Gone reading

Nothing new to show you today - I haven't done any sewing or quilting in the last week. My in-laws gave me a belated birthday present: the first book in the Millennium trilogy. So I have been reading every free moment and once I finished the book I went off and bought the second one! I'm halfway through that one now and have ordered the third book already...

I love reading, always have, and still read about one book a week, now mostly on the train to and from work, 3 days a week. I read a lot of thrillers (Val McDermid, Minette Walters and Robert Goddard are a few of my favourite writers) and I must say that these books by Stieg Larsson are among the best I have ever read. Highly recommended!

On a quilty note; this weekend I am going to a quilting retreat at Lake Moogerah with Rens. Looking forward to that very much! (I was at that same retreat 2 years ago) I don't know yet what I will work on there - I feel like doing a more traditional quilt after recently finishing a few art quilts. Maybe a quilt for Robbie, he really should have a bigger one...

Kids stuff

In between quilts I am doing some small fun stuff. I made this library bag for Ernst using the Spoonflower swatch made with his Grameldon drawing. He'll get it on his 5th birthday this Saturday. And I decorated t-shirts for him and Hugo using stencils from the book I showed you in the last posting:





The gymnasts quilt is finished, it's called MAGnificence (MAG = Men's Artistic Gymnastics). I'm trying to enter it online in the State of the Art Quilt 2010 exhibition, but the website it not cooperating...

Queensland Quilt Show

I managed to go to the Queensland Quilt Show yesterday and see my quilt hanging there! Compared to some of the other quilts at the show I thought it wasn't very good - I still have a long way to go... But it was nice to be there, meet some people, and, of course, do some shopping!



I bought some paintstiks, angelina and paint, 2 stamps and a gorgeous red handdyed fabric from Lisa from Dyed and Gone to Heaven. All for the quilt I promised to make for my mother-in-law - I am going to start on that one now. I also attended a beading workshop by Lisa and signed up for her beading club! I didn't buy the Down Under Quilts calendar but got it from Deborah because I read her blog! ;-)
I also bought this book which has great stencils for projects for the boys (dragon, bicycle, robot, rocket) and for me (feathers, cityscape, mandala!):



At home I played with the paint, stamp and some older stencils:

Hugo

This is the quilt I have entered in the Queensland Quilt Show. It is based on the photo I showed here. Click on the picture for a larger version. Do you like it? I do - I feel I really 'captured' Hugo.
Hugo likes it too, mainly because of the pirate fabric I used for the border!

Here you can see the winning quilts from the Show. I can't wait to see them IRL on Sunday!

It's that time of the year...

The jacarandas are flowering again. I keep making pictures of them!



Tomorrow the Queensland Quilt Show starts. I won't have time to go until Sunday, but I will post a photo of my quilt hanging there tomorrow.

Second Art and Craft Display

Remember the Art and Craft Display we had at my workplace, the Queensland Tuberculosis Control Centre, last year? This week we had the second edition of that event. My selvedge quilt had a prominent place (kept in place by some heavy medical textbooks!):



My colleagues loved the Tuberculosis journal quilt:



And I loved this throw knitted by one of them:



At home, I suddenly realised there are mandalas hidden in the woodwork!



I'm still adding seed stitches to the gymnasts quilt. It's getting a bit boring... But it has to be finished before the end of this month to try to enter it in the State of the Art Quilt 2010 exhibition.

Tomorrow the boys' grandparents are coming! They will be staying in Brisbane for 1 week, before travelling to the Whitsundays, so I think I won't be doing much quilting in the next few days. But it will be lovely to have some family here for a while.

Mandala and more dyeing

The theme for the next Art Quilts Around the World challenge is mandala. I used this photo from our holiday in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland to make a freezer paper stencil and made the print with discharge paste. Do you like it? I'm not sure if I will use it for the quilt or try something else (I have a few more ideas).

The blue fabric is a handdyed one - I did some more dyeing yesterday.

Seed stitching

I am still busy quilting the gymnasts quilt, adding seed stitching by hand. It's a helluva lot of work but I think the quilt needs it. I used to say I hated hand sewing but I am actually quite enjoying it...

Dyeing again

I signed up for another dyeing class with Marjie McWilliams at Quilt University, Quilters Palette. The first lesson was about dyeing fabrics for landscape quilts - water, sky, mountains, rocks, forest etc. I am very happy with the way my fabrics turned out!

Where Land and Sea meet...

... you often find a lighthouse!



My goal in making this quilt was to try out a new technique - free-hand quilting a scene on PFD fabric (plus batting and backing fabric) and colouring it in with Inktense pencils. I wanted to do a fairly simple image and suddenly, when I was brainstorming about the theme 'where land and sea meet' I thought of a lighthouse.

Googling 'lighthouse' for images to use as inspiration for my drawing resulted in a wealth of websites on lighthouses, enough to inspire a large series of quilts!



Cross-posted at Art Quilts Around the World

Holiday pics

We are back from our lovely mini-holiday - 4 days in Mapleton, in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland. Here are a few pics (more traditional holiday snapshots to be found on our family blog). The bat sculpture above was hanging in the garden of the restaurant in Montville where we had a scrumptious morning tea on Saturday.



This is part of a building that housed an art gallery - unfortunately there was no time to look at the art. I just managed to snatch a picture of this ... (what's it called??? well lid??) in the yard:



A lily:



And a cheeky kookaburra on the campsite (I love kookaburras! My 3-year old calls them kookabooa):



Stay tuned for the unveiling of the land and sea quilts on the Art Quilts Around the World blog tomorrow! I will have to work hard tonight to finish mine...

Faces

Although I have been quite busy in the last week, there is nothing to show yet - I have mainly been working on the gymnasts quilt but don't want to put it on the blog yet. So I'll show you another drawing made by Hugo, my 6-year old. He has school holidays at the moment and is making artworks by the dozen! I love this big picture of his heroes, Ben 10 (middle), Gwen and Kevin 11. Especially the faces, which I think he has drawn very cleverly (for a 6-year old at least!):



His room is a feast for the eyes!



Tomorrow we are going away for a few days, to camp in the beautiful Sunshine Coast Hinterland. See you next week!

40

Today is my 40th birthday. The 40 years have mainly been good (especially the last 8) and I am looking forward to the next 40!
The postcard above is from Marloes, I sent her a Dutch Houses postcard and she sent me this beauty, just in time for my birthday. Thanks Marloes!



This is a sneak peek of the gymnasts quilt I am currently working on. It's going well, but I still don't know what it will look like when it's finished!

Journal Quilt August

Finally, after a 4-month gap, I made another journal quilt for the Aus/NZ Art Quilters group. The theme for August was Motion and I thought it would be a good way to try out one of my gymnasts screen prints in a quilt. I chose the pommel horse, because on that apparatus the gymnast performs a series of continuous motions. The 'shadow' was made with a Paintstik on a freezer paper stencil.

For the text on the quilt I used some childrens' alphabet stamps. I quilted them with a free-motion zigzag stitch; the first time I have tried that. It works very well for letters!

I am quite happy with this journal quilt. To see the other ones, click on the tag journal quilts at the end of this posting.

Swatches

Remember the Grameldon? A few weeks ago Spoonflower had a free swatch day and I used Ernst's drawing for one of my free swatches (8x8in). It turned out really well. I may make a bag for Ernst out of it.



Here is the other free swatch. Do you recognize it? It's made using this print (scroll down a bit). I think it looks fascinating!

Dutch Quilters Guild

Yesterday I received the latest issue of Quiltnieuws ('Quilt news'), the magazine of the Dutch Quilters Guild. I joined the Guild shortly after I started quilting in 2006 and I still am a member, even though I have been living in Australia for 2.5 years now. I love reading this colourful magazine (that's Joseph's Technicolour Dreamcoat on the front page, I would love to see that musical!) and recognizing names mentioned in it.

Since last month there is a link to this blog on the Guild's website and I have noticed that quite a few guests have come to visit through that link. Welcome to you all! I hope you enjoy my blog and will come back sometime.

On a not-quilty note: as of today I am an official PhD candidate at the University of Queensland! Although it will probably mean less time for quilting I am very excited about this. The title of my proposed research project is 'The epidemiology of tuberculosis in Queensland as it relates to strategies to prevent transmission, particularly in the indigenous population'.

Experimenting

I am experimenting with stencils and Shiva paintstiks. Great fun!

Gymnastics quilt top

And here they are, all 6 gymnasts. This I think will become the quilt. But first I am going to experiment with some painting/stamping/rubbing/stenciling on some of the other gymnasts.

Hugo is very excited because he actually sold one of his drawings after my last posting. Thanks very much, Lynn! Now when we visit the Netherlands next he can say he actually contributed something to the trip. My budding artist!

The last one

Here is the last gymnast (top right). Now I will try to make a pleasing composition with six of the thirty-odd gymnast prints I have made.

And here are some works of art made by my 6-year old, Hugo. This is the brave knight fighting the dragon, while the princess and her father, the king, are watching.



And these are two pterodactyls (flying dinosaurs). I love how he has added the sky, sun and sea.



The first drawing was made for me but the second one is for sale! Hugo said he was going to make a lot of drawings and sell them, so he would have some money. When I asked why he needed money, he said that he wanted to buy plane tickets so we could go to the Netherlands. We have been telling the boys that it will be a long time (2 years probably) before our next visit to the Netherlands, because it is so expensive. And he really wants to go there again... He is happy to work on commissions! ;-)

And 2 more

Are you getting bored with them yet?!



I am making a print of all of the six events in men's artistic gymnastics: floor exercise, pommel horse, still rings, vault, parallel bars, and high bar. Only the vault left to do now - tonight, I hope. And then I will endeavour to make them all into a quilt... maybe in time to enter it in the State of the Art Quilt 2010.