Not a lot of stitching has been happening, but there have been some beautiful quilts in my life as in April I made my annual trip down to Melbourne to the Australasian Quilt Convention.
This year one of the special exhibits were the winners from QuiltCon 2018 and it was great to see these stunning quilts “up close and personal”. Most of you will have seen photos of them already so I won’t post them here.
I also particularly enjoyed the retrospective of the work of Australian quilter Carolyn Sullivan. Her work is influenced by the diversity of Australian land forms, and native plants and grasses and features exquisite hand stitching and plant dyed cloth.
These three close-ups give a taste of just how beautiful the work is with subtle variations of colour and stitching which gives a sense of movement across the pieces. The textures just beg you to touch them!
Something completely different again was the exhibit of the Travel series of quilts of British quilter Gillian Travis. I loved the skill and the whimsy of these quilts – they bought a smile to my face.
Each quilt features an iconic aspect of the country she visits such as this quilt depicting sardines in Portugal. The image is cropped so it does not feature the whole quilt.
It is always difficult to capture an entire quilt when taking photos in narrow aisles.
This one featured Icelandic jumpers – the detailed work was astonishing as each one was unique with individual patterns and stitching.
You can see some of the detail in the close up photo below. Aren’t they divine?
Her website is also a delight – go check it out!
Just looking at these three exhibits showed the amazing diversity and skill in the quilting community and it was a delight to see these and all the other quilts in the overall exhibition.
One project of my own over the past month was cutting up the latest Kona Solids Cotton Colour card – all 340 pieces of it. I then cut up 340 pieces of magnetic tape and stuck it to the back of each colour. The individual colours were then placed on two white boards.
I bought the white boards at KMart for $12 each which was a good price after checking around. I decided to use two boards instead of one because they were easier to put on my walls of my apartment and it also gave me more room to play on the boards when I am choosing colour palettes.
I bought the magnetic tape at Officeworks. This tape was thicker than tape in the dispensers, but it was stronger and the right width for the colour swatches.
This tape also comes in packs of 50 cut pieces which I cut into 2 pieces each.
All up I used one pack of cut pieces and two rolls of the thick tape.
Until next time happy stitching.