Calico Christmas Quilt Show

Finally, here is 'Celebrate Onehunga'. Not the sharpest picture I've ever taken with my little camera but you get the idea. The original quilt was going to be nine panels. I will still make it - and the other two I have planned. I even have an exhibition space in mind and the word of a councillor that she can make it happen!! I warned her that it may take me a couple of years to make them.

There are some stunning quilts in the show. The highlight of the show for me was meeting the Thimblelady, Liuxin, from Sydney. She is one of the judges and does the most beautiful applique. She is also the inventor of a special thimble, hence the name. I have no desire to perfect my hand applique or hand quilting but I can admire her work. She had one small quilt on show of a tree with tiny leaves. Each leaf was about the size of a nail clipping! How on earth does she manage that?? I suppose you have to go to her classes or read her book to find out. She was demonstrating her latest tool, a stitch regulator for whipstitch piecing. I wouldn't say I have any interest in that type of patchwork either but her love for what she does is so infectious that I'm considering taking it up!

Update with a slightly better photo.

Other posts on this quilt
pukeko take 2
second cabbage tree
Onehunga Bay reserve
mosaic table and chair
first cabbage tree
Inspiration and start of One Tree Hill

I made the hand-in time!

Last minute - as usual! I was manning one of the hand-in desks and sewing a velcro strip on the back of my quilt at the same time. I ended up being on the busiest desk too. I can tell you that in the amateur wallhangings section alone in Calico Christmas this year there are 60 quilts! Fortunately some of the other ladies wrote some of the receipts for me, one lady even did a bit of my sewing when I was inundated with quilts. What a lovely bunch of people!

Anyway, with all the last minute work, I never took a photo of the finished quilt! Sorry to those of you who were eagerly awaiting the unveiling (and thank you for the lovely comments). I didn't do this on purpose - honest! I can show you a couple of pieces joined together. The rest will have to wait until I can photograph the quilt in the show.
 

Details of the the quilt show here.

Other news, Leah has posted the winners of the Transformation Challenge. My little quilt wasn't a winner but I can see why. Mine was very different to the other quilts and would have stuck out like a sore thumb. I didn't think of that when I designed it. Never mind, it means I get it back - and one of Leah's books too. I'm happy about that.

Celebrate Onehunga - Pukeko take 2

So, I'm running out of time to get this finished! I changed my plan and had to redo this panel so that it fits. I decided to make it slightly less pink and also you can see a bit of Cabbage tree has crept into this block too!

Melanie asked me what I meant by "blocking". Blocking is stretching out a piece of quilting or embroidery to make it lie flat. I dampen my wallhangings by pressing them with a very damp tea towel. I don't press hard with the iron, just enough to get the steam into the quilt. Then I pin the quilt to a bit of ceiling board with very sharp pins, smoothing the quilt as I go, and leave it to dry.  That makes them nice and flat.

Here is the detail on the bird.

Celebrate Onehunga - second Cabbage tree

A busy weekend in Hastings playing steelpan so no sewing done. I have managed to finish panel number 5 today. This is a continuation of the Cabbage tree panel, one of the first panels I made. I love the way that some Cabbage trees look like they are straight out of a Dr Seuss book.

I keep trying to do less intense quilting so that this goes a bit faster. As you can see, I'm failing!

Celebrate Onehunga - Onehunga Bay Reserve

Panel number 4. This is Onehunga Bay Reserve, a great place to go for a walk with the dog. This is an off-leash park, which may explain why I've never seen a Pukeko there. So a bit of artistic license here!
The colour is slightly less magenta than the picture above but not as orange as this one below.

Celebrate Onehunga - mosaic table and chair

I've been having fun making new quilting patterns. Probably not new to the world but new to me!




I love the back!


Three panels done! Only six more to go...

Celebrate Onehunga - colour sketch

I've been working off a scruffy pencil sketch and was having a hard time thinking what colour to make the next panel.  So now I have a scruffy pastel sketch. I've also decided to cut down the final size (so I have some hope of finishing!) so the One Tree Hill panel has had a bit chopped off either side. That makes the middle panel a more manageable size.
I haven't decided what's going in the bottom right corner but it's going to be red!

So here are the panels at the right dimensions. This will look very different once the black lines are added.  I couldn't believe the difference when I did my sketch.

I've finished the quilting on the Cabbage Tree.

Celebrate Onehunga

I'm just so excited about my next project! I was going to wait until I finished some bits of it but I'm just too excited and I have to let you see what I've been up to.

First, the inspiration for this quilt comes from some prints my Mum has by Kate Spencer. Kate lives in St Kitts in the Caribbean, which is where my parents used to live and my sister is still there. This is one of the paintings and I have wanted to turn it into a quilt ever since I first saw it (in 2004 I think!).

Sometimes it just takes time for an idea to fully develop. I thought about making it a New Zealand quilt. Then I started to think about images I could use and the idea developed into an Onehunga quilt. There are so many cool things right on my doorstep! The old Post Office, Carnegie's library, the old Onehunga Primary School, the Tongan church and so many cute little houses.  How about these images, the mosiac table and chair on Onehunga Mall and the fountain in Jellicoe Park. These are things I love about living here.


Then I also have Cornwall Park just up the road from me. Melanie took this photo of a Cabbage tree in Cornwall park when she was putting together her installation for her final year of her Fine Arts Degree.

I think she did a painting of it. Look what I did with it!


Of course you can see One Tree Hill from Onehunga so I had to paint that too, as it is just now without the tree!



I'm really enjoying making this quilt! Just as well because this one is going to be nine panels, about 2m by 2m or perhaps a bit smaller by the time I make the wonky lines. So I suppose it's going to be 6 foot square. Oh, and I think I'm going to make three of them. I've got so many ideas for panels that they won't fit in one quilt. So what am I going to do with twelve square metres (over 100 square feet) of wallhanging?