Mystery quilt

I have designed a mystery applique quilt for our quilt guild. It's always difficult to come up with education ideas but I struck on the idea of having members teach each other to do needleturn applique. I took a simple drawing and enlarged it on to freezer paper, then cut it into six inch blocks. The mystery is that you don't know what you are making in your block but hopefully when it all comes back together, it will make a great quilt!

One finished block

Denise marking her block. My instructions in the foreground were way too wordy!

Hmmm, what could it be??

We have used fabrics from the community quilts stash so it will a real patchwork picture.

If you are interested in doing a project like this with your guild, I will post instructions and photos of the process when we have finished. Alternatively, you can add a comment here (enable email replies) and I'll email you.

Mixed media collage

One UFO finished!



Our art quilt group met last night and I just about finished my collage. I've got school work to do today but I was determined to get this finished - and it's done! Now I can concentrate on writing reports.

This was a fun project and used so many different materials a techniques.


The background was made by gluing paper napkins, pink tissue paper, paper doilies and text ripped from a very old large text book on to canvas. Some of it wrinkled which added a lovely texture

Then I painted it with a wash of orange and yellow acrylic paint and a few dabs of metallic gold.

I thought I made it too orange so I used the technique we learnt in our stenciling session and masked off triangles using masking tape and stenciled them with a white wax crayon.

Then I painted the music notes dandelion using acrylic paint. The white was useless and didn't have enough pigment for such small notes so I went over them with a correction fluid pen. I'd love to get some white acrylic ink like Geninne uses in her paintings.

The music was printed on fabric. I found an image of sheet music on the internet, downloaded and shrank it to a size that fitted in my design. Then I layered some of the brown paper bag 'leather' that we made in one of our earlier art group meetings with some mesh and zig-zagged the music fabric to it. There is stitching in this collage so it qualifies as an art quilt! (I think!)

The word 'easy' was made by printing out the word on paper and then cutting it and arranging it to where I wanted it. Then I drew in the cursive connections and traced it on to the back of some fusible web. I ironed that to the back of some Lutrador with a very cool iron. Guess how I discovered that you need a very cool iron! Fortunately I didn't melt the bit I was using. I then cut it out and ironed it to the canvas.
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This lovely scroll was made by Jean using her cuttlebug. I glued some gold foil to it and hot glued it to the canvas. Thank you Jean and I hope you are having a great holiday in UK. By the way, Crewe is almost exactly where I thought it was. Cheshire isn't! My knowledge of the geography of England is not great, but then again, I am Scottish!

Finally I added this meander of eyelash yarn. I've attached it with 'No More Pins' glue. I may put a layer of PVA glue on top if I think it won't stay.

As I said, it was a lot of fun and the only thing I bought for the project was the canvas. So, if you have a supply of glues (I used four different types!), some paint, bits of paper, napkins, fabric and embellishment 'stuff', give this a go.

I'm Rona and I have a UFO problem

I definitely have a UFO problem. I was pretty disappointed that I didn't finish my gecko for the show next month and so I've managed to create yet another unfinished project! I spent the rest of Saturday feeling very sorry for myself.

But this is a new day (Monday in New Zealand but I'll pretend that it's Sunday). I decided to list all my projects; quilting, sewing and art. It came to 30 projects! One of them is a handbag for which I've already been paid. It has priority.

When I looked at my list, quite a few of them are community quilts. Some of them are ones that can sit on the back burner but others are making me feel very guilty. This one in particular is one that I need to finish. My question is what do I do with the light blue star? I've quilted ferns on all the dark blues squares and I don't want to quilt so densely on the star (polyester batting so dense quilting not necessary) but the star needs to be seen. Help Leah!!


In other news, this little baby came home with me today. It has a 600cc engine and should halve my fuel costs!


I have to publicly thank my fan club/mutual appreciation group from Northland. You girls are the best and keep me going. I don't always comment on all your fantastic work but I do appreciate it. Have a look at these very productive women.

I met Monika when she did a screenprinting play day.
Ms Lottie and Suz couldn't make it that day. I hope you are all coming to Auckland Festival of Quilts. I'm on the EFTPOS machine on Saturday from 12 noon and Sunday from 2:30. Please say hello.

Koru Gecko II - FAIL

So I set myself the impossible task of finishing this by Saturday and I'm not going to make it.

I was quilting away, quite happy with how it was looking...

and then this happened...

I've changed the needle, cleaned out the bobbin race and rethreaded three times but it sounds awful and the thread breaks. I don't want to damage my machine or ruin this quilt so it's getting added to the pile of unfinished quilts.

I've got to make a handbag next. I've been paid for it already so priorities now are clean the house, write senior reports and make a handbag like the one I made for my sister.

Koru Gecko II

Remember this quilt.

I'm remaking it - for Saturday! Madness!!

Cot quilt - modern quilting style

Our guild had Robyn from Auckland Modern Quilt Guild run a class on modern quilting for us yesterday.  It was a lovely day, many beautiful quilts being produced and we are all better informed about the modern quilt movement now. Thanks Robyn for a great day!

I managed to produce this.

It's meant to be a rectangular cot quilt but it's missing a row. I mis-cut one cross block and another block got buried under scraps so I didn't notice until someone pointed out that it was square and not rectangular! 

The fact that I got this far was no mean feat. My organisational skills let me down somewhat. I knew that they were changing the locks on the doors and thought I had that all organised but somewhere some wires were crossed. I couldn't even remember who was going to open the door. All I knew was that I had had a conversation with someone and it was all ok. Wrong! So I arrived to a locked door, Robyn and a couple of people waiting. I'd forgotten my phone. Another person had no credit on her phone. The next person had a phone and credit - then we realised that none of us had Jo's number! So I drove home, phoned Jo, got hold of the other keyholder and went back to class. We are now running very late. Robyn took it all in her stride and we got started. 

I cut out my fabric, went to set up my sewing machine and realised that I had left my foot pedal at home. Drove back home, picked up the foot pedal and some lunch (which I had also forgotten) and my iron. Got back to class and worked like crazy to catch up. So you see, I did well! I think I'm going to add another 4 rows and make it a small single bed quilt.

Here's a close-up of my yummy fabric

Collage background

I haven\'t been doing a lot recently but here is a recent project, the background for a collage.