Quilts at my house

I was talking to someone the other day who has known me & my art for a little while, and didn't know that I make quilts. It's true that I have only quilted a couple of charity ones lately, and I went looking for the last time I shared progress on one of my own quilt creations with you and it was November last year!! That was a shock and a kick up the pants to get going on that again. I did quilt a quilt for Christchurch this year, but the top was constructed by someone else.Anyway - I hoped you might like to see some of the quilts in my house - all pieced, appliqued, and quilted by me.
Starting at the front of the house :  (click on any photo to see it larger)

The quilt above most recently occupied the stand in our entrance hall : Made with a pattern by Donna Ward (April 2009)

And this piece, which only had a little stitch on it but I was proud of as a new piece of art, hung on the wall there.
They have recently been changed for quilts I have had up before, but you may not have seen them.

This one is a favourite of my family which I started in a class with Mary Transom for my birthday in June 2008 (I completed the quilt the following year)

And this from a pattern by Jacqui Karl (another top that started a couple of years before completion in 2007)

On the wall between the kitchen and dining room hangs this small quilt from a pattern by McKenna Ryan. I made 2 of these in April 2008 - the other hangs in my friend's kitchen in Woodville.

And in the laundry - a much earlier piece : I made 3 of these for Xmas 2002 (altho mine didn't get finished until January 2003) - the others hang in my mother's and mother-in-law's houses (sorry - can't remember who to credit for this pattern).
Hope you have enjoyed the quilt tour so far. Will take you down our hallway next time. And hope to show you some new quilt creation soon....

Velvet & Bleach

I love Angie Hughes' work - you may remember that so far I have made a bookwrap and a foiled velvet bag using her techniques. Yesterday 3 of us had a play day and tried out something new following instructions on this dvd (lovely selection of DVDs available from Minerva).

Have a peek at the contents on the YouTube preview
As with much of Angie's work, there are a variety of layers built up. Because of the limited time we had available, Katherine kindly did steps 1 and 2 for us a day before. This is my piece sprayed with silk paints

followed by quink ink

This technique works well with wooden printing blocks - we pooled our resources and had a lovely lot to use.

Then we went about the business of applying bleach gel to the printing blocks

and pressing them onto the coloured velvet.

You can see in the above photo that found objects like lego and bobbled coffee cup holders joined the wooden blocks for mark making with bleach :-)
This process discharged the ink, and revealed the paints below.

As we built up the layers we created pieces that look like gardens at night.

Once we thought we'd used enough of the bleach, we then overstamped areas using a variety of metallic paints. Here are the 3 pieces at the end of our playday.

Mine

Katherine's

Rhonda's

Next step is maybe some foils and definitely lots of stitch.
Check out this post by Angie of work by students that were lucky enough to have her take a class for them in person.
And see more of Angie's beautiful work at her website or her blog
Have a lovely weekend - thanks for stopping by. 

Calendar challenge : October/November

Getting close to the end of the challenge and the year! Started my October page like this

Wanted to focus on stitching, and this beginning encouraged me with my making a card-a-day for October : especially this one.

Happy with the completed pages (click on the pictures to see larger)

Was a bit stumped about what I was going to do for November, until I looked again at the cards I made with fabric paper. I loved the rich effect of the print behind coloured tissue, so began with collaging scraps onto the base pages.

I scrunched purple tissue, and then flattened it out a bit and glued it over the collage.

Love the layered look with the images showing through.

Used stencils for the page markings. The pages were quite heavy looking with the black until I added the white pen to the lettering - the secret is to always add the same 2 horizontal & vertical lines on each letter. Has made a difference don't you think? The butterfly is a rub-on.

The speech bubbles were made by running a black marker within another stencil. Love that I will be talking to myself this month! Not sure how what else will be added to embellish the pages, so call back 1st of December to see what's changed.

See the other entries for this month at the Kathryn Wheel, and the flickr group.
Have a great November