NZ National Quilt Symposium : Part 3

Have been sharing a number of posts about Quilt Symposium : Part 1 HERE (lectures and tutors' exhibition), and Part 2 HERE (main juried exhibition). This weekend I'm doing some quilt classes, so while I'm in the quilting frame of mind, thought I would
share a final post about Symposium Quilts. These are a taste of what I saw in some of the smaller exhibitions which were in various places about town during Symposium week. At Te Manawa I saw a wonderful exhibition called Living Colour! It's a traveling textile art exhibition curated by Brenda Gael Smith. Here are my fav's : click on any photo in this post to make it larger

"Big Red" by Susan Mathews

"Consider the flowers of the field" by Christine Dowell

"Joy of life" by Roxanne Murphy

"Bountiful" by Phyllis Sullivan

Betty Busby's "Buffalo Gourd" was also part of this exhibition - I shared that HERE. Check out more in the Living Colour! gallery HERE.
Next up another traveling exhibition from Canada. These 2 stood out for me :

"Roots" by Karen Johnson

"Canadian Hats" by Janet Bednarczyk

Inspired by a workshop with Susan Shie, the "Canadian Hats" quilt was really fun.
Now for some more New Zealand creations. My favourite colour is purple, so was very excited to see the 12x12 purple exhibition. Again - just a couple of my favourites :

"Purple Dragonfly" by Mary Culver

"Cerego" by Charlotte Scott

And these next ones are from the Bernina Growth challenge for our national quilt association - the top 20 quilts selected to tour New Zealand were on show. 

"Darling buds of May" by Natalie Murdoch

Great colour and quilting

"An abundance of gum blossoms"
by Jennifer Patterson Stratford

Exquisite work when seen up close :

click on the photo to see it larger

"Increasingly Modern" by Helen Beaven

And to finish, some happy quilts at Taylor Jensen Gallery:

Which quilts inspire you most?

Can't wait to share what I do in my classes this weekend...talk soon.

Week 4 : DLP 2015

Information about the Documented Life Project is HERE.

Love how these challenges can create such joy. The minute I read "Words with friends" I immediately thought of my lovely friend Philippa - full of laughter, a kindred creative spirit, an articulate and talented poet, with a great love of traveling to Paris. I made her a journal for her first trip in 2010 - see it HERE. I can't think of her without thinking of poetry & Paris, so they were how this spread began and evolved....My limited colour palette was inspired by this postcard which she had sent me from Paris

First layer was torn book pages from a French novel, followed by a layer of watersoluble crayons, then gesso brayered over (as I had started with my first spread for this project)
Since my colours have been so vibrant for my first few spreads, I decided to keep it more muted this time. There's also a layer of background stamping added (French words) 

Stage 2 - I rubbed some distress inks through stencils for the Eiffel Tower and Fleur de Lis. Created my daily journaling spots with a fleur de lis border stamp and some pretty red spotty tape that "says" french to me.

click on any photo to see it larger

I added some more stamping, but the woman in the bottom corner did not turn out as well as I hoped (I was thinking Moulin Rouge dancer here).

I wanted to include one of Philippa's poems and went with one of my favourites - it is a great way to live, and so much how she is. 

Happily when I typed it up, one of the options for the font was "French script" - a theme can guide your choices as far as you like :-)
I printed the poem and a scan of the stamp that didn't work onto an inkjet transparency. I use this brand :

I taped them down and also placed pieces of tape around the page to tie it all together

Very happy with the completed spread.

You can see all my posts about this project HERE and I've created a Flickr album for all my Documented Life 2015 spreads HERE.

Recent inspirations

It's useful to find sources of free images and illustrations. Karen J. Hatzigeorgiou has just developed 2 new websites of images for anyone who needs them....both have FREE low resolution images which are great for many purposes. She also has high-resolution images available for a small price.
Design Image Source is devoted to supplying inspirational images gleaned from her old design books. Here's a screenshot of that site :

Silhouette Art specialises in black & white silhouette images. 

I'm thinking this site would be great for patterns for stencils.
Don't forget her original site Karen's Whimsy - you can get fabulous alphabets there to inspire you own lettering.
It's lovely to have new people contact me when they discover my blog. Recently I had another local person emailing about sources for gelli plates in New Zealand. 

They are hard to come by, so I have updated my list of Where I shop for mixed media supplies with a source at The Scrap Heap. You can always find that link easily over in my sidebar. And there's information HERE about what I use as deli paper as an option to print on.
If you've seen Creative Jumpstarts this year they have been using Liquitex supplies. Very impressed lately to see that Ochre Art Supplies in Square Edge here in Palmerston North have a fabulous range of their spray paints and paint pens, as well as the usual range of paints and mediums. You can also order from them online by following that link.
And it you like to look at other people's fabric, thought you might like to see my new purchases from quilt symposium. I had some colours I was specifically looking for to complement my existing stash - they're the neutral-lemon yellow and blues below. I only buy either .3 of a metre or a fat quarter so I can get more variety for my money.

I also have a quilt in mind that I could use the purples in...the butterflies were just because they're pretty :-) And because I have some large bits of fabric already in my stash that need using, I thought I might be able to put some to good use if I purchased this pattern :

I'll share when I make one (or more than one hopefully!)  Still Part 3 to come about the quilts I saw at Symposium...

NZ National Quilt Symposium : Part 2

Quilt Symposium was in Palmerston North this year. I have been filled with inspiration and am sharing a number of posts with you about my experience. In Part 1 HERE, I provided links to the tutors of the lectures I attended and shared some of the tutors' exhibition quilts.
In this post I want to share some of the prize winners and my favourites from the major exhibition shown in the Convention Centre which was titled "Growing the Passion".
Click on any photo in this post to see it larger
First up - Bernina best of show :

"Is it Art?" by Melanie Martin

The quilting on it was lovely

Lots of people loved this one :

"Exuberance" by Jean McLean

It won Professional First in "Growing the Passion" category, as well as Stu Schwartz' Judges Award and was selected for the NZ Quilter suitcase exhibition.

Other award winners that I particularly loved :

"In the corner of the garden" by Rosemary Rush

She won a Professional Merit ribbon for the section "Alive with colour"

Her colour choices are divine, and I love how the last line of black thread around the pieces make them pop. Her machine quilting is masterful - back view :-)

Another stunner to me was this :

"Fragility, Kina at Rangiputa" by Mathea Daunheimer

She won Professional First in the "No place like home" section.

This next quilt won 2 ribbons : Best of Show Excellence and Overall winner of "Best of Both Worlds" section

"Kisses for my daughter" by Donna Cumming

It positively glows as you can see better in this close-up

I am very taken with some of the abstract quilts this year : 

"Lime and Mango" by Sarah Ward

The above quilt won Amateur Merit in the "Out and About" Section. Love the colours and composition of that and this one below

"Graduation" by Kathleen Burford

Quilts don't have to be award winners to catch your eye and inspire. I love butterflies : 

"Butterfly kisses" by Natalie Murdoch

And I was very inspired by the next 2 as lovely examples of quilts that would use up some of your fabric stash and feature some of your favourites.

"Echoes" by Margaret Rogerson

"Needs more yellow" by Janet Ryan

I can't share every photo so go HERE for another quilter's view of the exhibition. I love the quilts she has chosen just as much as the ones I've shown you :-)
As well as the main juried quilt exhibition of the Symposium, the Convention Centre also had the 2014 Hoffman Challenge 

The New Zealand Hoffman Challenge is held annually, and participants must purchase a metre of the challenge fabric and produce a quilt that is no larger than 1 metre square and cannot be square or rectangular in shape. This is a selection of the quilts displayed : 

and this is my favourite :-)

'Kaleidoscope flutter" by Angela Simpson

And finally, Brazen to Brilliant, the Arty Bra challenge for BreastScreen Coast to Coast was fun to see. 

This was my favourite

...did you know I'm a librarian ;-)
There were a number of other smaller exhibitions of quilts displayed in various locations in Palmerston North during Symposium but I think you've got enough inspiration in this post to be going on with so I'll share them in Part 3. Hope you get to have some creative time this weekend.