Christmas Preparations

The year is racing by and May is nearly gone so it is already time to share the month's Christmas gift preparations.

I made this tissue box cover using the tutorial from Pink Penguin. It's an easy tutorial to follow, and I wouldn't mind one of these for myself. The lining is neatly finished so that it is reversible.


My favourite Christmas project so far has been to make a stocking for an exchange I am taking part in. I was assigned a partner, and we each made a stocking for each other. The really fun thing is that we have already swapped stockings, in fact we did this at the end of March, and now every month we make or buy a small gift, wrap it and mail it, to be placed in the stocking and not opened until Christmas.

This is the stocking I made for my partner Lorraine

And this is the stocking she made for me. Isn't it beautiful?


I especially love the piece of tatting that is stitched onto this and the way that Lorraine has used some pretty gold buttons and charms as embellishments because I said I liked metallic buttons. This stocking has such a feels of an old fashioned Christmas. I'm so lucky.

Week 18 Journal - Conduit

This is one journal quilt which I love. It was made using the gentle curves technique that Jeannette DeNicolis Meyer taught in her recent class... I think I might wear out Jeannette's name soon because I use it so often, usually along with the superlatives "fabulous" or "fantastic".

I'm beginning feel the pinch of time with these journals as they seem to take all my available quilting time, but leave me wanting to do more. Often they seem unfinished to me, but I have to make the decision to stop working on one and move on in order keep meeting the challenge of creating something weekly. It's an interesting conflict.

Journal Quilts - Weeks 15, 16 and 17

Catch up time.

Week 15 - Paper Bag Face

A recent visit to the local embroiders group inspired me to try this technique of stitching on a crumpled bag with old wool/yarn. The stitched piece is then painted, and I stamped mine and edged it with gold pen, and gold machine stitching. The other two layers of the "quilt" are iron on stabilizer.

Week 16 - Screen Printed #

This is my first ever piece of screen printing! At Symposium I did a three day class with Jeannette DeNicolis Meyer to learn screen printing using thickened dyes, fabric paints and thiox to discharge the colour from dark fabrics. I had so much fun. In preparation for the class I had been to a fabric dyeing class locally, so that I would have some coloured fabrics as a base for printing on.

Jeannette was an incredible tutor, very knowledgeable and great at communicating her knowledge to complete beginners. You can see her amazing work at her website www.jdmeyer.com/

Week 17 - Origami Squares

I was lucky enough to spend another two days learning from Jeannette when I returned from Symposium. Our quilt guild just had a class where she taught art quilt construction techniques for 2 days. I loved learning to fold these origami squares.

Queenstown trip

Queenstown was beautiful. Cold, but beautiful. The constant topic of conversation at the "Remarkable Symposium" was how many layers of clothing we were wearing to keep warm.

I had fantastic classes and got to meet up with Marina from Maisie and the Boys. These hexagons from the exhibition are for Marina who was stitching hexagons on her trip around NZ. I love the jewel colours on black.


Top to bottom:
Helen Marshall - Aurora Floriferous
??
Marg Hurst - In My Retirement

Week 14 journal - Making Faces 2

This is stitched on heavy lutrador that I first printed with images and then painted. The images mostly disappeared with the painting.

I would like to make "pretty" faces... I think it's going to take some work.

Catching up on posting journal quilts - Weeks 11, 12 & 13

Week 11 - Happy Village... cut from a larger piece started some years ago when Karen Eckmeier came to town to give a lecture about her techniques.


Week 12 - Bojagi... the centre panel was made in a Korean needlework class organised by our local Embroidery Guild and Patchwork Club.

Week 13 - Precious Metals... playing with bits and pieces

Week 9 Journal - funny face & Week 10 - what's on my desk

Last week was so buy that I needed a quick solution for the journal quilt. I had this face that I had made in a class with Griet Lombard last year. It was headed for the orphan block pile so a little bit of quick quilting and a free motion zig-zag finish turned it into a journal.


This week seems to be all about what's on my desk. At work it's a back log of work, at home it's piles of scrap fabric left over from making Christchurch earthquake quilts. I made this improvisational piece using some of those scraps.