Living Colour! Exhibition Program

Living Colour! opens soon.  I thought I'd publish the exhibition program here so if you are in any of these areas on these dates you can head along and look at some beautiful work.  Hint, hint family - I know where you live!

Head over to the Living Colour! website for more information.

The exhibition will premiere at the Australasian Quilt Convention 10-13 April 2014 and will tour in 2014 and 2015. The following venues have been confirmed:

• Australasian Quilt Convention, Melbourne: 10-13 April 2014 with daily curator floor talks at 1.30pm
• Creative Textile Show, Canberra: 2-4 May 2014 with daily curator floor talks at 12.30pm
• QuiltWest, Craft & Quilt Fair: 21-25 May 2014
• Sydney Quilt Show, Craft & Quilt Fair: 9-13 July 2014
• Brisbane Craft & Quilt Fair:  8-12 October 2014
• Quilt Symposium Manawatu, Palmerston North, New Zealand: 15-21 January 2015
• Gosford Regional Gallery, Gosford: 21 March-22 April 2015

The preview gallery is also getting full with only six more quilts to come.  Head there for a glimpse of each quilt.  Curator Brenda Gael Smith has put together a wonderful show, the snippets are whetting my appetite for sure!

Retrospective: Tweet Quilt

I was working with my students last night at the beginner quiltmaking classes I run (last one - they gave me chocolates to say thank you!!), when it occurred to me that I never showed the full pictures of the commission quilt I made back in September last year.

I was using one of the birds as an appliqué pattern for my students and they really liked it so I wanted to show them pictures of the quilt it came from.

What was tricky about this quilt was all the fabrics.  The woman who I was making it for asked her friends to bring pieces of fabrics to the little girl's second birthday party with the intention of putting them into a 'keeping quilt'.  Of course, because they all came from different people, none of the fabrics were particularly coordinating!

I had a pinterest board to work from, which was a big help in designing the quilt.  Adding lots of white space made most of the fabrics play nicely with each other.  Then I used all the NZ themed fabrics on the back with a black and white strip, black and white being very 'NZ' colours.

There was a woollen scarf in the bunch of fabrics and the suggestion was to use this for a tree branch, which I was nervous about but it worked out great.

I added more fabrics from my own stash to bridge between some of the original fabrics and I had great fun drawing up different bird shapes.  And the one last fabric that I just couldn't make it go with anything else, I made into a bag to put the quilt in.

It's the first time I've made prairie points and they were so much fun!  I think they added lots of texture to the quilt and really finished off that central image.

I free-motion quilted it with wavy lines in the sky, grass like lines in the foreground and a line of loops and a line of flowers in the border.  I also added the child's initial, a dragonfly, a heart and a leaf into the corners for whimsy.

I changed my bobbin thread colours as I went so you would see the 'picture' on the back too.

I machine bound the edges, because I was running out of time and I think it's a stronger finish for a child's quilt.  And then, to finish it all off, I made a little doll quilt for the girl's dolls.  And I still gasp at how cute that is!  How about that striped binding?!

So there you have it.  It was a great challenge and I was incredibly nervous about whether they would like it or not, but I had a wonderful message back about how much she loved it.  Yay!

Hope you enjoyed the pictures.

Work In Progress Saturday

I know, no alliteration, but I can never seem to get in step for Work In Progress Wednesday.  So, as my Dad would say, you can like it or lump it.

This is my challenge quilt for the Dorothy Collard Challenge.  Do you like the swallow quilted in and shaded lightly?  Can you see the shading?  

I have to get a hurry on for this quilt.  It needs to be in Auckland for 5th April and I'm going to have to post it due to husbands and hunting trips and other inconveniences.  But I'm thinking I'll try and get down for the opening night of the exhibition, that'll be fun.  

Hmmm, just had a thought.  Does one dress up for that sort of thing?  Yikes, maybe it won't be fun after all.  My country bumpkin uniform is jeans and tee shirt...

A Morning Walk

I'm continuing on the spirit of my last post about appreciating where I live.

Once a week I attend a yoga class.  I drop the kids off at school, squeeze in a walk and then stretch and breath through yoga.  But it's that walk that I want to talk about.  I thought I'd share some photos I took.  It's along the Opua to Paihia coastal track and it's one of the best local walks there is.  Do you think you walk further and enjoy yourself more when you are walking in a beautiful place?  I do.

I don't walk here everyday, but only because I don't drop the kids off everyday.  Bur rather than waffle on I'll let the photographs tell you how beautiful it is.

Thankful

I live in a beautiful place.  Sometimes I forget that and grumble about my dusty car, or my long drive to pick up the kids, or the cow poo on the road.  So I'm making a conscious effort to remember how lucky I am.

I'm lucky that my closest neighbour is more than 100 metres away.

I'm lucky that I see mist instead of smog.

I'm thankful that I can smell fresh air, animals and grass.

I'm lucky that I can keep chooks and collect my own eggs.

I'm lucky that I have no one telling me that my grass is too long/too short/too patchy/too green.

I'm thankful that my view is hills and paddocks and trees.

I'm lucky that I have a beautiful place to call home.

I'm lucky and I'm thankful.