Summer School at McGregor College at Uni in Toowoomba was great! Had 10 days of wonderful quilting with Wendy Scott. In that time I was able to turn one of my ideas into an original quilt "Many Coloured Beast", which is one of four I want to do inspired by lyrics of music from the '70s.

"The Many Coloured Beast" (Close-up)
Full view, after quilting before binding was attached.

In the early stages, showing curved piecing

Wendy Scott, from Newcastle Australia shown here with one of her wonderful quilts. Wendy loves colour and wears wonderful colourful outfits every day.

With Wendy's expert tutoring, we learned curved piecing and many other techniques. She encouraged us to develop our own original designs and that was the best part of the course. I must have got a lot out of it as I dreamed the other night that I was to be promoted to the third year of a mysterious Quilt University Course!



It was great fun, but exhausting, and it is a little hard to settle back into the old routine. I've got lots more quilt designs going round in my head and now I know what to do to make them come to life.

Rock Art

Moab Rock Talk 24 in. wide by 39 in. long $1,100.00

Quilt was made last year for the AQuA (art quilt guild in Grand Junction, Colorado) http://www.theartquiltassociation.com/
TXT challenge.

Inspiration/theme: Ancient rock art (petroglyphs) found on the red rocks of Moab, Utah and the southwest region. The designs range from representational to whimsical from laughing sheep to eerie shaman. The bottom left figure is the Moab Man. They speak to my soul although I'm still trying to break the code of these early text messages. I used very busy fabrics to convey the loud messages we are faced with today. I used low contrast as many of the petroglyphs are now very faded and hard to see.

Figures were created with hand applique including reverse applique. Hand and machine quilting. Beaded embellishment.

I was honored when the challenge juror Faye Anderson selected my quilt as one of the quilts to be featured on the TXT page of the AQuA website. To see the other 6 quilts http://www.theartquiltassociation.com/exhibitions/txt.htm

The TXT quilts were displayed as a special exhibit in the Mancuso's Denver show in May 2006 and their Chicago show in November 2006.

A couple of fun workshops have happened over the last month or two. In one, a one-day workshop with the local quilt group, I showed 8 members how to make a notebook cover decorated with thread.

A To do this, we prepared a simple base fabric with pellon backing, and then added freeform fabric shapes which had been prepared with fusible webbing. Then it was fun, fun, fun with lots of stitching over and over until the whole surface was totally decorated. When complete, the piece was cut to size, flaps added, and lined, to make a great notebook cover. Several of the girls have made more since then as Christmas presents. Here's some photos ot their work - I'm proud of them!

In another series of lessons at the local quilt store "The Quilter's Angel" a small group has been learning the basics of quilting. We made small completed items from our samples of walking foot quilting, free motion quilting, quilt as you go, quilt before you go and trapunto. Here's some of their work.