In between

This post comes to you from the darkened cabin of a Qantas 380 Airbus high above Western Samoa. Finally I have time to exhale, count my blessings, and catch up on some sleep!

 

I'm one finger typing on my DiPhone, on my way to Savannah, Georgia, and  Quiltcon East, via Florida where I'm excited to be meeting up with Linda Hungerford (Flourishing Palms) for some adventures. 

It's a strange feeling, after dreaming of making this trip for so long, and I can't believe I'll be landing in LA in just a few hours.

 

My Quiltcon entry, Levitation Fascination, wasn't one of the 400 or so modern quilts accepted into the show, but I'm OK with that since the standard was very high. It's already won me a rosette for Viewers' Choice at the Modern Quilt Show Australia last November, and I hope I can enter it in a few more shows yet.

Isn't that the cutest rosette you've ever seen? I'm looking forward to spending my prize, a $50 gift voucher from My Sewing Supplies, when I get back home.

 

 

There will still be thrills ahead for us, and a potential prize winner, since one of Linda's three Quiltcon entries was selected for inclusion. Yay!

Also on our itinerary after Quiltcon is AQS Quilt Week at Daytona Beach, Florida. This time I'm extremely happy to tell you my other rosette winner from last year, Out of the Square, has been juried into the show, along with several others from Aussie quilters. There will certainly be plenty of quilty eye candy for this shutterbug to photograph, so watch this space!

 

Those fabulous rainbow shades are all from Karen Lewis' Blueberry Park range, and I love how they worked together.

 

Out of the Square won the award at the Sydney Quilt Show for Best Modern Interpretation of a Traditional Quilt, sponsored by Melinda Smith of Quiltsmith, and I've already spent some of my $500 worth of gift vouchers on those glorious solids I used in Levitation Fascination. 

As an aside, the wool batting I used in Out of the Square was Nu-Wool,  of my Sydney Quilt Show prizes for Taking Liberties, my 3rd placed wall quilt from the year before. One quilt's rewards contributing to the creation of another - I love that! 

If you're not a follower of my posts on Instagram you'll be reading most of this news of last year's awards for the first time. I certainly had some catching up to do! 

For a litttle fun, here's a computer-generated pattern from www.makelight.com showing the colours I used in the quilts I posted on Instagram throughout the year.

You're probably surprised at the amount of yellow, but I'm finding myself adding a little (or a lot!) of this sunny colour to most of my quilts these days.

 

At the same time I'm looking forward, hoping for a year of creative satisfaction - not necessarily involving awards!

How's this for creative satisfaction: my baby granddaughter, Princess 2, joyfully tossing around some of my pretty fabrics. I hope to make a quilter of her one day.

 

 

Last year I chose JOY as my Word for the Year. It didn't go too well. In my humble opinion, joy is something that has to be sought. It's there to be found, if we only approach what happens to us with the right attitude, and I confess I fell into the trap of negativity far too often last year.

So I'm once again making JOY my Word for the Year. Yes, I'm giving it another go, because it's worth finding.

 

My Small World Quilt

Let's begin the new year on the front foot, with a post about a finish. 

From the moment I set eyes on Jen Kingwell's My Small World quilt in the Spring 2015 edition of Quiltmania I was smitten.  

A still, small (and frankly rather boring) inner voice cautioned that I had no time to cut out and sew together the thousands of tiny pieces needed to create this amazing combination of shapes and patterns. 

Besides, I'd go crazy coping with the piles of tiny scraps all over my floor, sorted into the colour palette I needed to "paint" this imaginary world. 

Not to mention my domestic machine quilting skills which I seriously doubted could do justice to such a quilt.

All of which was true.

However, once I realised My Small World would make the perfect quilt for a very special little person due to arrive in November, there was no stopping me. 

I mined my scrap box like a maniac, digging for the brightest, happiest pieces I could find. 

I fussy cut like a fiend so I could make my version into an "I Spy" quilt.

And I single-mindedly stitched together My Small World quilt top over six or seven weeks. Those fabric piles did drive me crazy, but they gave me the impetus I needed to get this stage finished.

It's a pattern that lends itself - almost invites itself - to personalising. So I created a sunny yellow, blue and white colour-washed sky and, instead of the stitcheries in the original design, I filled my sky (created with around 700 x 1 inch squares) with a fairytale castle, busy bees, bubbles and a big Dresden style sun.

All over the quilt I've included little objects that are fun to discover - a car, The Cat in the Hat, a zebra, a daisy, little children, a sailing boat...and so on.

While I thought about how I was going to approach the quilting of the buildings I worked an orange peel grid over the sky. 

Then I decided to mentally break up the quilt into individual spaces and quilt each one separately. This approach meant that I could effectively avoid having to tackle machining over any any thick joins, but also gave the quilt a rich and varied texture matching the style of the original design. 

My quilting was far from perfect, but again I feel it matches the quilt's naive style. That's my story, anyway, and I'm sticking to it!

This stage of the quilting took the longest, but I found it the most creatively rewarding.

I used Aurifil thread 50wt for both my piecing and quilting, and my batting was Soft and Bright from The Warm Company.

It was easy to add a multi-coloured binding using the method described here because the binding was applied in four separate strips and I could position the colour transitions exactly where I wanted them.

With this method the stitched mitred corners (almost) always turn out like this, which I love.

An "I Spy" quilt needs a label on the back with a list of objects to find. 

Perhaps you can play the game yourself?

And finally this label, so that Princess 2 will always remember her grandma who took the time (around 4 months working 2 or 3 hours most days or evenings) to make her this gift of love.

And remained sane*

Please see these posts of mine if you're interested in more details, and tips, about the making of My Small World quilt.

Tips for My Small World Quilt Part 1

Tips for My Small World Quilt Part 2

Tips for My Small World Quilt Part 3

* Some may disagree :-)