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.