Continuing to Doodle {with} Delight

I'm continuing to enjoy the ideas and challenges set by Alisa Burke in her Doodle Delight online class. She breaks the lessons down into manageable pieces and I am really happy with what I'm creating in my sketchbook

Some of the inspiration's been showing up in my calendar journaling too...

Adding colour next and then will be diving into her next new online class which has just gone live this weekend

Sign up HERE

Stenciled Cards

Every time I use any of my stencils and sprays I feel so happy. I've been getting my money's worth from my new stencil

Playing with layers of ink sprayed through the stencil

and then printing with the ink remaining on the top of the stencil

I really love the different effects of stencil vs print and the interplay of the different colour layers

These are card bases. I love them as they are

but I'm never able to call them done until I'd added some extras...so far I've completed and delivered two as birthday cards 

I love the added effect of stitch 

Hope you fit some creative time into your weekend

Quilt inspirations

Went to Pukeora on a bus trip with our quilt club on Sunday to see the Wine Country Quilts exhibiton. 

It was a wonderful day. I am now filled with inspiration after seeing these quilts as well as those from last week in Feilding. This is a post with lots of photos to remind me of the wonderful day and hopefully to inspire the quilter in you as well. Click on any photo to see the quilts up closer.
I love butterflies so this was the first quilt to catch my eye. Leanne Kenah did a wonderful job of this with sashiko stitching detail and the marbled fabrics for the butterflies are divine. She won First Prize for the Traditional and/or Appliqued quilt under 1.2m

"Butterfly Rhapsody" by Leanne Kenah.

Many of the quilts I'm sharing today are appliqued because that is my quilting passion. I mainly machine my work, but I can appreciate the artistry of this hand-stitched beauty. I saw the back of this quilt first: 

and had to get closer :

This is the front : 

"Union Square" by Vivienne Franklin

It's not surprising that this quilt won First Prize for Best Hand Quilting. Here's a couple more close-ups of the front :

I love how she has changed her quilting designs across the same block pattern

Now for some lovely applique quilts ::

"Rose of Sharon" made by Maree Beswick

This gorgeous quilt is from a block of the month by Sharon Pederson. The colours sing. Here's a close-up :

This next one got my vote for Viewer's Choice ::

"Flower Festival" by Shelagh Barber

I was really taken with the beautiful colours and the extra embroidery stitched embellishments finished it off so well.

I always love coming across new quilt designers to explore, and was very taken with this quilt which is designed by Wendy Williams :

"Growing Up" by Heather Preston

There were also shops at the show, and while walking around I saw that she has also brought out a book :

Go HERE for a sneak peek inside via Amazon

This is going on my birthday list! You can go HERE to see other patterns which she has for sale. I also quite liked this quilt

"Sisters" by Vivienne Franklin

Only just realised as I've loaded this name that she was the winner of the hand-quilted prize winner further above. If you check out this blogpost you will see that I think the birds were also inspired by Wendy Williams. Sometimes the universe seems to be hitting me over the head with a particular inspiration!
And I just have a few more things to show you....as well as the judged quilt exhibition, there was a guest exhibitor : Barbara Harder of Havelock North. Here are a few of her quilts - lovely to see such variety in her work.

Close-up of the amazing peonies

Another close-up because the dimensional petals are so lovely

And because I don't want you to forget that this is a New Zealand quilt show, here are my favourites from the travelling exhibition "Colours of New Zealand"

"There's a weta in my shorts" by Christine Singleton

"Kiwiana Christmas" by Rochelle Rielly

"Kaka Beak beauty" by Juliet Fitness

So with all of that shared and in my head, I am all set to get stuck into making more quilts!

Watercolour Calendar Journaling

This is already the 9th page in my watercolour journal which I started on Monday 27th January. Doing just a little bit everyday sure adds up. Loved the foam letter stamping with watercolour paint so much on my last page that I started with that on Saturday.

Then moved to doodling laying down some colour and a framed journal spot with watercolours on my waterbrush.

Monday I didn't get a chance to journal, but Tuesday I had the inspiration from the floral sketches I'd been doing

I love how the flowers look with colour and really happy with the feel it gives to the whole page.

Here's how the whole spread looks together - left hand page details HERE. 

You can see all my calendar journaling pages in my flickr set HERE

Lucky Quilty Week

A lovely week with 2 quilt shows to inspire me. Last Sunday I went to the Feilding Kowhai Patchwork Quilters' Exhibiton at the Coach House. It was a fabulous location for the quilts, displayed on the Coach House Museum pieces. 

I'm only showing you these 2 photos because you're best to go to the club's blog where they've posted lots of wonderful photos of the event. I was very inspired by this stitched quote for obvious reasons! 

They also had some shops there, and I stopped by the stall of Fabric by Three to stroke their beautiful hand-dyed fabrics, and admire their range of stencils (also available online). 

I'm still being thrifty, and although tempted, didn't make any purchases. I don't usually win competitions and thought my win last week of the online classes was simply amazing. But when I opened my letterbox today there was a package for me which contained a letter saying I had won a daily draw from Fabric by Three - so glad I filled out a piece of paper while I was there browsing! My prize was 4 beautiful hand-dyed fat quarters and a notebook with a lovely fabric cover. You can order their fabric online.

This weekend I'm off to see the Quilt show at Pukeora : Wine Country Quilts. There'll be more quilts to get inspired by, and there'll be more shops. Thinking I might have to enter another competition...or buy a lotto ticket! Have a great weekend

Doodle Delight again

I started Alisa Burke's Doodle Delight class last year. You can see what I did then HERE and HERE. I even stitched a cover 

This past week I've gone back to doing exercises from the class. Decided I would watch right from the beginning again so I get the whole picture - Alisa Burke is such an inspiring teacher. 

Using my own photographs of my garden for doodle inspiration ::

These floral doodles make me really look forward to what Alisa will have to share in her class beginning May 23rd 

and there's still lots of lessons to try before I've finished Doodle Delight.