A Retirement Quilt

My friend Gendie turned 60 this last September and retires from her workplace after 15+ years. I figured that she deserved a quilt especially for such a significant birthday. So I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself that I have made this lap quilt in a week and that I can present it to her at the 'retirement afternoon tea'. It's called Sudoku and measures 49.5 inches square (126 cm).

Another Competition Entry

This is a portion of my entry into the inaugural quilt competition by APQ (Australian Patchwork and Quilting) magazine. The theme was "Fantasy" and I chose to do a wholecloth quilt with Icarus as the central image. I 'painted' his body and the wings with tea and the shadows are emphasised with coffee. Over the top of the wings, which are stitched in the feather stitch, I glued glitter - unfortunately it shows up here as blue, but that is the shine from the flash. It is hours of quilting but I have the entry posted off in plenty of time, thank goodness! Now to the next project.

A Quilting Bee

This last Saturday some of my quilting group got together at my place for a quilting bee. We were helping out my friend Marjorie who wanted to make a wedding quilt for a niece, but this was a too much for her to manage especially as she is fighting cancer on 2 fronts.
Marjorie was having complete bed rest in hospital so couldn't join us.
But, we started with the fabric (New Zealand fabrics) and a picture ...

Pam, Jenny, Sue and I had our 4 sewing machines going while Biddy cut and ironed fabric.

Pam doing push-ups to get up off the floor and an almost completed top.
8.5 hours later we had finished the top, almost finished piecing a backing, eaten great food and had a lovely day working together.

From left: Pam, Jenny, Sue, me, and Biddy.
Well done ladies!

A Prize Winner!!

This was my entry into the Spotlight Quilt Challenge and today I got a phone call from Australia to say that I was the GRAND PRIZE WINNER! I had just about given up hearing from them and was deciding whether I should enter it anywhere else. You just never know - they loved it!! The prize is a Brother NX-400 sewing machine - I was just hoping that I could win some money to spend in the store and didn't bother too much about the machine!! WooHoo!
Watch this space!

Collaborative Art Journal - Brights

This is the last of the Collaborative Art Journals, which is Brights, belonging to Barbara Pritchard. I received this in July and have been procrastinating about the last pages for over a month :-(
The first page is a branch of wattle - they are the brightest flowers out in winter and there are so many down our street. The flowers are actually tiny pom poms and I made the leaves by using the pinking shears to cut out the shape then snipped the edges.

My next page is just playing around with lots of pieces of bright fabric and threads, starting with roosters Rise and Shine. It is covered with gauze, which I am not too happy with - too dense for this piece.

The next page was fun to make as I had bought some beads because they looked like licorice allsorts, the others I had in my stash. The jelly beans are painted wooden beads. Here is the sweet shop:

Now the piece of procrastination: the parrot! My friend Ray Clifton is a keen photographer and I told him about my idea of doing a bright bird - perhaps a rooster. He found this photo and I have played around with ideas for it. In the end some of the pieces are glued on. I used stitching to make feathers, the background is upholstery fabric. This page is not as bright as the photo, so I included it as well and made a frame for it.

We have all had a great journey working on these journals and will present the finished articles to Rose City Quilters on the October Club meeting.
I think that next year some of the group are wanting to try a similar thing but with a different approach. Perhaps making our own journals using different techniques and with a theme each month - that may be harder to keep on track - we'll see!!

Another Teaser!

Sorry this is all I can show you for another challenge!
I have used these 2 fabrics. There is a tree, applique, hand stitching and lots of beading - well it is a wall hanging size and it really does have to catch the judges attention - from a photograph, that's only 20 seconds.

The photos have to be in Australia by the 14th September, so I am on schedule (thank goodness it's all finished!).

D is for .....

ducklings,
dirt,
dosing, and
docking.

Mother duck had brought her babies into the chook compound hoping for an easy feed this morning.
Nolan and I spent an hour rounding up the sheep so we could dock the lamb's tails and vaccinate them with a triple vac. for pulpy kidney. 5 male and 7 female lambs and very muddy clothes which are now in the wash and should get dry today.
It is the first day of spring and we have had 3 days of sunshine to celebrate. I have been able to dig in new trees for the orchard, we both mowed the lawns yesterday and I fell asleep pretty much after tea!