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!

Spring Fling wallhanging

This was my entry for the 2018 Aotearoa Quilters 'Pink' Challenge - a 30cm x 30cm wall-hanging inspired by the blossom trees of Spring.

I made the blossoms by stitching together small pieces of pink/white cotton, tulle and satin, then attached them to the pieced background.

I wanted some bits of blue sky to peek through the blossoms.

I didn't win an award (from what I've seen there were dozens of amazing entries - and it was won by the talented Sonya Prychal, whose thread painting workshop I attended last week); the entire collection is now touring around the country.

Two crafty completions

First, a wool wall-hanging that has been swirling around in my head for a year (since we moved into this house and repainted the bedrooms...

I wanted something with texture to go in the space on that wall and spent a bit of time collecting up balls of wool in different colours of grey/black/teal/white/cream.

Finally got it made the other night - I used a length of driftwood that I collected from Lake Te Anau at New Year.

Second, a 14" cushion that is made from a Disney fat quarter - I used it in January to practice a free-motion quilting motif before completing a larger quilt.

Have finally put a backing on it (just a length of deep blue marbled fabric). My sewing supervisor is not looking too happy about the mouse motifs.

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: Lindis Pass

The second mini quilt in my roadtrip series, inspired by our trip down State Highway 8 back in October last year.

This one represents the Lindis Pass, which has a unique grassy, tussocky, hilly landscape filled with power pylons from the hydro dams in the Mackenzie Basin.

I appliqued the landscape, using machine stitching to add textures to represent the different plants and fencelines etc; I hand stitched the long stitches of the pylon - it just needed to be a bit more to the centre seam (but at the time I thought I would be overlocking the edges, however in the end I decided to try a faced backing, which meant I lost a bit more of the side seam than I had planned for).

It's 9"x8" in size.

Linking up to share with Crazy Mom's Friday Night Finish Up! Have a good weekend everyone!

Pasifika #1

Another finish of a project started during one of my classes at October's National Quilt Symposium in Christchurch.

This is a white dupion silk, free-motion quilted wallhanging, using Pasifika designs - a class tutored by Donna Ward (who won three prizes at symposium, including Best in Show!)

I used an aqua-blue theme for the quilting threads (because if it turned out okay I planned to hang it in our bedroom)...aqua in the middle, a variegated in the top right corner, and a deeper blue on the bottom left corner designs.

Donna was another friendly, relaxed and supportive tutor who gave us lots of tips about quilting Pasifika-themed designs; I really enjoyed her class.

Here it is 'in-situ'... it measures 18" x 16"...

The backing of the wallhanging is just a simple pinstripe with corner pockets for the hanging stick to sit in. 

And a Pasifika 'kia ora' or 'talofa' to visitors from Amanda Jean's Finish It Up Friday!! And I am thrilled to have had my Halfmoon Bay quilt featured in Kelly's Needle and Thread Thursday linky!!

Quilt Delivery Weekend

This weekend I took the opportunity to head up to Central Otago to deliver some very important recent projects...we nearly lost "Fizzy for Lizzy" into Lake Dunstan at Cromwell (it was more than a trifle windy up at the look-out, thank goodness Kieran had hold of at least one corner of it like I told him to when he made like a Hobbit and hid behind the rock for the photo!)

Great to be able to spend a long-overdue evening with my lifelong friend Ali and to be able to wish Fairy Princess Elizabeth a happy 5th birthday...

 

Then on Sunday, Kieran and I enjoyed a drive over to the Ida Valley in the Maniototo district, to deliver two more birthday presents...

"String of Pearls Remixed" for my cousin Kaylee...

The land here is quite a bit drier than here in Southland! Everywhere I passed, farm paddocks were being irrigated, while back here in Southland we've had an overload of rain!

And "Birds on High" for her daughter Claudia, just turned four...(I had to include the blue sky as proof that the sun does still shine somewhere in NZ!)