More Show Day Stuff

There were a couple of other quilts that I really liked. The close quilting lines gave them a lovely extra dimension.

The first was called 'Bush Walk Flora #4' by Anna Brown.

The second quilt was called 'Design Line #7 Lust in the Log Cabin' by Brenda Gael Smith.

Quilt Show

Yesterday I went to the Quilt Show at the Royal Exhibition Buildings in Melbourne and spent a happy few hours wandering around fabric and quilts. There were a few themes for the quilts on display. One was "The Seven Deadly Sins." There were several interpretations on the theme but the incredible work and detail on this one caught my eye.

By Bronwyn and Bianca Hill.

It's called "Hollywood."

Another section of the show was devoted to Tutors' Quilts.

This one was called "Transitions" by Carol Taylor.

The detail and planning that must have gone into this beauty is mind boggling. Makes all my work seem so simple and amateur. I guess that I am also pretty impatient. I rarely plan, because I have so much trouble envisaging the big picture. 

Valarie Robinson looked at her topic, "Homage to Federation" a little creatively and made this:

There were a few 12" quilts that I passed rather quickly but then when I saw them from a distance they really caught my eye.

Alvena Hall stitched, blockprinted, photo transferred, and used shibori as techniques to make "Ribbon Rock" and "Dickensonia"

And this very beautiful log cabin 12" byJudy Hooworth called "Black Water". It's printed, dyed and stitched.

There was more, of course but I'm running out of blog time.

Maybe another post tomorrow with the rest of the day's events.

Fabric Shack to the Rescue

40 days ago I ordered some fabric from a very well know internet retailer of quilting fabric. Unfortunately the fabric did not arrive in the usual swift manner. I emailed the seller and although several emails were exchanged, it seemed that the seller was not prepared to resend the fabric and simply advised me to sit tight!
Normally, I think I could have been patient but the fabric was required for a commission and my time was running out as I am going overseas in 10 days.
The seller-who-must-not-be-named was getting less and less inclined to believe me or offer a satisfactory outcome so I decided to reorder the fabric from The Fabric Shack. 11 days later my new order arrived.

Today the quilt was finished. I didn't even use all the fabric. The Urban Circus is really lovely and soft too.
Meanwhile.... my other parcel is still lost and the seller-who-must-not-be-named is not being nice to me. It's not my fault the parcel is missing.
Whilst I was fretting and worrying, I just had to order more fabric because it makes me happy and I ordered some from Fabricworm
Their parcel arrived in 5 days on a Sunday!
I made this with it but that was the day before the Urban Circus fabric arrived so I had to leave it.

So this is the finished quilt. Ready to be shipped overseas to a new baby boy.

Its not that I haven't been doing anything...

I missed my weekend blogging because I went away for a beautiful weekend to Blairgowrie. Although it rained in Melbourne we had two relatively pleasant winter days at the beach. We went on three walks with a couple of breakfast breaks on the morning walks. At night we entertained, cooked up a storm, lit the fire and played scrabble. I did finish binding one of my quilts while we were away. Thank you Lisa for letting us stay at your place.

Last week I also managed to go to Kazari to buy the fabric for my Japanese quilt and that binding is also completed now. It was so good to go there. There were so many choices and I was lucky to have a friend with me to give a second opinion. Sometimes it can be so confusing and I really believe that the binding on a quilt can make or break the final piece.

So here is my over the top Kaffe Fassett/Brandon Mably quilt. The colours are way to crazy. I contemplated pulling it apart and making the inner strips of sashing from a smaller print fabric but in the end I just let it go. It's on my son's bed already and although I still need to do some stitching in some of the larger squares it's found a home.

So I have been sewing but not blogging. Four quilts were basted too and Castle Peeps is ready to have its binding stitched down. Phew, soon I will back at school and all this fun will be over. Love holiday breaks!

What have I done?

I think I went a bit overboard with the sales on line. Rosebud Quilting and QuiltHome had sales on Kaffe Fassett and I bought all this at great prices but I think I went too far.
I am going back to work on Monday and maybe its a good thing because I won't have time to spend so much money.

Wedding Quilt is Finished

As much as I get very attached to the quilts I make, I can't wait to give this quilt away. I love the way it has worked out. It was really easy to machine quilt as it is not too big to manage. I hope they enjoy snuggling up under it during the colder months.
If anyone wants to tackle a design from Kaffe Fassett's books, this is a good one. I would love to see it in another colourway.

School's Out

Yahoo, school holidays have begun and with that comes an empty staffroom and the perfect quilting table for me to use. Every holiday I take over the staffroom and baste my quilts. I did my niece's quilt today. It is so much easier to sit on the tabletop than sit on the floor.
The backing is a Kaffe Fassett Liberty fabric. It feels beautiful.

Machine Quilting

I have been ringing around to find out how much it would cost to quilt my Japanese Kimono Fabric Quilt because I thought it might work better than the usual hand quilting I do. I've also been reading stacks of blogs and have found that lots of people just seem to manage doing the machine quilting with their ordinary home machines. I really can't decide what to do. I know $150 - $200 is reasonable because of the work involved but should I try to do it myself and risk the mess? I have a walking foot - I am just scared.

My niece's quilt

Today was the day I just had to sit and sew. There are just too many incomplete projects lying around and more fabric is on the way. I have a variety of fabric from the last big buy but I just couldn't decide what to use for the borders of the "S" shaped patches quilt. My main problem was that I didn't have the same fabric as in the book. Anyway I stuck to the theme that it had to be mainly yellow. I think it needs a strong colour binding to finish it off.

Border Number 1

Border Number 2

Secretly escaping

The week was over and I had barely had a thought for making anything except dinner. So on Friday night, after we had eaten, I snuck into my lounge which is the "quiet room" in the house, shut the door, put my ipod on and managed to do some hand sewing on one of my unfinished quilts. This is the second quilt I have made from the same pattern but the results are so different.

Productive Day

It been a good day for sewing. First I went to Amitie to match a backing for a quilt top I made over the holidays. I bought all these scrap pieces of kimono fabric from a reject bin at Kazari in Richmond. They smelt terrible so I had to wash them all first - they still were smelling rather different from the lovely cotton smell I am used to. They ironed well despite the dip in detergent and I spent a couple of afternoons cutting and sewing the pieces together. They were really interesting fabrics with different textures and weaves. I will definitely visit them again.

Anyway, I didn't get such a positive response from my family so I put the quilt away to think about. I decided to have another look at it today and bought a lovely chocolate brown variegated fabric to back it with. I also bought some yellow Kaffe Fassett fabric to finish another quilt. That's now complete as well.

Next job was to finish the Moonbeam baby dolls I had started at the market.

Done - sewn and ready for stuffing.

So at last I was able to work in earnest on my nieces' quilt. 28 patches made and 14 to go.

Now to clean up the mess the storm has made. The hail stones made holes in our porch roof and water poured into our family room through the doors. The volume of water was just too much for the down pipes. At least the garden looks happy.

5 new Moonbeam Babies waiting to be stitched up

I've had these guys ready for a week but I have left them by the wayside because I have been so excited about my new fabric. I have stitched up another quilt and started cutting the new fabric for my niece's quilt. I always seem to have 5 projects on the go at once. Anyway it all seems to come together in the end, usually during school holidays when I have some time off. I have to stop making so many of them but it's so hard to resist.

This is the quilt I should really finish before starting the next one. I managed to get most of it done but ran out of the the yellow fabric. Will have to buy some more before it runs out.