Re-Assemble Challenge for NZQS19

Earlier this year I joined in with the Re-Assemble Challenge for this year's NZ Quilt Symposium.

Each entrant was sent a photo of one portion of an art work and our challenge was to represent our portion in any 'quilty' way we wished as long as we matched the (roughly) A4 size and our edge lines matched. 

Here is the original photo I received:

And here are the two side-by-side; I am really pleased with how it turned out:

Each portion will then be joined together to recreate the original artwork in quilt form.

I chose to do an applique/thread painting method, with some painted areas in the green background.

I actually used bubble wrap to apply the green paint (which was a mix of light/med/dark greens, on a forest green marble fabric), quilted with an all over mini stipple.

The thread painting gives some texture and tone to the greys of the roof and poles.

I am really looking forward to seeing what the whole picture looks like! 

(I will add the finished result once I have been to Auckland in October).

Summer Day - Lake Te Anau

So excited to share this wall-hanging - it has been selected by Aotearoa Quilters 

to be exhibited at the Ailsa Craig Quilt and Fiber Arts Festival in Ontario, Canada!

The sky is a blue poly-satin with a baby blue mesh overlay and
a couple of scraps of white netting.
I did not quilt it as wanted it to stay smooth like a clear summer sky.

I entered the wall-hanging in the 'New Zealand Through Our Eyes' challenge for Aotearoa Quilters. We had options of sizes/layout and I chose the 18" x 8' long option as I wanted to share a slice of the colours of my favourite part of NZ - Fiordland.

The forest on the mountain-side is made of roughly cut rectangles of various shades of muted greens to
represent the native beech forest that completely covers the hill-sides down to the western shore of the lake.
I free-motion quilted curves over the shapes with a thick quilting cotton to soften up the edges.

I had been pondering the theme of the challenge for a few months, but was pretty sure I wanted to showcase our landscape - this was confirmed for me while camping at Te Anau between Christmas and New Year...

The water is reverse-appliqued, using three layers of blue poly-satins or dress lining.
I quilted the ripples and then cut away some sections to reveal the darker colours.
This is really close to how the lake water looked as it moved on the day that we were crossing in the boat,
so I am super pleased with how it turned out!

...while in the boat as we crossed the lake one day, to go water-skiing at Brod Bay, 

I sat looking at the scene directly in front of me: lake, mountain, sky. 

I knew that was the scene I wanted to create in my wall-hanging.

Pre-trimming - all layers complete.

The wall-hanging was sent away at the end of January and exhibited at the Great NZ Quilt Show in Rotorua, before then heading to Canada. I look forward to seeing it again on 

show at the NZ Quilting Symposium in Auckland in October.

'Kia ora' to all my visitors via Kelly's Needle and Thread Thursday linky party!
Have a lovely Easter!

Thread Painted Portrait of Bess

This is our beautiful Bess (part Labrador, Retriever, Huntaway and Samoyed!) who turns nine in February and has been with us for eight and a half years after we adopted her from the SPCA.

In October 2018 I attended a two-day thread painting workshop in Winton, with tutor Sonya Prchal, hosted by the Otautau Patchwork group. After our New Year holiday I took a day to finally 'frame' the picture up as a wall-hanging.

I really enjoyed learning the technique of thread painting (basically using free-motion stitching to 'colour in' a pre-printed photo) - it was really fun to do and so exciting to see how effective it looks!

We started with our photo printed onto fabric. Sonya guided us through the stages of thread colour selection, use of the free motion, where to start, where to move to next etc. Here are some progress photos...

After printing our photos Sonya had worked out some of the main colours we would need for thread and instructed us to buy those; thankfully she had her own collection of a huge range of colours for us to make use of for the areas where we only needed small amounts of the colours.

After all the stitching was done Sonya helped us to use some fabric colouring pencils to add depth or shading as well.

Original stitching 6x8" and final wallhanging 16x12.5"

Here is a photo of the work of some of the other workshop ladies - their quilt group holds an annual exhibition (photo via Sonya's Facebook page):

 

Happy summer hello to anyone visiting me via Kelly's Needle and Thread Thursday linky party!

Hint of Spring

I created this little piece of quilt-art to get an idea out of my head 

regarding making some Spring blossoms.

It only measures about 9" x 10". I used some hand-dyed fabrics from Mallee Textiles as well as organza and satin ribbons, a pale pink solid, and some pink tulle.

These two photos taken at night, inside - so aren't wonderful, sorry.

The blossoms are four layers of fabric/ribbon/tulle in various combinations.  

The 'twig' is a brown organza ribbon that I have re-purposed from a gift box.

Roadtrip SH8: Lake Tekapo

Inspired by scenes on our October 2017 road trip from Christchurch to Edendale, mostly travelling along State Highway 8 (after first travelling through Geraldine), I drew up some sketches with a plan to create a series of little art quilts.

I had just attended the 2017 NZ Quilt Symposium and was very motivated by the various classes I took; I could see potential art-quilt or abstract quilts in every landscape.

Lake Tekapo is a beautiful sight in October - gorgeous deep blue water, reflecting the Spring sky, surrounded by mid-Canterbury-brown hills with snow still covering the tops. I can't find the photo I took when I made my husband stop by the side of the road but this photo is similar to  what we saw...

Image source

A bit closer up: I used three blue shades of machine embroidery threads to
stitch in the water, and white thread for the snow.

The motivation to actually make the quilts came in January, from one of my Symposium tutors, Brenda Gael Smith, who is running a Monthly Art Project challenge via Facebook - so I signed up.

My plan: to create small quilts, about 8-9' square in size, using a mixture of piecing, applique, quilting and embellishments.

I really didn't know just what I wanted to do for finishing it off...I considered facing it, and then saw a tutorial for a perle cord thread finish, but have no perle cord to do it with. So I decided to try a serged/overcast edging. Not sure I like it really. I think I might make sure to get some perle cord and then I can try it out, as I do think it looks smart when done like that.

Sharing with my quilting friends at Kelly's Needle and Thread Thursday and Amanda Jean's Finish It Up Friday linky parties. Hi everyone!!