Shimmering at Brisbane Stitches and Craft Fair

I decided to make a second quilt using  Jenny Bowker's Shimmering Quilts pattern, this time using our Aliquilts hand printed art fabrics. This little quilt measures 33 inches square and will be on display at the Brisbane Stitches and Craft Fair between 19-22 March.  Can't wait!!!

Shimmer ...

I recently had reason to purchase a quilt pattern - only the second time I've been seduced (in that oh-my-the-possibilities- fabric sense) and Jenny Bowker's Shimmer pattern lived up to its title. Jenny has also set up a page where all the Shimmer-ers can congregate and share images, interact with Jenny and generally get inspired - click on the link above. I love the way we can interact across the miles ... and I got to use some of my most precious commercial fabrics - including a few from Judith Baker Montano.
I'm really glad my one traditional quilt a year for 2015 is ... Shimmer!

I've been "schwabe'd"

Seriously - a few weeks ago when the floods and tsunami roared through the neighbourhood I happened to end up in an email with Alison Schwabe and Jenny Bowker - they'd been having a conversation in SAQA - and since then I've been indirectly inspired to be more than usually exuberant and "why not?" in the studio. This super activity could be the reason behind a brief hospital stay last week - and when queried by the Doctor about what I'd been doing immediately before the event - I replied "hand sewing at my studio table."  I know he didn't believe me. So, confined to quarters for a short while, I'm being very restful and quiet and catching up on a whole lot of overdue reading.

Why I start reading quilt books and the like from the back cover will remain one of life's mysteries. My interest was perked by what was clearly a plagiarised version of Alison Schwabe's free motion cutting tutorial (available from her blog site). I couldn't believe that someone would be so brazen to actually copy her process almost word for word  into a book. I only accessed it from her blog site in recent weeks. And then I turned forward a page and ... it was an article written by Alison Schwabe.  Everyone relax - I'd just been "schwabe'd". The book is a great art quilt resource from the Quilters Guild of  New South Wales - Quilt Skills. Sadly, I need to return it to its rightful owner .. thanks for the loan Maxine.

Flood #1

Pieced and pristine

SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Association) wisdom is sent to my inbox every other day and one of the recent posts involving Australian textile and fibre artists Alison Schwabe and Jenny Bowker has become the basis of Flood #1.  They did the thinking. I got to read it and ended up in the studio. The images of dirty brown absorbing everything in its path will stay with many of us for a long time. I can remember the floods of '74 and many of the natural disasters that have occurred across the globe in the years since. I know that eventually this too will also pass.

Shiva silt

I wanted to convey an aerial and expansive view of the very beautiful Lockyer Valley area not so far from where I live - prairie points now mountains, tubes of  railways and bridges; patches of blue for the inexplicably untouched areas and everything else under the spread of mud. Small communities, towns and localities sprinkled across the landscape - represented by the smaller half-square triangles - mostly aligned and then some not.  Images also of soiled things - again the muddy silt. I've played with the quilting lines in my journal -  they are sharp and urgent, swirling around fixed objects but ever so straight and unstoppable. It's one of the great things about being a SAQA member. Thanks to Sue Dennis and her never waning encouragement, SAQA membership has provided me with exposure to many artists and ideas, lively debate, and the opportunity to grow.