JULY PROGRESS

A little while ago I found a fabulous tutorial for drawstring bags at: http://sewbunnybum.blogspot.com/2008/05/drawstring-bag-tutorial.html - I absolutely fell in love with them and made 5 in one afternoon! 2 were birthday pressies for my son’s friends (twins). They were great for wrapping the other parts of their pressies. I made a couple for Mack too and he gave one away to a good school friend! The 5th I made from vintage fabrics.

I cut a couple for my daughter early one Saturday morning and got 1 sewn up before the kids and I headed off into town! That's the one with the purple owl fabric in the photo.

Did I mention how very easy they were? And that I just love them? I’ve since made one for my Mum out of printed cotton with an Egyptian pattern with gold and blues. I used a beautiful turquoise as the lining and a gold cord drawstring! It looked gorgeous but I forgot to take photos before posting it off! Oops! And I made 3 small floral ones for our Garden Club Birthday Luncheon where we place gifts at the table places for all attending! So, thanks Jessica for the tute!

Rose's Owl Bag

Mack's Skull Bag

I love the American Quilting Arts magazine to which I now subscribe. I found it about 6 months ago and am officially hooked! There are always new techniques to try and lovely articles on quilt artists and their work. They also have a website with a forum for mad quilters! http://quiltingarts.com/forums/

This little quiltie is a result of one of the challenges. It was so much fun to make; sometimes it is nice to go off in a different direction! (I usually work square or rectangular although I feel a circular quilt coming on! I wouldn't have ever thought to make the whole quilt a different shape!) The background is vintage tie fabric which I have hand embroidered and beaded. I hand stitched on some gold ribbon. It has fabric backing, craft wadding, and a velvet sulfolk puff with vintage button as embellishement. I machine stitched all around to combine the layers. Approx 5" x 6" (13cm x 15cm)

Medieval Shield Mini Art Quiltie

I entered a 1m square quilt for Down Under Quilts (http://www.downunderquilts.com.au/) magazine calendar competition a few months ago and have just received it back in the post (which obviously means I didn’t win anything! lol) This is the largest quilt I have completed to date (I can’t wait to see some of the other entries and of course the 13 chosen as winners for the calendar! The theme was ‘The Rhythm of Life’ The title of mine is “NO TIME TO DANCE’ and I had such fun designing and making it!

No Time to Dance

Here is the latest progress on The Light Within:

The Light Within WIP

MORE JUNE PROJECTS!

I’ve been playing around with manipulating photos on the computer. [I sadly lost a lot of my photos when our old computer crashed a few months ago! I didn’t have all of them backed up and have lost photos of finished artwork as well as family occasions and landscape, flower and building photos I use for my art] : ( I was happy to find this one of an old church window buried away in an obscure file and played around with it before printing it onto fabric. I don't know why but I love the shape of gothic windows and doorways!

The Light Within

I have painted vines and flowers on both sides of the window with acrylic paint and fabric medium. The inkjet printed cotton is a nice surface to paint on! I have just started to embroider some leaves and am excited when I think of adding wadding, backing and starting to quilt it! I've already added sashing and a border and can't wait to see what it looks like complete!

A lady in a local quilt store told me if I ironed freezer paper onto fabric (A4 size) that I could run that through the printer too! I was so excited I tried it out as soon as I got home. Unfortunately, it jammed. I may need to do a little more research! I was excited as it meant I could print onto coloured and commercially printed fabric instead of the standard white of the packs that I am currently buying.

I've done a little more stitching on my Mosaic Rose. I'm uncertain about the orange and may change it to yellow. I want to get the rest of it finished before I make the final decision but overall I'm pretty happy with it!

Mosaic Rose

Here is a little postcard sized mini art quilt in my Landscape Series. I knew it was buried under piles of fabric on my main work table and it turned up the other day! It's just waiting for it's binding and a little hanging ring before I take it off to the gallery!

Postcard Landscape Series

OMG! I’ve just made my first ever granny square! Crocheted! When I was 11 an aunti taught me to crochet those groovy diagonal square pot holders that were popular then (you know; the 70’s!) I couldn’t read a pattern and certainly didn’t know the names of the stitches; so here I am – some considerable time later with a yearning to learn to crochet! Why? I’m not sure. I think maybe I’m thinking of crocheted edges on little art quilts or those little crocheted flowers (which I saw on a gorgeous scarf the other day) or is it the memory of a gorgeous fillet crochet pattern I have floating around here somewhere? Whatever it is, it has propelled me to dig out the simplest instructions I could find and just begin. The hook feels like an old friend and there is none of that uncomfortable kakihandedness that sometimes accompanies learning a new skill. It is like we’ve never been apart!

I admit I had to unravel it a few times and even this final product isn’t perfect (a word no longer in my vocabulary anyway!) but I’m very pleased with myself! It is probably going to be one of those fleeting love affairs but it will be passionate whilst it lasts and I will enjoy the memories evoked of time with my aunti! I thought I'd taken a photo of this but can't find it in my files; so I won't embarass myself after all!