Quilt for Christchurch

Finished quilting the quilt top for Christchurch. Will deliver this evening at my club night.Very cool to see how different quilts look from basted quilt top to quilted and bound.

Making me happy

I have enjoyed a few different things over the past couple of weeks :
Loved this DVD
Have read and enjoyed thisIn the middle of reading this - it reminds me of "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen with its circus focus.
Always loving the library - these Non-Fiction books begged to come home for a visit with meThis photo was taken a couple of weekends ago when I was working at the Awapuni library - my brother, my nephew, my 2 boys and me in the background behind the desk :-)I am planning a long-weekend break with some girlfriends to Raumati beach : We went last year and decided to make it an annual event. 8 girls shopping/sharing/wining & dining/gossiping/relaxing...what could be better?
On the creative front, I am sewing the binding on the Christchurch quilt and have started some hand stitching for a needlecase at last. Hoping to get some time to do more Flower Power for the Holey Moley workshop soon - check out floral loveliness in this blog post from Jacinta Leishman - one of our next lessons. Other Blog love that's been making me happy : Caatje's houses.
Donna Downey's inspiration week making a canvas art journal - lots of gorgeous paint/drippage/stencil loveliness and general fun....3 friends and I watched a couple of episodes together and were both inspired and entertained :-)
Butterflies always make me happy + I am enjoying this for March as my calendar computer wallpaper.
And just wanted to tell you I really DO appreciate those of you who take the time to make comments about my posts and if you are 'following' me. I started this blog to keep a visual record of my creations and what I am thinking about/reading/watching/inspired by. It is especially cool if you enjoy what I am doing too.Hope you have something that's making you happy this weekend.

Friendship

Happy Birthday to my very special friend Katherine. I feel so lucky to be blessed with such a lovely and creative friend. We appreciate each other for our differences, and are constantly inspired by each others' projects and creative ideas.
Katherine's mum sent an email asking if I wanted to contribute a 12x12 inch page as part of a gift for a significant birthday. It is great to be able to share it at last. You might remember the neutral wall-hanging which I shared in Feb using techniques from my Mixed Media Melange online workshop. Katherine loved it, so I decided to use this same technique to create a page for her. The quote says "Every friend is to the other a sun, and a sunflower also" (Richter) The page contains a combination of things which are a blend of her and me - she would expect butterflies and hearts to feature :-) These girls are a silhouette copied from a fabric postcard she sent me in March 2008 which lives on my inspiration board.The page is backed with fabric paper in my favourite colours with my favourite free-motion stitch and the pocket contains a card handmade especially with her in mind.

Quilting again

Not sure when I last used my sewing machine for quilting. Our club is making quilts for Christchurch and have had some days of working together making quilt tops. This is one of the tops someone constructed.I am half way through free-motion quilting it. Makes me want to get back to this.Have a creative week.

Lovely Tyvek

Progress on both workshops to show today. First my tyvek piece from Mixed Media Melange - in progress here. Now finished and hanging in our entrance hall. I love it and will definitely repeat this exercise.
Special thanks to Carole who inspired me with thoughts of turning this into a Beryl Taylor-inspired piece (and a resulting sleepless night!!). I will definitely make another as a background for this purpose in the future.
You can also do lovely things with Tyvek and heat. For my Holey Moley class I have had fun making some Tyvek beads.
First paint both sides of your tyvek - I had 3 weights to try : left to right they are tyvek fabric, medium (envelope) weight, heavy duty (use it on a building site!)Cut strips of the painted tyvek and roll around a wooden skewer, securing it with rayon thread (because that won't melt). Then heat with your heat tool until you are satisfied with the lovely crusty effects. Examples of before and after.They melted only little differently so it is good to know I can use my freely-obtained heavy duty stuff for this.

Flower Play

Been having fun gathering supplies for my Flower Power Class. The Holey Moley Club consists of 6 workshops each of 2 months duration, the first of these being "Flower Power".
I have been gathering papers - serviettes/dyed abaca tissue/book pages/sheet music/small tags - many of these I have sprayed (using Tattered Angels Glimmer Mists or sprays made with distress reinkers and perfect pearls as explained here) or painted in a pretty theme of pinks/purples and greens. Sometimes I want to be really girly since I live in a house of boys!These fabrics are in my colour-theme. I loved pulling them together although I have no idea where Dale is headed this month and they may not fit with the lessons.Sheers, scrim and ribbons in the theme.These are rose petals (fresh picked from my garden) laid onto chiffon with a layer of vliesofix between. Ironed together, the layers here are chiffon/vliesofix/petals/vliesofix/chiffon. Sheer and beautiful, but somewhat hard to photograph.If you try this make sure you have baking paper below all layers, as well as over the vliesofix layer you are ironing (the voice of experience - now off to buy a new ironing board cover. Forgot that the chiffon scarf is so sheer the sticky would go right through the back layer too!) Have also been spraying and painting vliesofix with watered down lumiere metallic paints. If you want a good video demo, have a look at this latest free DMTV show . Linda Kemshall demonstrates how to paint the fusible and then the lovely effects you can create with it. I have had fun with this before. Some of my painted vliesofix I am just preparing for (as yet unknown) future use...You can see the upper samples are just the painted fusible, while the gorgeous purple has been ironed to green, and the very low layer is fusible ironed to organza.In the example below I have ironed painted fusible to sheet music, then laid dried flowers on top, followed by another layer of fusible. Liking the sparkly effect that can be seen in real life.

Weekend agenda

This is my first effort for the Holey Moley workshop. It was a pre-class exercise making Japanese Kusudama flowers. Fun but I won't be making a whole bunch!
Lots on this weekend :
I am gathering up things for the Flower Power section of Holey Moley.
Wanting to finish my tyvek piece for the Mixed Media Melange workshop.
Working at Awapuni branch library Saturday morning.
Hoping I have some time this month to have a go at Michelle Ward's latest crusade which looks very cool and could actually turn into a whole mini-journal if you let it!
And considering this international postcard swap with iHanna - she also gives plenty of ideas for creating the postcards here. Have to sign up by 18th March if you are interested.... I like to have incentives to create, but don't want to overcommit - it's a fine line at the moment :-)
Plus we have to pack for school camp - Jacob leaves for 3 days to Castlepoint on Monday.
Plus Craig played a the Regent last night for the Quake Relief concert and is playing at Relay for Life tonight.
At least we had a bye for cricket this weekend!
Hope you have a creative weekend....

Vinyl and Another Workshop

Finally the collage and paint on vinyl experiment from Mixed Media Melange is finished. It isn't an artwork to frame, but rather a piece to try out some different ideas, and now it can be cut up and used to create lovely things (will share when I get round to those things!)And this is becoming the year of the Workshop!! I have just joined the Holey Moley Club created by Dale Rollerson of The Thread Studio in Australia. These blogposts from Dale in January 2011 and then linking back to May 2010 made me do it! Am very excited - it is a whole year of fun and experimentation with mixed media and stitch, and of course I will share my creations as I go along.
In other news this week, don't forget the Palmerston North City Library booksale this weekend - details of hours and location here. A fabulous place to find books for your kids, cheap novels for your holidays, and of course lots of wonderful material for book alteration/mixed media fodder and plenty of Non-Fiction inspiration for all sorts of projects.
Since I have been thinking about stitchy things, I thought you might like a look at these blogs - they are new to me and have some lovely ideas :
Deborah's journal - lovely stitching with sheers
Stitchtress Stumbles - Debbie Bates' blog.
Talk to you again soon.

Hearts for Christchurch

The thoughts of all New Zealanders continue to be with Christchurch.

On Friday our school had a Red & Black mufti day to raise funds for the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal - we raised $2184.50 - a fantastic effort. I painted our boys' faces - in this photo my big boy is on the left.
A woman in Napier has started a lovely initiative called Hearts for Christchurch. We had a wet weekend so I used my spare moments to make some.

I started by making some with fabric paper - inspired by Belinda Spiwak's "Puffy Hearts" article in Cloth Paper Scissors : Sept/Oct 2008. You can download a colour copy of that article if you belong to the Quilting Arts community (it costs you nothing to belong).
Then I saw this really cool post by Tizart, and decided I would like to make fabric ones as well. I spray-basted scraps of fabric to thin batting, free-motion quilted it together with my favourite swirl motif, then cut out the hearts which are now stitched together, embellished and ready to post tomorrow.

Calendar challenge : Feb/March

February always speeds by so fast - there are so many things going on with kids going back to school and the new routines of the year to settle into - and it was only a 28 day month as well.

This is a reminder of how my February spread started And these are my completed February pages. As the month progressed I added the title, the days' entries, and some stamps between the days, and then looked at it for quite a while last night wondering how to complete it. In the end I decided to just paste on the red roses and move onto March.This month was inspired by NZ Book week....base made of torn book pages (from last year's library book sale). The daily squares are gesso outlined with a lovely thick Pitt brush pen - I also used that pen for the stencilled month title. The black and white also reminds me of all the newspaper reports about the Christchurch earthquake - it is appropriate that it is a bit stark as the country works through this disaster.

If you are in Palmerston North, check out the Palmerston North City Library's events for NZ Book month - including the library book sale, and visits from fabulous NZ authors like

Sarah-Kate Lynch and Joy Cowley.

And if you want to see more calendar art check out the Flickr group or check out all the new blog links for March at the Kathryn Wheel

Have a happy March everyone.

In my world

Still can't share any artful creations yet, so here are some other things from my little corner of the world in the meantime:

In February I read this which was enjoyable

and this which was incredible....

This DVD was great entertainment for the whole family

and this DVD was a bit of light action fun - entertaining for a quiet night in with my man

Trees came down in our backyard yesterday - 2 huge elms that were getting way too big and cutting a lot of light on our property and neighbouring ones too. I highly recommend "Town and Country Tree Care Ltd" (0800 869626) if you live in the Palmerston North area. They are based in Bulls and were efficient, friendly, and cleaned up after. Very happy with the results. We now have more light, plus heaps of firewood and mulch for the garden :-)

Happy thoughts :

Angie Hughes' latest work in 2 very different altered books : white and floral

Lots of beautiful coloured Mexican images being posted by Pam Garrison lately and go see the photos of Geninne too : this post and scroll back through a bit - wonderful sense of colour and composition

Talk to you again soon