The Quilted Garden

The Wellington Botanic Gardens currently have a quilt themed planting, with the flower beds in the main garden having been transformed into living ‘quilts’.

Throughout January there is to be a real quilt exhibition at their Treehouse Visitor Centre.

Some pics (taken on a drizzly wet day).  The gardens were only planted earlier this month so should look pretty amazing throughout summer.

Grandmothers Garden

Sawtooth

Christmas Tree

Nine Patch

Wordless Wednesday

'The Backseat Band' - voting now open

This year Bernina NZ have been running a Music Challenge.  The size of each quilt had to fit within A2 (594 x 420mm). 

Completed entries were taken to the local Bernina dealer.  They then selected a winning quilt which will be part of an exhibition that will tour the country during 2014.  

Each dealer also ran a 'viewers choice' for the most humorous quilt, which then competes with all the other humorous quilts for the overall winner.

My entry 'The Backseat Band' won the viewers choice for Nancy's Embroidery Shop (my local Bernina dealer).  


Voting is now open on Facebook (click here ) until Tuesday 10th December 2013 (NZ time).  If my quilt makes you smile (or not) and you felt like voting then please do so. 

The Backseat Band

I was inspired by the stick figure stickers on the back windows of cars, the ones with Mum, Dad, the kids, the cat, the dog, etc. - which I refuse to have on my car!  The quilt pretty much represents our musical (!) family, including the fellow on the right who wants the noise music to stop.

The figures were stitched first with double lines and then coloured in with Tsukineko inks.  Before applying the ink I painted on Aloe Vera gel (a Judy Coates Perez technique).  This seems to make it easier to apply the inks onto the fabric while also stopping the ink bleeding out onto the fabric.  The quilting also fits the musical theme with the repeating five lines (staff) and the music notes flowing through.

Wordless Wednesday

Overprinting

What to do with less than successfully dyed fabric? over print of course!

I was inspired by Catherine Parkinson's blog entry (see here) where she has a great tutorial for making quilted pouches.

The original pieces of dyed fabric were interesting colours but rather washed out and not very appealing.  Using a few stencils, a selection of textile paints, Golden acrylics (with fabric medium) they were transformed into ...

 

add a bit of quilting, a bit of sewing ...

selection of clutches

Minis

I haven't posted any pictures lately of the small quilts that I make for our local Neonatal Unit.  These ones have been sitting on my shelf waiting for the final touches - threading threads in.

These two are similar except the one on the left has partial seams.

Practicing my free-motion quilting.  The quilt on the left has a sort of circular swirl in differing sizes.  

The quilt on the right is my interpretation of McTavishing. 





This quilt was intended to be a scrappy quilt using up scraps of solids.  As I was arranging the squares I could see a sort of pattern emerging - so quite a few other pieces were added.

The circular quilting is free-motion.  A few wonky moments but an interesting experience.  

pieced back, complete with cat's tail

Wordless Wednesday

Blue 12x12s

After their successful RED 12x12 challenge Aotearoa Quilters now have a BLUE 12x12 challenge.  This is due end of January and will be displayed at the Craft Fairs in Christchurch and Palmerston North in February 2014.

Here is a work in progress view of my first blue entry (there may or may not be more!):

I've used shot cottons from Oakshott (purchased from Patchwork Passion) and Reece Scannell (purchased from Plume Art).  The shot cottons are great to work with and certainly suit this kind of piecing.  

Definitely inspired by Gwen Marston!

Wordless Wednesday

Back Home Again

My quilt 'Out my Window' has arrived home.  

It was part of the 'Beneath the Southern Sky' exhibition and has been travelling since early 2013.
 
A couple of pics showing the hills and sky that inspired the quilt.  The sky had been a lot bluer just before I took the photos.