Anniversary Gifts

This small celebration quilt is the latest work on my design wall. Today my neighbours celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary - yes, SIXTY years of togetherness! - and I plan to present this quilt when we meet them for dinner this evening. L&M are an active couple - always busy out in their garden or pottering around the house and often to be heard playing table tennis (typically accompanied by gales of laughter).

I don’t have an extensive garden and I don’t play table tennis - but do I like to laugh, potter around, bounce things backwards and forward and stop to smell the flowers, including right here on this blog. And I just realised that yesterday was my four year blogging anniversary - I first tentatively stepped out into the blogosphere with this post and have enjoyed the ambience ever since. To mark this occasion, I’ve decided to expand the scope of my current giveaway so:

• all subscribers to my e-newsletter as at 4 October (date changed from 1 October)
• PLUS anyone who leaves a comment between now and 4 October

go into a draw for a small textile work that I hope to be able to show you tomorrow. You can sign up to the occasional newsletter on the subscription page and follow the prompts. You can also view Issue #2 online. Or you can leave a blog comment.

Thank you to all my readers and blogging friends. The world seems a smaller and more congenial place.

AMQAS Gallery & Bid-4A-Cause

Images of the prize winning quilts from last week’s Australian Machine Quilting Association Show can now be viewed on the AMQA Blog.

And more A4 textile works are displayed on the Bid-4A-Cause blog.

HelenConwayDesign Website Launch

Helen has a new website at www.helenconwaydesign.com. Do go and take a peek and then leave a comment on Helen’s blog.

Emerging Series

It’s been a while since I updated the gallery pages of my contemporary quilts website www.brendagaelsmith.com but that was rectified slightly yesterday. You won’t see any new work but it is interesting to see the emerging Dreamlines series and Desire Lines series all in one place:
My contributions to the Twelve by Twelve Collaborative Art Quilt Project are also displayed on my website along with some of the supplementary works I have created along the way:

Be sure to visit the Twelve by Twelve group blog on 1 October (US time) to see how I complete this series.

Roseus Goddessii

The textile works for Bid-4A-Cause are starting to appear online. They will be auctioned to raise funds for breast cancer research. My contribution is Roseus Goddessii:

“Roseus Goddessii” comes in all shapes and sizes. This piece includes eleven fine lines – ten pale pink and one deep pink – to represent that one in eleven women in Australia will be diagnosed with breast cancer before the age of 75.

Blooming Good News

Identifying my entry in the Australian Machine Quilters Association Show in Brisbane this weekend just got a little easier. It will be the art quilt Acacia Bloom with a second place shiny ribbon on it.
 
And a reminder that all subscribers to my e-newsletter as at 1 October go into a draw for a small textile work. You can sign up on the subscription page and follow the prompts. You can also view Issue #2 online.

AMQAS 2009

If you are in Brisbane this weekend 26 and 27 September, you might like to skip to the inaugural Australian Machine Quilting Association Show at the Auditorium Eventide, Beaconsfield Tce, Brighton for a machine quilting showcase. The show is arranged by the Australian Machine Quilting Association and includes entries from domestic and commercial quilters from across the country in five categories:

• CUSTOM – HEIRLOOM/TRADITIONAL:Machine quilted to imitate the customary techniques of our ancestors. Techniques might include, SID; block motifs; feathers; coordinated border designs; crossıhatching or gridıwork as well as continuous curves, wavy lines, outline stitching etc. No embellishments such as metallic threads, fibres, fringe, crystals or painting, etc will be permitted in this category.
• MASTER QUILTER:Quilts which have won a best of show, or first in its category at any Australian State Guild Show or Internationally recognized quilting show are eligible to enter this category. Open to any size and any
  technique.
• ART/PICTORIAL:Involving thread play and/or a mixture of mediums and embellishments. All embellishments must be firmly attached and quilt must be able to be hung conventionally and with minimal care required. All quilts entered in this category must be the original design of the quilt maker and not made under the direction of another person in a workshop/course situation.
• FUNCTIONAL CUSTOM: This category is for those functional or utility quilts that we do for ourselves or for our customers that are meant for daily use. No embellishments, metallic threads or thread painting of any kind are permitted in this category.
• EDGE - TO - EDGE (E2E): An “all over the quilt” pattern which is a continuous line derived from a pantograph or freehand quilting. The quilting design must cover the quilt completely from edge to edge. Computerised quilting systems excluded from this category.

In the spirit of participation, I have a small quilt entered in the Art Quilt category. Let me know if you spot it!

Feather Folly Labels

I dispatched my challenge quilt off to the Guild today. Of course it had to have a label so I took the opportunity to try out this tutorial for making labels using t-shirt transfer papers. Apart from some initial difficulties peeling the transfer film off the paper backing and a botched first ironing attempt (kind of like first pancake syndrome), the whole process was remarkably angst free. Here are the results:

Please note that, whereas the tutorial refers to transfer papers for white t-shirts, I used transfer papers for dark t-shirts that I picked up at Officeworks. The product I used creates a white opaque background but I’m guessing the white t-shirt product is transparent which may be preferable. The other thing is that I did not need to generate mirrored text for the product I used. I only found that out AFTER I had gone to the bother of working out how to flip the text. Save time and read the instructions on your product completely before you get too far!

Serendipity Studio Newsletter No 2

Issue 2 of the occasional Serendipity Studio Newsletter has been dispatched to subscribers. The newsletter contains some things not shown before on the blog so you might like to read the online version here.

Thank you to all my subscribers. I hope the newsletter reached you safely. If you would like to become a subscriber, you can sign up for the next issue of the newsletter (due out in 2010) at the subscription page. All subscribers (including new subscribers) that sign up by 1 October 2009 will go into a draw to receive a small textile artwork by yours truly.

Dusted

No, I am not playing with the settings in Photoshop. This is the view that I woke to this morning as dust blankets much of the State (see more dramatic photos from Sydney).