It's been a while...again!

I can hardly believe that it has been over a year since I wrote on my blog.  It seems to have been a busy year but I don't actually have much to show for it. 

We had our ensuite totally ripped out and a brand spanking new one put in during Jan/Feb.  It's a lovely light room now, which we definitely couldn't say before.

We went to Melbourne in April to the Australasian Quilt Convention.  I did a 2 day class with Rosalie Dace, which I enjoyed very much.

We had a wonderful trip to South Africa in May, with a couple of days in Zambia to see Victoria Falls.  We came back with some magic memories and lots of photos of wild animals.  We managed to see all of the 'big five' and quite a lot of others as well.  My MS didn't give me too much trouble except for the fatigue.

We lost our beautiful fur-child in July.  He developed what the vet first thought was an abcess in his lower jaw, but it turned out to be cancer.  He was 19 years old.  Trev the Wondercat, we still miss you.

Another short trip at the beginning of October, to Adelaide for the inaugaral Australian Machine Quilter's Festival.  I really enjoyed myself - I had lectures with Kim Brunner, Pam Clarke and Anne Bright, and managed to spend a bit at the vendor's market.

We are in the midst of organising to have our kitchen totally renovated.  I think it will be happening at the end of March.  It was due to be starting next week but there's been a delay in delivery of some of the stuff we want.  That's okay - it gives me more time to empty all the cupboards!

I'll finish up with a photo of Trev in one of his favourite spots, sleeping in a sunbeam on a nice warm quilt!

city & guilds stuff - part 2

The next step was to slice the main piece again and insert the remaining smaller units.





Nance Crow has her quilts hand quilted, but I machine quilted mine. I haven't done much in the way of hand quilting for the last 10 years so it wasn't a difficult decision! She mainly uses straight lines or grids so that's what I did too.



After I'd finished the quilting and looked at it, I decided to do some little wavy, swirly bits in a few places.



I really enjoyed making this and I have a few ideas on how I can go further with this technique - all I need is the time coz I sure don't need any more fabric for it!

city & guilds stuff - part 1

One of the activities I had to do for my city & guilds course was to choose 3 internationally known quilters and make a little quilt based on their style. The first quilter I chose was Nancy Crow. I love her work, I find her inspirational. I decided to focus on her strip pieced quilts and tried to strip piece without it being anything like Nancy's work. I needn't have worried - mine is like kindergarten work to her wonderful quilts!

I wanted to use some of my hand dyed fabrics so I chose 3 of them as well as some quilter's muslin and a grey homespun.

I cut them into strips of varying widths then pieced them together into several different units.

Then sliced the biggest unit apart and stitched in two smaller units joined end to end.

More in part two...

Here's a few photos...

...but I still need to take some more photos of some of the stuff I've been doing since I last posted (in the dim, distant past).

Some friends came over to my studio one Saturday in August, and we had a great day playing with fabric and paint. My camera skills are definitely lacking because these are the only two photos that didn't come out blurry! The first photo shows Beryl and Anne and the second one shows Lynda and Edith, all hard at work.




I really enjoy the days we have these get-togethers. Having them here at my studio means that I can get the place ready over the preceding week, I don't have to travel anywhere with heaps of stuff and don't have to pack anything up at the end of the day to travel home again. The 'fatigue' part of my MS sometimes becomes overwhelming so being able to have playdays here is great.

This coming week I should be able to get some more photos organised and posted!

cheers
cat

speaking of the Kemshalls

Linda and Laura Kemshall also run the online City & Guilds patchwork and quilting courses ( as well as Creative Sketchbooks and Creative Computing). I've wanted to start the quilting courses for a few years now, and recently I decided that now was as good a time as any. So I'm now doing Level 2 7822-10 Patchwork and Quilting, which is the first course of three. My dream is to be able to do all three of the courses but that will depend on finances. They're definitely not cheap, but are high quality courses of study. I've got a while to decide though.

Module 1 was about colour mixing and fabric dyeing. I've done LOTS of fabric dyeing over the past 10 or 12 years so I got through that module fairly quickly. Module 2 involves playing with acrylic paints among other things, and I'm having a great time with that at the moment. My husband had carved a heap of lino stamps for me this week - I tried but don't seem to have strong enough hands. Apparently plumber's rubber gasket is easier to carve and the resulting stamps work the same. I have no idea what plumber's gasket is, but will try and buy some so we can test it out.

little challenge quilt

Linda and Laura Kemshall are well known in the quilt world. A few months ago they ran a quilt challenge called the 'Love Colour' challenge. You can read about it at the link below.

http://www.lindakemshall.com/LoveColourGallery.htm

I made a little quilt for the challenge, and I'm tickled that a photo of it is on their website! It's a variation of the big fuchsia quilt I made earlier in the year, and was a lot of fun to make.

Busy couple of months...

on the quilt front. In May I went to the State Guild's annual retreat at Poatina. I think it's about the 12th or 13th year we've gone to the same place, and I've missed 2 of those years. It was a tad cold up there in the mountains, but stayed fine while we were there. Here's the website for Poatina village if anyone's interested. http://www.poatina.fusion.org.au/ One day I'll learn how to do links properly!

I got quite a bit of quilting done on my tulip quilt. I did the applique in 1983 - the stitches are about 1/4" apart and all the stitching on both the pink and dark green fabric is done in white thread. Mum had kept the quilt top for the last 25 years then gave it back to me. I was tempted to just throw it out but then decided that it was part of my quilting history so I would finish it and keep it. I'm doing the quilting on my faithful Husqvarna, and enjoying it too. It's going to be 'feathery' - I'll post a picture when it's done.