Recently our quilt club had their annual tote & gloat show day. People travel from all around to share their quilts, shop, admire others' quilts, and to listen to an inspiring speaker. This is what the stands look like once the quilts are hung :
And there's my quilt hanging on the day.
This is a view of how the shops are set up :
I did mention this in another post, but in case you didn't see it : Fantastic news for New Zealander artists - Tulis Textiles had a stall at the quilt show, and she sells gelli plates!
I have added this to my post about Where I shop for mixed media supplies - always available in my top right side bar. In the photo above you can see she had smaller shaped ones available. You may need to email her about them since they are not online as I post this. Also have more recently found they are ALSO available at Gordon Harris - stores located Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch.
I love to look at quilts and I took lots of photos so I'm going to share lots of quilt inspiration with you here. We had a couple of Club challenges this year and since I didn't enter anything I thought I'd share my favourites :
"1986" challenge (because it's our 30th show)
Liz Gates : "My journey" - many cool techniques to look at here. Liz won a merit prize for this one.
And there was a challenge to make a quilt inspired by a page from a book (given out at the club meeting, so you couldn't choose your own inspiration)
Debbie Jacques : "Good night" - an iconic image from our Kiwi past beautifully executed. Debbie won 1st prize in the Advanced section for this quilt.
and another fabulous quilt featuring another kiwi icon - this time from a beloved children's book series. Kay McDonnell "Hairy Maclary"
Kay won the Intermediate section for this quilt, and also got Viewers' choice.
See ALL the winners of the quilt challenges at our club blog HERE.
We were also lucky enough to have the winners from the Aotearoa Flight Challenge quilts. You can see the 20 quilts which are traveling HERE. So I'll just share some detail shots of my favourite one by Mary Transom called "Leaving". I ♥ butterflies and Mary's work.
Details - and you can click on any photo to see it even larger
Yet another display of quilts was of past viewers' choice quilts. These are the ones that caught my eye :
Debbie Jacques 2015
Below left : Wendy O'Neill 2015, and below right Sonja Revell 2014
Anna Williams 2007
Sheryl Meech 2005
Helen Wilkinson 2003
And then there were quilts that were shown but I can't credit, so just enjoy the loveliness (and click any photo to see it larger) :
Lovely Kaffe Fassett fabrics and gorgeous quilting - here's a detail
To finish the day and this LONG quilt post, we had our inspiring speaker Susan Brubaker Knapp.
She began with this wonderful quote by Leonard Wolf : "Everyone is here on earth as an artist; to tell his particular story or sing her irreplaceable song; to leave a unique creative signature". And then she shared her quilting journey. Afterwards we were able to look at her beautiful work. I am particularly inspired by her flowers :
As you might imagine, I am so inspired to get on and make another quilt. I'm just not sure whether it will be appliqued flowers, a baby quilt, or a simple stash busting quilt to showcase lovely fabric :-)
2 friends and I have a bit of a tradition of having Play Days for our birthdays....most recently we made paper mache tea cups. I shared mine HERE. On a recent Saturday we got together again, and the first thing we did was share our completed ones :
This time the birthday girl's choice was to have fun with alcohol inks. We set up
and then started with some simple monoprinting on photo paper
These make lovely backgrounds which may be doodled upon or stamped :
Then we tried a technique which I've been dying to try for ages : blowing alcohol inks with a straw. See a video on YouTube for blowing patterns onto transparencies HERE. This was my first try on photo paper ( I think I put the blending solution on the surface before I dropped the ink) - also note the cool underpaper from the previous monoprinting :-)
and it didn't seem to be enough to do just one....
And here's what I did on the transparency - this was just a little one
but it was so much fun I decided bigger must be better - so hard to stop!....
I'd also seen this blog post where CeeCee had used this technique on vellum, so I figured it would work on Tracing paper
and it did
It was also cool on glossy cardstock
There was a fun effect that Zsuzsa had shared on her blog HERE. She dropped the inks over stencils and then removed them once dry. We tried this first on vellum : We used paper cut-outs as stencils, and also dripped some blending solution to encourage the ink to move (we may have used the straw as well to help move the ink around - just for fun!)
And then on a transparency - which I didn't think was quite as pretty
but note the piece of ceramic tile in the first photo that I'd pressed on top to get some of the excess ink - I finished it off with some copic markers and it now rests on the sill by my art desk (it's my word for 2016)
This post talks more about ceramic tiles and making coasters for gifts.
This next technique is also using a transparency - go HERE for the instructions. You need to alcohol inky up your transparency/acetate, then stamp on it with archival ink.
Once dry, you can rub the ink off for a very cool ghostly effect
When the play day is finished, you have all these cool 'bits' that you can add to your journal
or turn into cards
and keep a stash to add a certain "something special" to future projects :-) Even the under papers are cool - as a background in your journal
or for card making as seen in my previous post
I really encourage you to get at least one person or a small group together to play with some art supplies. In my experience, I am far more likely to push myself to try something different, and in a group setting it's much easier to laugh at the things that don't turn out, to move onto something else instead of getting discouraged, and to learn from others by seeing what they're doing.
We've also had a play day where we used alcohol inks to colour metal. Check that out HERE.
And although there's not been much time for art, I continue to capture my life with photos and add them to my journal
If you look back at the last few posts you'll see the Mothers' Day card, the bereavement cards, and the background under paper photographed above is in the bottom left hand corner. Click on any of the photos to see them larger. You can see my Flickr album with all my daily journaling spreads HERE.
