Quilt Talk

Happy Easter Eve. I made this small applique block in a class with McKenna Ryan in November 2009. Seemed appropriate to head this post. 
I've had a busy start to April, but my boys and I are heading into 2 weeks of school holidays starting now - YAY!  I've been focusing on quilts this past week because I was asked to speak at Levin Town & Country Quilters last night. 

I gathered a pile of my quilts, and a few of my mixed media pieces 

Click on any photo to see it larger, and the titles following to get the blog post about these projects. ABOVE : top left Celtic Cutwork, top right Velvet night garden, bottom left butterfly star book, bottom right Gran's fairy shoes. 

Top left LOVE fabric collage, top middle Paper & Stitch collage, top right sari ribbon slow cloth, middle left On a Lark fabric folder, middle right daily journal 2017, bottom fabric banner.
I had a fun time revisting my past quilts and it was awesome to see them all laid out on display

The invitation prompted me to finally start quilting my Disappearing Nine Patch quilt which I began back in June last year! 

It's tricky sometimes to know what to focus on...

I had to show it to them in progress, but hopefully I'll be sharing it with you completed very soon. If you're new here and would like to scroll through all my posts about quilts I've made click HERE. 

As you can see I had a fun evening, and I'm hoping to be invited back by the club to teach some mixed media projects later in the year. Wishing you a happy creative weekend. Talk to you again soon.

Rebinding my Altered Art Journal

I'm doing much of my art journaling this year in a recycled art book -  more details HERE. Recently, I decided that I needed to rebind my book a la Effy Wild - by slashing the spine and adding wide strips of Duck tape. Just an FYI - I wondered why she calls it Duck tape and I've always called it as Duct tape - turns out it's not cos she's from Canada and I'm from NZ, it's a matter of Duck tape being the original name for the product.... I smiled when I saw that the one I used this time is called Bear tape!

Your pages MUST be SEWN into the binding, NOT glued for this to work. My original second-hand library book had a little tearing at the top of the spine so added just a piece of tape to hold it when I first started

Now blooming so much I decided I needed to slash and tear off the original spine and re-tape it 

I layered 3 widths of the tape to get enough around the spine to hold it firmly

Here's a view looking down with the original spine laid over the new

I was thinking of decorating the cover, but now I'm thinking I'd better wait until the end in case this needs more spine treatment - there are still quite a few pages left :-)

Daily Journaling Week 14

I'm following the prompts of the original Documented Life 2014. Week 14 : Write your name and embellish it (not inspired by that at all this week!) And from the blog for Life Documented 2017 HERE : Theme for the month has been Bloom. Prompt : make drippy collage flowers. 
I started by using a stencil and paints for my days of the week - pretty

This week has been very stormy as we catch the end of Cyclone Debbie....no worries at my house but I am sick of "drips" and not ready for full-frontal winter yet so decided I would go for messy blooms instead. I was inspired by Alisa Burke's floral finger painting on YouTube and this blog post as well. These in turn put me in mind of a Life book lesson I did last year called Expressive Florals - not fingerpainting, but loose and messy and lovely ♥

When I went back to look at it again, I realised that I had only attempted the bonus lesson (actually from 2014). So here I am inspired by {some of} the actual main lesson from Week 32 2016 called "Grow Free" with Tam. Began with a sprayed background and very loose leafy shapes

Spatter and finger-painting - loose and fun and drippy flowers achieved :-)

This is the finished spread - not one of my favourites, but a fun experiment and I'm calling it done ready for journaling my week

You can see all my posts about this project HERE and my Flickr album HERE