Present Open
Concertina style, it will be able to sit on a shelf or be folded up.

Birthday Present
This weekend I'm going away for a retreat and we all celebrate our birthdays during this time.
Each lady gets a present specifically made for her by one of us. This is my present for a special friend and I hope she enjoys it as much as I enjoyed making it.

Discharged Fabrics


Some of the discharged fabrics pinned together.
I'll just look at them for a while, move them around and take a few more pictures until I dicide what to do with them.
They haven't been cut, just overlapped and pinned together. Next with be some cutting and playing to see what else I can do.

The Wedding Ring
This quilt began in a workshop at Beenleigh Quilters with Tutor, Pam Hill. I cant remember the year.

It was the first time I'd dyed fabric and did the colours specifically for the workshop.

Well, some yrs later it has been taken out of its box and is now spray glue basted awaiting quilting. I'm going away this weekend on retreat and I'm taking it with me to work on.

I have one other thing that I'm taking to do some work on. Hopefully I'll have uninterupted time to work on both.

Country Sampler

This is a quilt that I designed as a group project. I supplied a pattern each month for 6 months to the ladies in our patchwork group and each person made their own quilt.

This one was made up by my friend Julieanne Mathison. We pooled our scrap fabrics for this quilt and Julieanne did all the applique.

It did sit in my house for some time waiting to be quilted and finally its done. We are both pleased with it.

New Retreat

This is a close up of the view from our new retreat home. I forgot to take a photo of the house. There's plenty of room for everyone, sleeps 23 and we usually have 14. Its also 20Klm closer than the last retreat so although we have to pay more we're saving on petrol.






Pam's Quilt
Finished at last, much to Pam's relief. We all love this quilt and know how Pam loved making it. She is on a mission to make a quilt for her bed for each season, this is her Winter quilt, just in time to get it on the bed for the Australian winter.

Discharge Day

Played with bleach today and did some discharge on black fabric and some dyed fabric.

Tried putting leaves on the fabric and overspraying with bleach, not too successful, though I did like the finished results.

It was a great way

to play and experiment with small pieces to see what happened.

The challenge now is to use these fabrics together and make something

up to show them off.

On the design wall

This piece has been on the wall for some time now.
It's not something I normally do (there's no flowers) and I got to this stage and everything stopped.
I guess it's part of being comfortable working in a certain way and then doing something different and feeling slightly uncomfortable with what you're doing.
I may have to just sew it together and see what happens.

Rainy Day

I had washed some fabric and trimmed the fraied edges and had a lovely colourful pile.
I spread the fabric trimmings over a piece of fabric then with some of the brighter pieces I made some flowery shapes and gave them centres.
Then it was covered with 'washaway'and pinned around the edges to hold it all together then sewn, giving the flowers some shape and stitching down the background.
When there was enough stitching to hold everything together I washed the piece to remove the washaway.
I folded the backing fabric over the edges and topstitched around it, then trimmed the excess away.
Plenty of trimmings left to play with.

Fabulous Fabrics

Here are a few shots of fabrics that were painted over the weekend.




Playing with colours.


Some tree trunk fabric on right.



This butterfly is going to make someone's granddaughter very happy.





Sunsets with and without trees.

Dyeing Workshop in Chinchilla Queensland

The hall where the class was held, in the Museum grounds where old historical buildings are on display.
I'd love this hall in my back yard.

Some of the ladies having a break, you can't lose your face mask if you wear it as a party hat. Morning tea and lunch were wonderful, thankyou everyone.



At some stage there was a cyclone in the building, must have been, surely we couldnt have made this mess.
We had plenty of room to spread out and get creative, there was a riot of colourful fabric produced and lots of projects planned as the colours were produced.

'Tulip Corner'
Some tulips to stand in the corner and brighten the room. I love flowers and they brighten my day.
A preview of my newest pattern. I plan to add it to the website today.

'Whats the Point'

This quilt has been a while in the making but its finally finish. I paper pieced the stars, it was a block in QuiltPro if I remember correctly.

I shrunk the star to make it small enough to put it in place of what should have been a plain square.

The 1st border is the centre of the star and the long points.The outer border is the short points of the star.

I like the way the centre looks crooked, its an optical illusion because of the long points in the border.

Lime Green and Orange are my favourite colours at the moment.

The Title? This was Paper Pieced and I still lost a couple of points - which of course wasn't noticed until I was quilting. Its mine and I love it I guess thats all that matters. Perfectionist? Not!

'Railroad'
This piece was made using fabric I didn't like.
The background was a practice piece that I'd painted and the browns are a colour scheme I don't tend to use.
Interesting that I really like this piece and don't mind the colours.
The background was heavily stitched so the fabric is no longer the focus.

Happy Mothers Day

To those who are Mothers
To those who have Mothers
To those who lost Mothers
To those who are going to be Mothers
I hope you have a wonderful Mothers Day

Mother Sun
The background of this piece began with dividing the paper then making the piece up with fusible webbing.
The sun is shine down on the earth, there is a river flowing through the piece and trees atop the sun.
I'm drawing this up so I can make it larger. Perhaps an environmental piece to show concern for whats happening to our planet, both locally and globally.
May need a little reworking.

Playing with Colours

I'm really enjoying making small pieces.

Drawing on an A4 size piece of paper dividing it up with lines and drawing circles using the bottom of threads. this is the second one and I'm planning to do another.

Playing with colours
this is the first exercise in dividing an A4 sheet of paper. This is something I did in beginning art class, where we then had to paint the shapes that were made after the drawing. I drew circles and shapes over the the piece and made this out of fabric. I think my art teacher would like this.

Happy Birthday Vicki

I belong to a group in my area and each year at Christmas break up we pick a name out of the hat and thats the person we make a birthday gift for the following year. My gift was late this year because I put the piece of paper away and forgot about it until someone else had a birthday and got a present. Jogged my memory and I thought my persons birthday was coming up only to find it had passed.
I did better than the last birthday I had to make for in another group. We celebrate all the birthdays in this group on our weekend away, I lost the piece of paper with the name on it and completely forgot who I had to make for. I made a present but was a little (maybe a lot) embarassed when I told everyone I would have to go last because I didn't know who I had. Fortunately my friends saw the funny side of it. But they haven't forgotten.

From my garden

This is a potted plant that was given to me by a friend, this is the second stalk of flowers its had this year and they are truley stunning to look at. Its a Lily but I can't remember the full name.
Re reading this post I remembered the name - its a 'Eucharist Lily'. Spelling may be wrong.

My photo with 'Beach to Country' behind me, the quilt that won the Down Under Quilts Calendar competition in 2005.
Uploaded so I can put a photo on my profile.

Little Flowers
Some people have asked how I do the little flowers shown in a previous entry so I thought I'd show you.
Firstly I folded a piece of fabric in half so I had 2 layers to sew on.
Put the fabric in the machine and pull up the bobbin thread. The 3 petals are stitched in one step but I've done them 1, 2, and 3, so you can see the positioning.
Hold the fabric taught while stitching. Try to leave a little space between the petals, stitching just beside the previous petal and always make sure the last petal has enough room to fit in, then when you cut them out they will be seperate petals on one small flower.
I don't draw the flowers first so they all look a little different.
I use a cream thread to do the outlines and then, to attach them to the quilt, I use a coloured thread to do a centre and veins on the leaves. See the previouse entry.
The back of the work
Good idea to check the bobbin tension before you start, notice the lower flowers, the first ones I did I had not checked the tension. I could have kept that hidden but I make these mistakes on purpose (thats what I'm telling you), how else could I show people what not to do?
Try some flowers and send me a photo.

Playing with Misty white Fuse
Had fun playing with this yesterday. Carmel put a piece of Misty Fuse on baking paper, then scattered pieces of thread on it. Then folded the baking paper over to cover the piece and ironed it. When cool, peeled off the paper then we sat it on variouse fabrics to see how it looked. Very happy with it and its very soft to the touch. Sewing over it next to see how it sews.


I ironed the Misty fuse to some pieces of fabric, again putting the fuse on the baking paper, placing the fabric on top and covering it with paper then ironing. It is soft to the touch and cuts well. I free hand cut some shapes and ironed them to squares.
May make up a few more pieces to go with this before I layer it and do some stitching. So far I'm very happy with how it works and I dont have to peel off paper and dispose of it.

Carmels Visit
My dear friend Carmel spent the day with me yesterday, and what a lovely day we had. Looking through magazines and books and playing with a new product. Usually our days are a frenzy of sewing doing but yesterday we had fun just talking and comparing pieces in books etc. With a little play time.
Carmel brought along this challenge she's doing to show me. It is all in pieces, and she said she wasn't feeling too happy with it and wanted to show it to me.
We laid it out on my table, the black and white pieces are sewn together then cut in strips with wavy edges. She put the coloured fabrics down and positioned the black and white strips over them and I thought it was brilliant.
I got out the digital camera and took a photo, then we re arranged the pieces and took another photo, then I took a photo on an angle. I think she could make all 3 pieces and have fun making them all.
Once she saw the photos she too thought it looked good, Sometimes it helps to see something in a different perspective and simply using the digital camera and looking at the picture helps you see something you couldn't see before.

Almost Finished
This is my garden inspired quilt that is ready for the binding to be done and it will be finished.
These tiny flowers were what I accomplished on the weekend away and I'm really pleased with the way they turned out.

Julieanne's Quilt
I'm about to start quilting this quilt for Julieanne. It was made from one of my patterns and thankfully she only found one mistake while she was making it.
The small photo is my quilt done in my hand dyed fabrics.
I was anxious to see how the quilt would look in commercial fabrics and I like how this has turned out.









This is a small section of a quilt I'm teaching. Inspiration comes from your garden and so far this one is coming along nicely. I really like the effect Ann has on the leaves in this pot plant. Her leaf litter looks so scumption you want to dive into it.

Easter Bunny
In the spirit of Easter and to entertain the ladies Allyson found this great Easter Bunny Hat to wear. Some people can wear hats regardless of the type, I'm not one of them.





Prairie Points
Jenny spent some time making prairie points for the border of her quilt, could there be a hat in the making?

Karen working away in her favourite colours suddenly had a change of heart and wanted to try something different. She saw something in an art gallery that gave her an idea and several drawings later this is the piece that she designed. Now she's looking for models.

Weekend away with Clever Friends
Lexie is working on a quilt made from one of my patterns. Its always nice to know the pattern works before you sell it.

Love the quilting Lexie is doing on this piece and the back looks fantastic too.