Posted on

ABC Radio Interview

I was recently asked to do an interview with ABC Radio Brisbane about my quilt BEV 10-08. The hostess Rebecca thought she was going to interview me about my Honeycombed Hummer quilt. Luckily I had a photo of the quilt with me (not the best quality). Bev 10-08 will be handing in the Australian Quilt Show in Brisbane this coming week. Once she is back with me, hopefully, I will have heard if it has been accepted into 3 Quilt Shows in the US. Then it will be overseas for the next 12 months, so a very limited time left to see it in Australia.

The interview is linked above.

Posted on

BEV 10-08

SPORTING TWO RIBBONS AT AQC

These are my latest entries in The Australian Quilt Show run by IntoCraft that debuted at AQC in Melbourne last week. The quilt above won First Place Modern then was also awarded Best of Show.

The Honeycombed Hummer

Also debuted at AQC and received a Judges Commendation in the Traditional category. This is a LegitKits pattern wirh my added EPP border.

Both quilts will tour around Eastern States of Australia before returning home in December.

Additionally Circling Sevenstar is about to hang at Paducah Quilt Week. Fingers crossed she is admired favourably. Might even send it on to Houston while it is Stateside.

Posted on

Stocktake is complete

Last count of all the Glide threads in Busy Quilting Shop
A few almost empty boxes being packed and sorted

The big PACKING boxes are filling and so is my Garage space.

www.makeitquilted.com.au/store/

now has their shop up and running with all the HabandDash products and Glide Threads

Les and I thank all of you for allowing us to introduce you to HabandDash products and hope you continue to enjoy your journey with them with Monika.

Maybe now I will be able to post more of my piecing and quilting adventures. Plus expect lots of touring quilt piecing pictures.

Posted on

Shadow Quilting

Afternoon Shadows on Circling Sevenstar

I am fortunate to have a room that receives late afternoon sunlight through the windows. They do however make unusual colours of quilts. The back of this quilt is White Magna Glide Classics 1900+ metre of it.

When you take it off the frame and find you have missed a bit

There are those shadows playing colours again. 9 different colours of Glide #40 and two of Glide 60wt used for the quilting.

Real backing colour this time

I have Daylight lighting in my studio, plus 3 metres of windows on a northern wall. When you use your longarm table to sew on a hanging sleeve and for 3 random designs on the back the sleeve matched the facing.

Posted on

Glide 60 wt Thread

Glide 60wt thread is a finer Glide Thread without as much sheen as 40 wt thread. It is still a filament polyester thread, lint-free, giving great definition to small designs and tiny fills when quilting. It is also the same thread that is on the Magna Glide Classics pre-wound bobbins. These M class bobbins hold 203m of thread. I put my partially used ones in my sewing kits as they are excellent for applique, hand piecing and EPP. The small size and the magnetic core come in handy.

Posted on

My Face Mask Pattern

Since I cannot post a PDF to my Facebook or Instagram pages I thought I would put it here, so that my family and friends could use it also.

This is a 4 layer mask with an opening for a filter product, should you choose to use one. Research says that using a higher thread count fabric is better, batik fabrics work well, silk is possibly good for the inner layers as softer on the skin too.

The size for “longer/wider” faced people could be adjusted by extended the centre section of the pattern both horizontally and vertically. Measure from the tip of your nose to the base of your chin, this pater will work for those less than 3″.

Covered nose wire, helps to keep the mask gaps free over the nose. Using 1″ strips cut from around a t-shirt make a soft tie for around the head. I use a loop around my neck and a tie at the top of the head. OR rather than a tie I thread the two ends of the tie through a bead and knot, then use the bead as a movable tightener.

Posted on

Geata Teaghlach pronounced garta ch-eye-lokh

During a visit to Great Britain in 2005 I took many photos with the idea that one day they would make themselves into a quilt.  The Chirk Castle Gates in Wales really impressed me.
When a friend encouraged me to try Ice dyeing while I was in Victoria for The Best of Australia Awards in April  this year, I knew that my idea of a wrought iron gate quilt had found its quilting muse.
I took this photo on the 23rd June after I had played around for a while with scale to make sure I was using the pieces of fabric to highlight my vision of what I wanted to achieve.
Drawing tools,  stencils, reference books, template,s trusty lead pencil and the ever present eraser
It was only after I was happy with a design in pencil that I then committed it to ink on  quilt size piece of paper.
Sketching different fills as I go.
Pulling threads  from all over the place in the stash to achieve what I envisioned, before I started to trace the design. Once I had had the design on my paper, I traced the main details with a fine tip  gel pen.  Then I used at least 3  Blue Water Erasable Leonis Pens to trace the design onto my top. I don’t have any pictures of the actual top all blue penned.
I had decided I wanted a thicker thread look with my quilting so decided to run two threads through my thread stand and the eye of the needle.
The Perfect backing fabric was also in my stash, possibly from a similar era as the inspirational photo. So on the 4th August the quilt was loaded onto my  longarm machine.  you can see some of the blue markings here.
The quilting is no where near the same as Chirk Castle, I was using the picture to reference where I would stitch a solid line between metal pieces or leave it open to appear like it was a solid piece.
I wanted to depict a stone base to the wall of the gate.
I am actually standing on the table of my longarm machine here to take this photo from directly above the centre of the quilt.
There is a garden path and gardens in the foreground of the quilt.
The Southern Cross a constellation visible above Australia is beaded into the background.  There are 8 different shades of maroon thread represented in this “Diamond Sky”, gradually fading as they distance themselves from the gate.
after two weeks on my longarm I was able to take it off the machine, have a sticky beak first, then give it a cold water bath and start the process of blocking it.
I felt curved binding replicated the  idea of gates, but still felt it needed something a bit more
The label gives an insight  to how I chose what I felt were the major design elements, within the quilt.  The name is for my mother, My Father used Morse Code to mark his items in the workshop during his apprenticeship.  Can you find my Morse code links?  There was also a story from a Great Aunty in my youth of something shady in the family past. I learnt this year that my Great Grandfather, of my father’s side,  when he sailed to Australia changed his surname from Smith.

Geata Teaghlach pronounced garta ch-eye-lokh –  Irish for Family Gate – in all her painted glory.