love the teal colours

I hope you get time to use your machine too Helen.

And yes - much to my surprise, my quilt "Life Encircling" was pictured in issue 98 of QuiltMania, a French quilting magazine.  The article was about the Taupo Symposium.  Thanks Helen and Raewyn who both sent me a heads up.  And thanks QuiltMania - exciting!!

I'm busy working on a quilt to enter an exhibition.  Unfortunately I'm not allowed to show it :(  But seeing as the deadline is a week away, I'll have something else to show you soon enough.

Have a good weekend everyone.

RED 12 x 12 Challenge and Life Encircling quilts.

You might remember I posted this picture of my four 12 x 12 RED challenge entries.  This was a mini-exhibition held at the Taupo Symposium and arranged by Aotearoa Quilters Guild.

They were all for sale at the same price and I was really lucky that one of my pieces sold on the first day.  In fact, it sold before I got a picture of all four together!  You can see mine in the second to bottom row, but they've filled in the gap created by the sale of my 'Red Bird Home to Roost' with someone else's quiltlet.

Here is another wall of them.  There were four walls altogether and they looked really fantastic hanging together.

And here is the obligatory goofy photo of me standing next to one of my other main exhibition entries, 'Life Encircling'.

This was the other quilt that I couldn't show the whole thing online before the exhibition.

A couple of detail shots for you.  The birds were painted onto white fabric then cut and appliqued onto the pieced background.  Lots of the leaves of plants are either scrim or organza - hand painted and then appliquéd.  The background is mainly pieced from my hand-dyed, painted or printed fabrics.

I had a lot of fun with this quilt.  There was a lot of playing and trying out new techniques so I'm glad it was successful in that it was accepted for show.  And it was neat to see it hanging nicely on the black walls of the exhibition.

I also took two classes whilst I was at the Symposium, but I'll do some posts on them another day.

Happy Dance!

I got notice today that both my quilts that I submitted for the Taupo Symposium exhibition have been  accepted!  Woot, woot!

It was my goal to have at least one quilt accepted at one of the major exhibitions in New Zealand this year - and now both have been so I'm over the moon!

To see the whole quilts you'll need to visit the exhibition.  It's the Horn Cabinet Quilt Exhibition Taupo 2013 at the Taupo Symposium 2013 Fabric Art Festival held 18th to 23rd July at the Great Lake Centre, Tongariro Street, Taupo.

I'll be lurking in the background like a proud Mama.....

Today....

I'm printing,

harvesting,

and trimming.  

I'm also trying to decide on a binding - who knew it could be so difficult?!

School Holidays have hit

So I found my camera.  I did what I should have done first.  I asked the kids.

"Oh, we found it on the ground, so we took a few pictures."

"Then what did you do with it?"

"We put it in here to keep it safe."  

Of course.  And here was their toy garage.

I thought I'd show you a couple of their artistic shots.  They illustrate quite well that it is school holidays for two weeks and they are already driving me a little crazy at lunch time on the first day!

So once I had my camera back, did I take any astounding photographs?  Not really, sorry!  Just a few of the ducklings who are enjoying living outside.  Big Red, the rooster, is a huge bird, so you can see how much they've grown after only a few weeks - much faster than chickens - and if you want to eat these, they are ready at eight weeks.

And I'm still stitching away at my Tree of Life quilt.  I don't want to rush it just to have it done.  I'd rather spend the time on it to get it right.  

So happy school hols everyone!  Let's hope I'm still sane by the end of them!

Multi-tasking

So I've discovered that I'm not really a 'one WIP' kinda girl.  I've been focusing on getting my Tree of Life quilt ready for the Auckland Festival of Quilts, and with a week and a half to go before hand in date all I can think of is all the projects I'd RATHER be doing.

You get an old pic to make me feel better about how far it's come since this - and because I've temporarily mislaid my camera.

Like trying monoprinting.  I have a big sheet of glass and I used it to monoprint a couple of pieces of organza for my Tree of Life quilt the other day.  Turns out it's fun, and it's easier than painting the organza direct.  So now I'm itching to play with printing.

And I'm a third of a way through quilting my Old Maid's Puzzle quilt.  It's so close and yet so far because I haven't worked on it for months.  I swear it looks at me resentfully every time I dump something else on top of it in my studio!

This was taken months ago - before I moved into my new studio!

Then there is the other stack of UFO's.  I can't even claim that they are WIP's because the work and the progress part are sorely missing.

I'd really like to work on this organza piece some more. 

And it's spring.  The garden is a forest of borage and brassica flowers - all very pretty, but it doesn't bode well for the menu come summer.

So, in a way, I'm glad that the deadline is approaching way too fast.  Because whether I finish my Tree of Life quilt or not, in a week and a half, I'll be able to pick up something else.  Or two or three other things at once - I'll be in multi tasking heaven again.

Growing Things

We spent the weekend growing things.  We grew the wood pile for next winter and it's higher than my head now.  There is something very satisfying about having a good stock of fragrant wood drying.  Maybe it harks back to caveman days when fire was safety, warmth and food all in one.

We didn't grow these, but we did plant them.  Fifty baby Kanuka trees that will become a hedge/shelter belt and will shield us from the view of the neighbours.  Grow babies, grow!

And my quilt continues to grow slowly.  I've been glue basting the birds on and will soon be appliquéing them with a straight stitch.

I hope you had a productive weekend too.

More Fabric Painting

After a week and a half of sick children, today was my first day when they were both back at school and I had no other commitments.  So I made a date with my studio, turned on my latest audio book*, and broke out my new Jacquard textile paints and had a play (of course, that was after I fed the calves, chooks, ducks and rabbits, loaded the dishwasher, washed and hung out two loads of washing, took the dogs for a walk, vacuumed the house (the plug is fixed - yay!) and had a cup of tea to revive myself.)

*'How It All Began' by Penelope Lively - pretty good, but not exactly fast paced.  Would recommend 'Giants Of The Frost' by Kim Wilkins - kept me riveted.

The Kotare (Kingfisher) and Pukeko were the result.  I'm pretty happy with the Kotare, but I think the blue on the Pukeko is a bit bright and uneven, so I'll go back to that.

The other thing I've been playing with is samples of how to portray foliage.  I've pieced a small background made of the same fabrics on the quilt I'm making and have painted and appliquéd onto it to see what I want to use.  There is hand painted silk organza, hand painted scrim/muslin, shiva paintstiks, Jacquard Lumiere and normal Jacquard textile paints and some old acrylic textile paints I had hanging around with no labels on them!  It's been really interesting to see the different effects.

No sewing tomorrow, for I'm off to work to pay for my habit ;)

Fabric Painting on a Windy Weekend

I painted these yesterday.  Freezer paper stencils and fabric paint - lumiere and assorted others, on white 300 thread count cotton fabric.  Then today was howling with wind so I stayed inside and touched them up a bit.  Hubby took the kids for a jaunt to the shops to spend some of their pocket money so I had a couple hours of solitary painting time (aaaahhhhh!).

I'm pretty pleased with this one.  It is the kokako, or blue-wattled crow.  It is severely endangered, and has the most beautiful haunting call.

The keruru or wood pigeon. It has the most distinctive heavy wing beats when it flies overhead, and is known to get drunk and stumble around on lawns from eating fermented berries!

And the tieke or saddle back.  I'm pretty sure it survives only on off shore island sanctuaries.

I'm undecided whether to try and cut these out and appliqué them to my background, or paint them directly.  These were practice pieces but they've turned out so well that I'm tempted to try the cut and appliqué route.  If I painted them I think I'd have to paint the background white first.

And this is a background on which they will all be placed (the design wall is still under construction).  The majority of these fabrics are my own hand dyes or surface designed fabrics and there will the a nikau palm in the centre.  I better get moving on this quilt as I wouldn't mind exhibiting it at the Auckland Festival of Quilts (aka Calico Christmas) in November.  Chop chop!!

Autumn Skies and Hand Dyes.

I think one of the reasons I love Autumn is the amazing skies we get.  And not just sunsets, but the cloud formations and day time colours are always stunning too.  The kids spotted this sunset last night and suggested I take photos - and I'm so glad I did.

Here's another sky.  This is what my hand-dyed blues have been used for. Probably 95% of the sky in this shot is my own fabric, either hand dyed or painted.  A lot of the purples are too.  Lots more work to go on this quilt yet - a base of greens and browns, a trunk for the nikau palm, trim the white off the leaves, lots more birds.......

Yesterday (Sunday) we did a big mission on the studio and now most of it is painted with undercoat.  And we only stopped because we ran out!  I'm getting a little closer to decided what colours as topcoats.  To help me I wrote a list of criteria that will influence me:  

• Warm colour - the room has windows only at the back and front and so can be a bit dark and cool feeling, I want to feel warm and cosy when I'm working.
• Light colour - again because of the lack of light, I need a light colour that will reflect natural light as much as possible.
• Neutral - I've decided to head more towards a neutral so that my wall colour doesn't influence my colour choices when I'm making quilts and using my design wall.

But, my oh my! There are hundreds of neutrals when you go looking at the colour cards at the paint shop!!

A good blogging friend has asked for an update on how our piece of land is evolving.  I realise I've blogged much more about my quilting lately than what has been happening on the farmlet, probably because I haven't been doing much outside lately.  I guess my focus has been turned inwards on the studio and with the cooling weather gardening etc takes a back seat.  The vege garden has truly become a wilderness, but I can forage something out of it most nights.  

The orchard trees will be needing their second ever winter pruning soon.  Both them and our shelter trees grew well last summer as it was a mild season.  

As for the animals, I have four bunnies at the moment, two mamas and two daughters.  Our breeding buck went to bunny heaven a while ago and I'm going to hold off on sourcing a new one until spring.  We killed our two ram lambs the other day and a friend hung them then butchered them for us.  They were nine months old and in good condition, we have polled wiltshires and they are not overly fatty, and we've had one beautiful meal of chops so far.  It's not so far till spring and then we'll have more lambs bouncing around.

None of the chickens are laying as it's moulting time - they are all at least two years old now and I'm going to have to do some serious culling soon and then start again either using my incubator or some point of lay pullets.  The ducks are still amusing us with their antics, but they aren't laying either.  In spring I will hatch a new bunch out.  

Yes, I love Autumn, but Spring has it's joys too!