AQC Floortalks

Thank you to Sue Dennis for snapping this photo of my floortalk to AQC delegates yesterday morning. I started with an audience of about five but there was a crowd at the end. There will be another floortalk from both Kirsty and me on Saturday at 1pm. In the meantime, Kirsty is in attendance at the exhibition. Stop by and say hi!

Twelve by Twelve Exhibition Opens at AQC

Today is THE day! It's early in the morning on Thursday 29 April and in an hour or two, the Australasian Quilt Convention opens including our WORLD PREMIERE exhibition. Kirsty and I spent yesterday fternoon hanging the quilts. We have a prime location at the entry of the quilt gallery area. You won't be able to miss it! I'll be giving a floortalk to AQC delegates at 9am but Kirsty will be there all day to answer any questions you may have. Come and say hello.

More photos to come!

Slow Volcanic Activity

I admit it, I've been a little behind on this challenge. Between book writing at the beginning , Disneyland, dieting and exercise, and the craziness of everyday life I just haven't had the energy to do much creative. Plus the color scheme is way out of my comfort zone. Finally, last week I have made myself get to work. I started with quilting a big pile of fabric sandwiches. Over the weekend my parents took all the kids over night. My husband was away at "men's weekend" so I had the house to myself and time to paint. I had a lot of fun once I got to work. Orange really isn't as scary as I make it out to be. Now that I have the raw materials I need to get to work putting them together into a quilt. I still have a few days, right?

An Exciting Week!

This is an exciting week. Thursday, 29 April is the opening of the Australasian Quilt Convention and the very first public exhibition of all 144 quilts from the Theme Series.  Kirsty and I will be accompanying the exhibition and giving floortalks as follows:

• 9am, Thursday 29 April - AQC delegates only
• 1pm, Saturday 1 May - all welcome!

Please come and say hello and perhaps even buy a special set of Twelve by Twelve postcards:

Then on Saturday 1 May (Sunday 2 May Australian time), we will be sharing the next Colourplay challenge - Kilauea.  Remember you can subscribe to the RSS feeds of our posts and comments or you can sign up to receive our blog updates by e-mail by entering your e-mail address in the form below and following the prompts (no special account or login required):

My Great Nephew's Volcano

My nephew and his son made this for the Cub Scout Cake Bake in Northern New Jersey. I think they nailed some of Kristen's colors.

Quilting with ash

It appears that by tomorrow I might be able to quilt with real volcanic ash.... see this news picture and associated links.

Dollar Store Find

I have been storing my 12 x 12 quilts in a big ziplock bag to keep them clean and together. The other day I was browsing the Dollar store, where I seem to find great containers for things, and found this nice plastic envelope that is exactly the right size to hold the 12x12 quilts. Nice thick, firm plastic with a string closure. It has pleats at the sides and bottom so that it expands to about an inch and a half in depth. It may hold all 12 if I don't make them too fat. They looked so handy that I bought several! At $1 a piece I can afford to keep some on hand.

If you like the looks of these, the store was Dollar Tree and they are in the craft/scrapbooking section. Do you have Dollar stores in Australia and England and Belgium?

Kilauea in Silk

My Kilauea quilt is asking to be in silk. I had some of the colors including that gorgeous shibori from Glennis Dolce, Shibori Girl. I didn't have a good lava black. I dyed some last night and you can see the two pieces. I like them both. I still need to work on that taupe color if I want to use all of the colors that Kristin gave us. My gray should be a little lighter and I will work on that today. The Colorhue dyes are so fantastic when you need instant gratification with silk.

I need to get this done because I want to make new work for the Artists Among Us show next month.

Mangos

Apparently mangos were in peak season when Kristin announced the new color theme. They were piled high at the grocery store. Ten for $10. (Or a dollar a piece. Such silly manipulative pricing.)

I immediately noticed that they included all the colors -- red, orange, black, gray and chartreuse. I took a couple of shots on my counter. (Certainly not very arty. But you can see the colors, right?)I perused Flickr for more mango shots. But they were nearly all yellowy-orange and mostly styled food glamor shots. Not as inspiring as I was hoping. Here is another from my kitchen.Then I remembered a photo I took of a tiny shrine outside a shop in Maine. See the mango?I also remembered the amazing salad I had during our family vacation to Antigua. Mango with goat cheese. Swoon.

Not exactly following the theme colors, but I am feeling the wheels turning and finding bits of inspiration. Now, to put it all together.

Mt Tarewera

Family distractions ranging from the good (shopping and quilt shows) through the would-be-good-if-they weren't-so-time-consuming (househunting) to nasty (visting bereaved friends) have distracted me from really considering my Volcano quilt.

I did have a latent idea that I might combine photos of Mt Tarawera in New Zealand with the colours specified. But, when I review our photos they are not so good. This has much to do with the fact I was so travel sick I gave the camera to Dennis who was so excited to be in a float plane that his hands were shaking!

But anyway , my mind has wandered in another direction having visited the wonderful Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights in Bath. Ed, the members of staff there in charge of art books installed me in a leather chair by the fire with a mug of tea and brought to my feet piles of art books, opening them to show me quilty like delights. That's how I found the New Zealand Artist Rosalie Gasgoine, whose work (see here for several exhibition galleries of hers) has my brain synapses popping. Then I found sheers in all the right colours on sale down the road. And wire mesh cloth at the Quilt Show.... must go, have a quilt to make....!

Deja Vu

Like Gerrie, I thought this palette was vaguely familiar.  Now I remember my Feather Folly quilt for the 2009 Quilters Guild of NSW Challenge incorporates red/oranges, greys and pale chartreuse.

One Step at a Time

Kristin may be almost finished but some of us are still at the beginning of the process. I tried some more shibori - this time with tied stones and buttons. It's batching now but I don't have high hopes...

Learning from Each Other

I've finished my Kilauea quilt and had to giggle as I was putting the finishing touches on it.

As a final step, I decided to sew black seed beads (as a nod to Pele's Tears) onto the border the same way Deborah has added beads to several of her quilts. In my mind, I heard her advice that this technique looks especially nice when one only adds the beads and/or stitching to part of the border, But I decided no, that was a cop out and really, MY quilt could handle beads all the way around. I'd change the color of the floss in a few places though.

When I was about half way done, it was obvious that beads all around was too much and the parts I liked best were the few areas where I changed color. So I removed most of the stitching and beads.

I really should listen to those voices in my head.

Twelve by Twelve Down Under

Our publisher Lark Books has completed photography of all of the quilts from the Theme Series and dispatched the quilts Down Under.  It's always a little nerve wracking to ship quilts, especially across the ocean blue, but they arrived in Australia safely before Easter.  Today it was my privilege to unpack them and sort them into theme sets in anticipation of our forthcoming exhibition tour.

For me, it was a very moving experience to see all these quilts together for the first time.  I had the boardroom to myself but anyone listening at the door would have heard me gasp as I opened each travelling pack (Terri's of course had cat fabric!).  In compiling the Twelve by Twelve website I have pored over images of all of these quilts but surveying the treasures before me, I discovered an entirely new level of detail and texture: the wonderful hand stitching in Karen's community quilt Similar Differences; the three-dimensional rose petals in Gerrie's Satin Sheets; the layers and stitching in Deborah's She Sits to Dream and so on. There was no time to linger today but I look forward to the opening of our international exhibition tour at the Australasian Quilt Convention on 29 April 2010.

Feature Story: Australian Patchwork & Quilting Vol 19 No 1

Turn to page 106 of Volume 19 No 1 of Australian Patchwork & Quilting, and you will find a feature story about the Twelve by Twelve Collaborative Art Quilt Project with a focus on the 12th theme challenge - Twelve.

And don't forget that the WORLD PREMIERE EXHIBITION of Twelve by Twelve quilts opens at the Australasian Quilt Convention in Melbourne on Thursday 29 April. We can't wait!