Heirloom Quilting

This is a quilt made by my customer, Rosemary. It has been "Heirloom Quilted" which means that very close quilting has been done all over the quilt, in a traditional style. A combination of freehand, stitch-in-the-ditch and computerised Statler patterns have been used. The quilting took me the best part of a week. The calico backgrounds are ideal for this type of quilting. I was pretty happy with the result, and I am sure Rosemary will be too, when she sees it!

Art Nouveau Today's Edition

This morning I worked on the drapery of the figure. It wasn't easy to reduce about five different tones to just two, but by selecting a new background it would be less work to stitch out. My new idea is to use different background fabrics in different areas to make the final design much more dynamic in terms of colour. So we have a different colour behind the arch and a more suitable colour behind the fabric folds.

The original design has some prints stacked up in the foreground, but I think I will introduce flowers here, possibly standing in a tall vase, and spilling out over the frame to lead to the outer frames. I have no idea yet how these will look. In the final quilt, some of these could be three-dimensional, as could some of the leaves in the hair.

Another Idea on the go

No, it's not an alien cat! I am in the process of creating shapes to correspond with the original photo of Anna, one of the spoiled ones. The bottom picture shows how I am drawing the shapes, the eyes and nose and a couple of other areas are shaded in.

The top picture shows the design thus far with the photo removed. What I will be doing is add layers which will represent pieces of fabric. I've decided that the technique for this one will be a raw edge, sewn around just inside the edge, then the back cut away, before attaching the next layer. this will reduce the bulk. By using large tonal shapes, this will be much quicker to make than lots of individual pieces, This quilt will be big - A0 sized, over a metre in height and over 80cm wide. A very scary large cat with eyes that follow you round the room!

Long way to go yet with the design.

Art Nouveau Garden is Slowly Growing

Today, I had fun for five minutes at lunch time when I photographed up close some of the fowers and plants in my garden. These images will be handy to file away for design ideas later.





The Art Nouveau Garden is slowing growing. It takes about an hour a day when I am working on the design as this is all the time I have available, but I will get there. Today I did a lot of playing with colour combinations. Although they may not resemble the final fabrics very much, I am finding that this initial fabric rehearsal pays off once the quilt is started. You can narrow down the basic tone, textures and hues, saving a lot of time later. I have been having fun playing with the magenta, cyan and yellow sliding bars on the palette as you can see the colour dynamically changing as you work.

Art Nouveau Garden

More progress is being made on this design. I have worked on an arch shape to surround the figure and then there will be some wedge shaped floral panels to go around that. There is a lot of black in the design at present, but that will be covered up by flowers, leaves etc to a large degree. I spent about 3 hours on this today and I must say it has been fun and a great learning experience as I am getting better at making the software do what I want it to.

More Pictures of the Kool Kats

It's Sunday - a lazy day, and what better way to illustrate Sunday than with pictures of my two lazy Kool Kats!

This is the female, Anna, who loves to roll at your feet to tell you she loves you!

Me with Anna, or it is Kurtley?
Anna again, loves attention.

This is the male, Kurtley, my couch potato who loves to warm his butt on anything. He was most unimpressed when I got rid of the old nice warm fat monitor and replaced it with one of those flat screen things. Kurtley is shy and there are fewer photos of him, but he is generally seen around the food bowl.

Art Nouveau Block of the Month Design

This project is coming along again. I needed to get into the routine of working on the design and so I do an hour each day after breakfast, before the work day proper commences. I'm learning lots of great techniques in Corel X3 to make this design. The colours are only rough and will be adjusted as I go along to only resemble final fabrics to be used.

I can create a palette and can number the colours later. This will help in the planning of the pattern packs. Because Corel is so great, I will be able to make a pattern sheet cutting out guide for each piece of fabric. This will greatly assist those putting pattern packs together with fabrics.

Well - Hello Dolly

Well - Hello Dolly. Made for the first Quilt Art bag o' stuff challenge led by Tomme Fent. Owned by quilt artist/author Jane Davila. Jane sent me a bag that contained calm light fabrics (pinks, blues, and greens), beads, buttons and some unusual (to me) items (copper mesh, aluminum flashing, etc.). The fabrics were a challenge (not my usual palette) and I had no clue what to do with the unusual "stuff". Then Jane’s fabrics met the Russian nesting doll fabric I bought for my sister and they wanted to play together. The dolls thought Jane’s fabrics brought out their beauty and Jane’s fabrics thought the dolls were perfect complements and I had to agree. I used each of Jane’s fabrics and I added darker fabrics to balance out the design.
I used freeform crazy log cabin piecing, machine quilting with metallic thread, hand quilting with cotton thread, couched eyelash yarn accents, and beading. It was fun to experiment with the different methods and materials. But I couldn’t figure out how to use the unusual items except for the scrapbook tag which I used as my quilt label/finishing touch.

A Quilt Made Entirely from Shirt Samples

Here are some photos of a quilt made by my customer, Jan. She has collected lots of men's shirt samples and made them into this delightful quilt. I quilted it with an all over pattern called "Chaos" from Lorien Quilting. It shows up well and gives a classic feel to this wonderful quilt.

cards and quilts

Here are 2 more postcards, valentines for my sister and my parents. I've had such fun making these cards. Last week was spent in continuing education for quilt appraising. Any day that you get to study quilts is a good day (even though I had to drive in snow). Today, I went to the Museum of Moab and helped with their quilt collection. I will be curating our guild quilt show there in May and June called A Quilted Feast (food themed quilts). Life is good.

Family Update

Time for a family update. This is our daughter Michelle, dressed in her university nursing uniform. the picture was taken a couple of years ago. She has now finished her degree, with High Distinctions, and has just started on her degree in Medicine at Hobart University. Yesterday, we were told that she has been awarded the Science Faculty Prize for USQ here in Toowoomba. As well as that she has won a scholarship and a bursary. Michelle did all this as a mature age student. She is now almost 25 years old. We are so proud of her!

Infill patterns on an applique quilt

This quilt, made by my customer, Grace, shows a decorative loop pattern which can be done as an alternative to stippling. It simply goes up close to the applique work. Usually the applique does not need outlining as well, but that depends on the individual quilt and the design of the applique.



This double wedding ring quilt, made by Jan, has an allover pattern; "Deb's Feathers" designed by Deb Guiessler. The quilting was executed on the Statler Stitcher. This is an inexpensive alternative to doing special quilting in the individual spaces of the rings. It creates a lovely, flat and decoratively quilted result.