Quilting Retreat

I'm going away with friends for the weekend, lots of sewing and eating and laughing. These weekends are good for the soul and I always have a great time, although the thought of packing (which I haven't done yet) and planning what I'm taking (almost organised) is always the hard part. Then there's packing the car and unpacking it when I get there, still, it's good to go and why I'm wasting time thinking of it as a difficult thing to do I don't know.

This is the entry to the house we stay in, doesn't it look welcoming? I'll try to get a photo of the whole house this weekend and share it. The property has just changed hands, from 'Church' owned to business property. In other words, the price has gone up and we may not be able to afford to go again. Some of the ladies have been going to this place for over 12 years and its going to be quite sad if this is our last weekend. Time to look for something new and affordable.

The house on the lower left is on the same property, opposite the house we stay in. We've stayed in this one too but prefer the layout in the other house, even though the toilets are accesible only from the outside verandah which is fine during the day but we get a bit scared in the dark of a country night.

On the right is the view behind the house, Maroon Dam (20 minutes outside Boonah) a supply of water to parts of South East Queensland and at the moment extremely short of water due to years of low water fall. One of my husbands favourite fishing haunts. We've had some good rain fall this season but not a lot has fallen in the catchment area of the dam. We're all wishing it would rain out that way and top it up.

Hope you all have a good weekend too.

My Computer is going away for the weekend too. Not with me, but to get an external hard drive fitted so I don't loose everything if something goes wrong.

Machine Quilting
Just finished this piece this morning. I love to see my backs looking as good as the fronts. Here are a couple of close up pictures of the quilting.

Desert Storm

Loving this postcard size piece that was done with scraps from another piece.

I've framed one of the postcards in a old frame and I like the way it looks. There are a few more postcards that I'm planning to frame, managed to pick up a few frames the other day just need to do it.

Plan to experiment with surrounds, the one in the frame is attached to a fabric background. I made a sleeve with fabric and inserted a piece of Timtex then stitched the open end closed. Then I straight stitched around the edge to attach the postcard to the backing. I think I could do that and sell them that way without a frame.

April Issue of Down Under Quilts
This year I have been lucky enough to have my photo on the February cover of this magazine when I was profiled and April's issue has a small photo of one of my quilts quilts on the cover. It was a fun quilt that I made recently that depicts happiness, called 'I Feel Happy'. There's also a great photo of it inside in an article on quilts for girls.
You can check out the magazine here www.pridepublishing.com.au

Quilt Label

This Label is on one of my Journal quilts, I'd forgotten to put labels on before quilting them so this one is attached with fusible webbing and a few outer stitches just in case. I took a photo of my hand and can now print it, any size I want, onto fabric. Then I iron them to the fusible and write details on it and iron it to the backing, normally before I quilt, but a lot of the time I forget to make labels and have to attach them when I remember.

How do you label your quilts?

Profiled
How exciting to see yourself on the cover of a magazine (Feb, issue 93). Even better when you see how lovely your quilts look when you see them in print inside. Quite an honour to be profiled.
In the same magazine, 17 of the quilts in the 'Across Australia Exhibition' curated by Dijanne Cevaal are featured and mine is one of them.

Textures
I took some photos of a log in the front garden. I love the way this looks, might be nice to try to duplicate it on fabric with some threads.

Where's the Quilt

I'm using a quilt hanging on the wall as a temporary design wall just now. Only this morning when I took a photo of this little postcard did I realise I was hiding one of my favourite quilts, planning to tidy it off when I'm finished with blogger. By the way, the postcard is upside down.

Another clever Friend
This is Allyson, a very competent theatre nurse who runs screaming from the room when we mention machine quilting.
She had a play on the weekend and I think the look on her face tells that she had some success. I think she'd do it better if she breathed occasionally.

The Fisherman Returns

and he had a good time. He caught 2 fish and he won a raffle prize, the big blue esky which has 'stuff' in it.
It wasn't a big fish catching weekend though, 32 fishermen and only 22 fish caught. I would imagine some of the fishermen were'nt smiling quite so hard when they got home.

Lexie's Holiday Quilt
This exceptional quilt was first made by Lexie, (taken in part from a holiday photo) in A4 size while we were doing an excercise from Katie Pasquini Masopust's book,Colour and Composition.
The first one was great and Lexie (and everyone else) liked it so much she redrew it to a larger size and did it again. I love the colours and the quilting is amazing.


Somewhere in Tasmania, I will find out exactly where and replace the 'somewhere'.

Lexie read the blog entry and the 'somewhere' is 'Port Arthur'.

My weekend's work
Australian outback colours, pinned to another quilt that hangs on one of my walls. I've added borders to this now.

A beautiful weekend
I am lucky. On the right in the picture
I have great friends who like to spend time with me.
We go away sometimes, we see each other at groups, go to each others houses, share good times and bad and we're thankful for it all.

Just had one of those weekends and everyone just went home, I hope my husband enjoyed his fishing weekend as much as I enjoyed my weekend with the girls.

Some of us are shy. Most of us are out there

Borders Stamped

This is the border that I stamped using the newly made stamps and learning that I should plan ahead.

Once I saw the backing was showing as well as the design I used a small paint brush to paint the shapes so the backing stayed clean and the stamping went well after that.

Did I measure before I stamped? That would be a No answer.

Learning by making mistakes is the way I do it though and I'm sure I'll be able to use these pieces somewhere.

Let me know what you think. Does it matter if things are not evenly spaced?

Does the border look any good around this piece?

Stamping
This is my first attempt at making my own stamps.
The product I used to cut out the stamps was a little too thin. When I use the roller to spread the paint it gets on the backing and transfers to the fabric, stamp and backing that is.
I'm going to try making stamps with glue gun next.