Wordless Wednesday

Thermoformable felt

A while ago I received some thermoformable felt from Dale at thethreadstudio.com. The idea was to have a play and send her the results.  

The felt is 90% wool and 10% polyester.  It can be shaped by adding heat.  The instructions said to pop it in the oven at 150deg C for 20 minutes.  The kitchen did smell a little like warm wet wool.

The starting piece of felt was quite thick, using my Janome needle-felter I added some merino/alpaca/silk blends and hand-stitching.  Then using various bits and pieces from the kitchen, a bit of cooking ...

felted, stitched, ready for shaping

useful kitchen items

 

shaping tools

end results

The bowls held their shape quite well, even before the cooking.  I might just need to revisit this interesting stuff.

Wordless Wednesday

Colours of New Zealand

'Colours of New Zealand' is a touring exhibition organised by Nutex and New Zealand Quilter magazine.  

The finished quilt needed to be less than one metre in either direction.  The quilt top had to contain at least 50% fabric from the Nutex Kiwiana range.

This is my entry 'Colour Full' and it was selected with 19 others and is touring various venues around New Zealand for a year.  The first outing was at Minerva here in Wellington and it has also appeared in NZ Quilter magazine, see this post.  



 



The Nutex Kiwiana fabrics are very busy in their design. For awhile I couldn't get past the image of the Postcard type of quilt that these fabrics are often used in.

A trial layout.  The letters were created in Powerpoint.  Then traced onto freezer paper, cut around for each letter, and then appliqued onto the plain fabric.  





Each word is the Maori word for the colour, i.e.Whero = Red, Kikorangai = Blue, Kakariki = green, Poroporo = Purple, Parauri = dark brown, Kowhai = yellow.

For the quilting design I enlarged one of the designs on the black fabric. 

What I learnt:
* even if the deadline is close still take the time to do samples and try the techniques before committing to the final piece

* limit how much fusible is used.  Each letter is fused onto the background solid and that is then fused to the quilt.  Those letters are stiff! the quilt doesn't get rolled up but sort of folded.

A trip north

Last week I spent a couple of days in Hamilton to see the Aotearoa Quilters exhibition at the Craft and Quilt Fair in Hamilton. 

On the way ...

Mt Ruapehu

Mt Tongariro, Mt Ngauruhoe and Mt Ruapehu

Kakepuku Mountain and Kawa Hill

Kakepuku Mountain (~450m) and Kawa Hill are familiar landmarks from my childhood, although not so prominent from the air.


After arriving in Hamilton, I visited ArtsPost Gallery mainly to see Norma Slabbert's quilts in her Walled Garden exhibition.  Unfortunately photos were not allowed.  

Then a visit to Hamilton isn't complete without a trip to Donna Ward's Studio.


The Craft and Quilt Fair opened on Thursday, Wednesday was judging day.  As I hadn't entered any quilts I volunteered to be a judges scribe. 

It was an amazing experience, I learned heaps about the judging process.  The experience also reconfirmed to me how varied judging can be - that a quilt can win in one show and not another.  

From this I re-learned not to let non-selection, non-winning stop me creating and entering shows.

Some pics:

Ansa Breytenbach's 'Christmas Star' Best of Show

closeup - amazing quilting and beading

 

closeup

Donna Ward's 'Pacific Spice' Best Bed Quilt

The quilts from AQC's Free challenge were also exhibited:

Bernardine Hine's 'Coreopsis', AQCs viewer choice

closeup

Gillian Shearer's 'I Am Nujood and I Am Free!', AQC runner up

Wordless Wednesday

Red 12x12 - all three of them - updated

Back here I posted about my three quilts in the Aotearoa Quilters (AQ) RED exhibition.  

Two have sold and I now have the cheque. 

The doily quilt (on the right) showed at the Craft and Quilt Fair in Hamilton last Thursday to Sunday (5-8th). 

A couple of pics from Hamilton.  The pictures with the white borders are photos of those that were sold at Taupo.  These photos were taken on Wednesday during setup, the show opened on Thursday.

AQ have announced another 12x12 challenge - this time blue and it is due at the end of January 2014. See here for details.

Fishnets - my SAQA Auction Quilt

Welcome to the Oceania Collection Blog Hop.  Today is my turn to describe how my entry 'Fishnets' was created.

Fishnets

Starting with a piece of felt, strips of hand-dyed sari silk (from Dale Rollerson) are blanket stitched onto the felt using Perle threads (or similar).  This is a technique that I've admired in Dale's work, it gives an interesting texture.

Silk sari strips and perle thread

felting the blanket stitched strips

Sari strips after felting

Cutting into strips

Trial layout onto another piece of felt

The piece is layered onto cotton batting and backing then basted. The strips are stitched down and quilted at the same time. 

The piece is then faced.

 

facing completed

I'm the last on this blog hop, I hope you've enjoyed seeing how all these fabulous quilts have been created.  Be sure to follow the online auction here when it starts on Monday September 9th, at 2:00 Eastern.   

In addition to the online auction a selection of quilts will be auctioned at Houston International Quilt Festival at the end of October.  I'm quite excited that Fishnets will be one of those quilts.

Enjoy viewing the quilts and purchasing your favourite piece/s.

Wordless Wednesday