Wordless Wednesday

The Kiwi Collection

SAQA's annual Benefit Auction starts 18th September.  Members have been invited to create their Dream Collections of six art works.

I've called mine 'The Kiwi Collection'.  Five are by New Zealanders with the sixth by Betty Busby.  Betty's 'Takahe' is a great representation of one of NZ's native birds.  Betty also taught here earlier in the year (see here). 

I blogged about my quilt 'Like Tapa' here. 

For other Dream Collections see here or for the full collection of auction pieces see here.

The Kiwi Collection:

Wordless Wednesday

Creating Stencils

For most of my quilts I've used freezer paper stencils with textile paint, paintsticks or oil pastels.  Some designs I've drawn or traced then cut with a blade.  While I've become quite accurate with my cutting it takes time and is difficult to get precise small pieces.

Earlier in the year, after some research, I purchased a Silhouette Cameo.  With the combination of the Silhouette software and the magic little blade my world of cutting freezer paper has become way bigger.

For my current project I wanted to repeat the technique that I used in my quilt 'Out My Window' using freezer paper stencils with paintsticks applied over the painted background (the swirls).

'Out My Window' detail

The Silhouette Cameo uses a 12"x12" carrier mat, whatever is to be cut is 'stuck' to the mat and feeds into the machine and the design is cut.  

trimming freezer paper to fit the mat

smoothing the freezer paper to the sticky mat

  






 
After a bit of use the mat looses its stick.  To 'clean' the mat a quick way is to lay down printers tape then remove the tape - this returns some of the stickiness and removes all the stray pieces of paper or whatever else has been cut previously.



This is my first mat - still working well despite the interesting cut patterns.

Using the Silhouette software the design is created then 'sent' to the machine for cutting. I'll explain a bit more about the Silhouette software in a later post.

completed cutting

 

slightly better view of cut images

 




















The cut pieces easily peel off ready to be used ...

Wordless Wednesday

A Second Visit

What to do with out of town visitors on a cold windy Wellington evening? 

Wrap up warmly and visit a parrot at Zealandia.

Sirocco

Sirocco is a Kakapo, one of ~120 remaining Kakapo.  Heaps of information about him here and here.

We saw him on a previous visit a couple of years ago.  This time with only 9 people (excluding Zealandia and DOC staff) we had a fantastic view of him for the whole time.  Last time with ~25 people we had a limited view.

The Kakapo is nocturnal and flightless.  For viewing he is in an enclosure making photography a bit of a challenge with reflections. When he isn't on 'show' he can roam the trees nearby. 

Afterwards a quick visit to the Botantic Gardens to look at the glow worms.

Another Outing

My quilt 'Knit One, Paint One'  gets another outing next week.  See here and here for previous posts about this quilt.

It is part of SAQA's 'Redirecting the Ordinary' Exhibition that will be showing at 'Quilt! Knit! Stitch!' in Portland, OR, during August 13-15. 

I was sent a jpg to use ...

The next appearance will be in France at Carrefour Europeen du Patchwork, Alsace, during September 16-19.  Now that would be a nice place to visit ...
 

Wordless Wednesday

Sampling bigger

Here I posted about my freemotion quilting samples. While making them I also created a mini quilt sampler.  

I'd sorted some hand dyed fabric that I'd purchased ages ago on Trademe (NZ's version of ebay) and had never used mostly because the fabric was quite flimsy and the colours a little light.  

For the initial piecing of the front used gentle curves then the back with straight piecing. Then the back became the front!  

For each segment a different quilting pattern was used with varying threads. 

back

closer look

 











One of my favourites is the fill in the slim white piece.

While I could keep this as a sample it is also the right size for a neonate quilt or maybe a large cushion.