home again, home again



 First stop at Logan City Council and this beautiful rusty creature in amongst the fernery and buildings. Not quite as nasty as he looks.


 Then on to Brisbane and this piece of public art by John Elliott (Travelling North, 2004) when he travelled across the state border and into south east Queensland in the 1970s. I always feel good in this space. 


 Back out to Ipswich and finally home - the back way. Sometimes I leave the Cunningham Highway behind at Frazerview and take the slow roads through to home. There's never anyone else in the world for a short while....



 Home at last and up to the house, passing one of the little people who, perhaps hasn't emotionally renegotiated the recent pruning of the peach tree.

Experimenting with fire and thread

Bonded fused and daubed in gel ... three ways of trying to form a nest with the ball of thread still attached - I want it to look like it "made itself". Yesterday, WMBM went off to a rural fire brigade "thingy" (referred to as a community day and a look at the new fire engine). I got to play with my new toy, a gas fired flame thingy, after a breakfast of fresh fruit and yoghurt.  Some things didn't go so well today  ... I set fire to stitched layers of silk, organza, something unknown but now clearly flammable, metal flakes, emu feathers  .. more metallic stitches and Shiva oil in distressed synthetic velvet ... and ended up with a flaming mess. So much fun though even if it went the way of the Tassie tiger. Can still smell singed something. It was so worth the effort. I think WMBM is eyeing off my new flame thrower for himself. On quick reflection, his alert and alarmed look may have had something to do with having just returned from the rural fire brigade meeting.  Hmmm.  Used Mel's method of transferring photos to fabric - rubbed all the photo backing off and then could not remember how to do the rest so carefully placed the "photo" face up onto a new piece of fabric the folded and stitched the raw edges forward over the photo edges... and gelled it all again - this  has potential to be either a postcard, or wheelie bin filler. Jury still out. The Sunday afternoon studio clean and sort happened rather late this afternoon (also known as it's-just-too-hot-to-vacuum-the-house-now). The effort is classified as "housework" but it is a labour of love. One day I WILL use 43 x 500g empty yogurt containers with lids, 54 chocolate wrappers carefully collected by work colleagues, and 50+ hand dyed recycled tea bag papers ... and I'm not sure why I bought tissue paper last week when there's sufficient to put a decent epidermis across a footy field in one of the "useful boxes".  One of the best things today was playing with the newly acquired embellisher - second hand and like new - loads of directionless fun as it's a whole new world for me.   When I'd run out of fibre to whack, I made postcards out of one of the flood pieces from earlier in the month and now it's time to get ready for another week. When did we eat that much yoghurt?

These are my people

Welcome to the first 2QAQ meeting of 2011 - that's two-quackers and there's not an Indian runner or mallard in sight. There is a wealth of friendship and talent and these are my people. Yesterday thirty of us gathered at the Wellers Hill Bowls Club for an afternoon of live art, show and tell and fun. One of our members was giving new life to old photos affected in the recent floods - and had remade a photo of young love into a postcard that she sent her husband on Valentine's Day. Others kicked off show and tell with the results of their recent challenge - and there was the return of the State of the Art Quilt 10 pieces - reminding us that there are now ... about 48   30   24 is just today   left to complete and enter quilts for SotAQ11.  New members are always made welcome and our March meeting will have guest speakers smartArts  - if you are in the area or interested in art quilts at any level - we would love to welcome you to the group. Our April meeting willl be hands on workshop making penants for the Quilts4London project - a pennant for every olympian and para-olympian (we don't have to make all 16,000 of them ...) All the details of our meetings are on the 2QAQ blog site - it's just $5 per meeting to contribute towards hire of the venue, and BYO lunch.

Paint + fibre

Between the 2QAQ group, Dale Rollerson and Playways have taken me and my machine to creative places I did not think I could imagine ... my only complaint is that the possibilities are endless and the WMBM is frequently a "studio widow". He will manage. His mantra is that I should follow my dreams, so long as that doesn't mean he has to leave his dreams to participate in mine. Art quilts and aviaries - it's a marriage made in compatibility. 
Painted some sheets of vliesofix over last weekend and  bonded them to felt perhaps to be rotary cut, re-purposed and start a new life as a journal cover. Played with Tyvek thanks to an envelope received from the US some months ago when playing tourist ... I'm getting into the painting and loving it.
Used all the copper thread offcuts from a different project with silk that I'd dyed at Ankie's some time ago to make another ....(you guessed it ) nest and played with wafer thin sections of silk fibres carefully bonded with a hint of Angelina fibre and now have a possibility for another nest or bowl .. albeit with  a fragility rating of "fairy floss".

Mug Rugs in blue

Quilting Bloggers recently conducted a world-wide mug rug challenge - and these two arrived last week from Anett in Hanover, Germany. Thank you Anett - who made the second mug rug from selvage scraps. I love it!

Silk nest - Mark III

Mirror images

This nest is translucent now it has completely dried, and there are several places where the fibres are so thinly spaced it is possible so see through to the inner sanctum. The goal is to create 2-3 nests each week - different fibres, techniques ... and embellishment ...the embellishment is way down the artistic track ... for now the focus is on creating. Now what did I do with all those emu feathers ......

vliesofix + paint + felt

While in Beaudesert I found the fabric and patchwork shop (by sheer coincidence, directly opposite the Council offices and right beside breakfast ...) and I purchased felt - by the metre. Oh joy. Using cool red, cool yellow, raw umber and magenta a largish piece of vliesofix got the treatment, and when dry (aided by the hairdryer) was stamped with a lino cut block ... dried again then bonded to an equally large piece of felt. Stitching will commence sometime this weekend ... most likely Sunday after 2QAQ' first meeting for 2010. 1-4pm @ Wellers Hill Bowls Club (note the new premises for 2011). BYO lunch!