Posts Tagged ‘colour memories’

Desert Wind, With Toothpick

Thursday, December 28th, 2017

Left – Desert Wind 1995,  200cm x 200cm.     Right – Toothpick, year unknown

A couple of days ago while showing some visitors a few of my quilts, I unfurled this one,  Someone said ‘There’s a needle in it…’  and we turned it over to find not a needle but a toothpick slightly protruding. It’s not of any kind I’ve ever bought, and I have no idea how it could have got there. The notion of someone stalking around an exhibition opening spearing a quilt with a used toothpick is quite bizarre.  ‘Desert Wind’ (bound edges not visible) is approx 2m x 2m.  It’s big enough for a bedcover – and in the right room in the right house it would be dramatic.  I made it originally to use as an eye catching backdrop for my booth at a contemporary craft show in Australia.  It doesn’t suit our style or anywhere we’re ever likely to live – but anyway it remains in my possession, and I exhibit it from time to time.  In its exhibition history it’s been handled by quite a few people one way and another, and of course, it took many hours of machine piecing, machine quilting and hand quilting.

 

 

 

 

How strange this toothpick has only just come to light!

Following A Trail – aka Making Samples

Saturday, July 22nd, 2017

Earlier this week I had a studio visit from local textile artist Lilian Madfes, and while she was here I gave her a demo/lesson in the basics of freehand patchwork piecing   Next week I will go to her studio for her demo of the basics of silk painting, at which she is a master in a very creative way.  When I had given her plenty to use to explore the technique if she wishes to, I talked about the dome-like shapes I often use in my designs and showed her how I do one.  Sewing it up therefore made it a sample – and my readers know I’m keen on samples for trying out any new ideas and materials!

That first one is on the RH end of this pic.  I liked it, so made more, and love where this is apparently going.

Art Quilts Exhibition – Touring Australia

Friday, May 5th, 2017

In 2017 I made the following quilt “Purnululu #7” in a series of works with the same landscape scheme.  While working through it, I blogged and showed more images here and here,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Purnululu #7” Currently travelling with SAQA exhibition “My Corner Of  The  World”

 

Australian landscapes such as Purnululu and Uluru, known in the past as the Bungle Bungles and Ayers Rock respectively, are distinctive examples of weathered sandstone landforms or karst topography. To the Australian Aboriginal people these and other similar places have always held strong cultural and spiritual significance.  Today non-Aboriginal Australians and foreign visitors find Purnululu and similar Outback places great destinations for travel and education.

“Purnululu #7” is already quite well travelled in Canada and USA with the juried SAQA art quilt exhibition “My Corner Of The World”.     Made while I’ve been living here in Uruguay, it’s already gone to places I never have visited.  But starting later this month it will travel to places I do know well, appearing with the others in this collection at textile and craft events in these Australian cities on the following dates:

My Corner of the World
Craft & Quilt Fair, Perth, West Australia, Australia • May 24 – 28, 2017
Craft & Quilt Fair, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia • August 10 – 13, 2017
Intocraft Handmade Expo, Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia • August 17 – 20, 2017
Craft & Quilt Fair, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia • September 11 – 12, 2017
Intocraft Handmade Expo, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • November 24 – 26, 2017

 

What happened Brisbane? Why no Hobart?  Darwin – are you there?

New Life From Scraps

Tuesday, March 7th, 2017

Somewhere the other day – and I’m sure it was Margaret Ramsay’s blog but of course can’t find it now 🙂  I found a comment about how liberating the artist found it to just use scraps and offcuts in her surface designs instead of cutting into pristine new yardage.  I totally agree.  I keep all reasonable sized off cuts from earlier projects, and blogged about this some time back.   We all know the thrifty ethic thing that is supposedly part of the back story of quilt making, so there’s a bit of the feel good thing there, though that’s not why I do it.  Scrap bags accumulate scraps of fabrics that you’ve already liked  – you’ve bought them and used them in something.  According to my theory stuff you like goes together as a rule.   So scraps are ‘auditioned’ for their next project appearance, and piecing begins.

For every work of mine that has segments of colour forming a shape, as in all the Ebb & Flow series (see gallery elsewhere on this website) the process of putting bits of fabric together into strings before cutting them to the next edge shape, is fairly fiddly but very calming.  Once you have your heap of scraps extracted from the scrap bag – which is about the only colour designing you do  – then it’s time to put the bits together and just sew, iron, cut and sew.  Repeat.  You sort of know how they’re going to look, but don’t always, and some are better than expected.   This little sample on grey has silver metallic edging on the curved strips which are about 3″ long – gorgeous but a bit daunting to make into a larger work.  Having said that – heck, why not? It’s on my mind.

I’m currently working with scraps of summery colours on a cream background, and really, to do the lines of patches and then cut and sew them into the rough square takes a total of about an hour for each one from start to stop, with plenty of ironing.  This wall quilt will comprise sixteen  8″ squares, which means the piecing alone will take me another 10-12 hours before moving on to the sandwiching, quilting and edge finishing.

Fishing around for another pic to go in this post, I found one of a miniature I’d quite forgotten –

It’s exciting because it reminded me that in a drawer somewhere I have several colours of this fairly thick very bright neon thread I can consider using to quilt the current project, and I might not have remembered it without seeing this.  All this just goes to show how a bit of looking back can sometimes be inspiring.

Segmented Designs 3

Thursday, May 19th, 2016

Today I found these photos of paths, taken about ten years ago in New Zealand, reminding me I’ve had a thing for mosaic/segmented designs for quite a while.mosaics 2 blog

Brick mosaic pathways, New Zealand 2006.

And really, when you think about it a lot of patchwork designs are a bit like mosaics, aren’t they?  With that thought, I looked further in the old files and came up with a few –

mosaic like blog

 

I also noticed this blast from the past, “Hidden Messages”,  which hung only once at a solo exhibition I had in Perth, Western Australia, 1997.  I have no recollection of what the hidden messages were ;-0  but might remember if it was in front of me, perhaps.  It was not one of my greats, and yet finding it today gave me pause to think about it again …

hidden messages blog

Hidden Messages, 1997.     86cm  x 120 cm

 

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