2014 - looking ahead, new promises, new beginnings

Wow - the first day of January 2014 has arrived - I can hardly believe it. It's a beautiful day. I am sitting at my desk, working on my laptop with the sounds of birds calling, dogs barking, cars driving by and bees buzzing in the trees. The sounds of life in Africa. It's a very special day when the fish eagles call as they fly overhead. What a beautiful sound. It reminds me of the essence of Africa and a promising start to a good year.

What have I been up to since I last posted as posts have been very scarce in 2013?

I spent the second half of 2013 catching my breath and recuperating from the curve balls that life had thrown a couple of years ago. It has been a difficult road to walk but rewarding to see the progress my family and I have made.  I worked on a couple of UFOs, both quilting and needlepoint work, and started exercising seriously again - swimming and mountain biking. On a sunny day about 8 weeks ago, out at Sani Spoors I "invited the ground to rise to meet me" while on my mountain bike. I discovered that the ground is very hard and the older you get the harder you fall. That put paid to any needlework, and exercise for a while.... oh well, I shall

Once I have recovered from my injuries and completed the rehab, I plan to go back to finishing off the UFOs and looking forward to creating new quilts and generally being creative again by taking photos, learning to draw etc.

I haven't made any new year's resolutions this year  - am rather setting goals and breaking them down into achievable bits. The first goal is to get 2014's goals set and broken down by the end of January 2014.

On the whole I am excited about and am looking forward to 2014. As the old cliche says: "Watch this space".

Quilting progress.....

I am busy quilting a memory quilt for a friend as a gift so I can't post any photos yet .... the first foray back into quilting for a long time....... I am using my walking foot and trying to sew straight lines with even stitches :) What a challenge - am discovering the hard way that it's all about the speed at which I move the quilt in relation to the speed of the machine stitching. However, I am determined to succeed. It's the old adage of "Practise makes perfect". Just think how awesome it will be when I manage to sew straight even stitches with a sewing machine.

Return to quilting and life in general

We're back......Woohoo!!!!

As many of you know, life threw some fairly rough curved balls at my family and I've spent the last 2 years picking up the pieces. The absolutely fantastic news is that we are almost back on track. The last step is to find a house to stay and to move into it. It means moving my studio and all my fabric as well as the rest of general household goods, 2 legged children and 4 legged children. It shouldn't be too much of a problem as we are in the process of clearing out stuff that we haven't used or looked at in the last year. Teaching children the value of donating unused goods to various organisations that support underprivileged people and animals is so important.

All I can say is... "watch this space" for regular posts and updates from the quilting front.

Autumn in South Africa

Africa is never without vibrant colour contrasts, no matter what the season. The photo below is of yet another fabric landscape I made, my first with a fabric border. Note to self.... learn how to make decent mitred corners on the binding. Practise makes perfect they say....

Fabric Postcards and Landscapes

After a long break I signed up for another postcard exchange. They are fun to make and even more fun to receive. This postcard came from Ireland.

I also made an autumn landscape yesterday.

Hot Sunny Day

It's a hot sunny day today - a perfect time for a bit of fabric dyeing fun. The self imposed brief was to dye fun funky colours.....as you can see it didn't quite work out but I'm happy I still have 8 new pieces of fabric to play with.

The first 2 photos are of the fabrica incubating in the dye in the sun.

The end result:

Very Long Time no post......

It's amazing how life always throws us curved balls to deal with. The latest curved ball in my family's life is taking a while to sort out. We are taking things one day at a time. Needless to say, I have been totally swamped and overwhelmed and haven't had the mental energy to be creative.

We went to the Game Farm last sunday and I managed to take some photos of a group of Aloes. It was a beautiful sunny, albeit cold day.

Preview

On the way up to the Game Farm we saw lots of snow on the Drakensberg Mountains. This photo was taken just outside a town called Escort. The snow is on the mountains in the background.

Creativity and huge learning curves

As you might have noticed, I haven't spent much time being creative this month - big mistake.....Being creative feeds my soul and helps me face the challenges of the real world.

On a lighter note....

I have completed 3 more exercises for my quilting course. The first photo is of my 2nd attempt at bias binding applique. The first one had too many pointy bits so was correctly deemed substandard. The second photo is my Curved Piecing exercise. This is always fun.

The following photo is of my Drunkard's Path exercise. This has been the most difficult exercise to date. I cut out the template without adding in seam allowances - not a good idea for me.  Guessing the seam allowance afterwards was not successful at all. I am going to have another shot at making a template but this time I'll add in the seam allowance to the template

Playing with lines

Playing with Bias binding or bias strip is fun. The task is to take an image or a line drawing and create a linear design using thin strips of bias binding. I LOVE stain glass windows so.....off to Google Images and the following image caught my eye.

 

This is the result...It is almost complete - I need to stitch the strips to the backing fabric either by hand or using the blind hem stitch on my machine (Help?). Would you believe it? I don't have any black thread.

Landscape Series

 These fabric landscapes were made as a wedding gift and the theme was burnt orange. It was my first commission (embarrassed blush). I think I am still rather overwhelmed by the fact that people like and want my work hanging on their walls.

The bridal couple own a lodge on the northern coast of Mozambique (I think) and are passionate about the Mozambique coast hence the inspiration was the Mozambique coast. Fortunately I have been to Mozambique twice on holiday now so had many photos to work from.

All the fabric in this photo were hand dyed by me - my first forays into the wonderful world of dyeing my own fabric

In the third photo I used a combination of my own dyed fabric with some Shweshwe (the bright orange) and some other hand dyed fabric I have.

Red and Indigo Shweshwe Rag Quilt

Rag quilts are fast becoming one of my favorite quilt designs. I love their soft and cuddly look..... I had some log cabin blocks left over from from a log cabin quilt that I am trying to finish. This is the result... I love it....

Fabric Dyeing again

As I have mentioned before, fabric dyeing is a wonderful excursion into the world of semi-unpredictable creativity. Well, maybe it shouldn't be so unpredictable but it is such fun. I needed some backing fabric to finish off a couple of quilts. Mmmm, when do I find the time to rush off to the shop to buy some backing fabric...wait a moment, I can dye some fabric. Here are the results...

Dark plum fabric for the back of a purple Trip Round the World quilt was first up on the to do list. I had a sample of premixed purple dye. So.... on with the dyeing process.....One thing I learnt is that if you don't mix dye powder properly you get spots of the primary colours that are used to make up the secondary colour - not necessarily a bad thing. The results are a bit like snow dyeing- I love the results.

 

The next photo shows the blue fabric I dyed. I needed backing for one of my stash busting cot quilts so.. I started with a medium blue and then decided that it was too light so I over-dyed it with a navy blue. This piece of fabric will now serve 2 purposes....backing for the cot quilt as well as a stormy sky for a fabric landscape that was commissioned - that is another story for another day

The last photo is an attempt at dyeing a piece of burnt orange fabric  - not a success. It came out too brown. I used 4 parts yellow dye, 4 parts red dye and 1 part black dye powder. Any ideas on how to improve the colour?

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Stash Busting

It's stash busting time!!! I had some fabric left over from when I made a blue cot quilt for a friend... So.. I have put together 2 cot quilt tops from this fabric. The question now is... do I hand dye some backing fabric using Low Immersion Water Dyeing and hope I match the colours or do I go and buy some commercially printed fabric for the backing fabric? Any ideas?

Beginnings of the fruit study

I have spoken before of my attempts at completing the City and Guilds quilting course. Well, it is taking longer than expected......One of the exercises I had to do was to do a fruit study - first paint a fruit with acrylic paint and then take interpret it using fabric. Well, my painting was a total disaster so I found a photo that my painting was supposed look like and used it as a base for my fabric interpretation. The recommendation was to fray the fabric squares - to make them look softer. What I found is that fraying the fabric also changes the perceived colour of the squares. Obviously the colour did not really change but still.... it was a fascinating experience. I look forward to more challenges along a similar vein. 

Shweshwe Postcards

As I've mentioned before, making Shweshwe landscapes and postcards is a passion.Making these postcards also seem to be working as a "warm up exercise" for more creative quilting. It's interesting. I happened upon this discovery this morning....

Anyway, without further ado, some photos of the latest postcards.....














I love making the postcards with the "yellow sun" in it....

I discovered I can draw

What an amazing discovery. I have spent my whole life believing that I can't draw a stick man properly. One of my challenges for this year was to gather the courage to take drawing lessons..... Well, after 2 lessons, I discovered that I can actually draw... The first lesson we drew apples and mushrooms. This week I took the following photo along......

The outline of the kitten is done - I am now shading her in. As soon as she is done, I'll post a photo of her.

Finished Trip Around the World

The latest Trip Around the World quilt is finally finished. This pattern must be one of my all time favorite patterns. It is simple but so effective. I also made a backing for the quilt out of left over fabrics from the top and cross hatched the whole quilt is variegated cotton - again, simple but effective.....

The first photo is of a close up of the cross hatching......

 

This is the backing - if you have followed my blog for a while you would have noticed that I cannot work in straight lines or blocks.....:LOL

This last photo of the top of the quilt. It looks much neater now that it finished off.....

Schools and Shweshwe pencil bags

The 2011 academic year is finally upon us.My daughter starts school tomorrow and my one son starts school on Wednesday. My other lad is being home schooled this year so he gets to stay at home for the year. I don't know whether he thinks home schooling is a blessing or a curse :LOL

Anyway.....back to matters at hand. I have been making pencil bags (why is it so difficult to sew a zipper into a pencil bag?) for the kids. It still amazes me that they would rather have goodies made by "MOM" rather than stuff purchased from the shop.

Dyed T-Shirts

Once a year my kids and I dye t-shirts for ourselves. It has become a family tradition. We normally use Sun Dye so have to wait for a bright sunny day but this time, we used the dye and Low Water Immersion dying technique I used to dye fabric I posted about in an earlier post.

We used purple and yellow dye to dye the first t-shirt and red/pink to dye the 2nd t-shirt. My son added black to his t-shirt but I still need to take photos of his t-shirt.

 

Conquering the Sketchbook

I am petrified of drawing or painting in any form...and have now decided to try and conquer this fear. Yesterday while waiting for my daughter to finish her cricket lesson (Yes, my daughter plays cricket.....), I took pencil crayons and tried a bit of scribbling....... My starting point was the colours of the fabric I have recently hand dyed - 3 primary colours - red, blue and yellow, and 3 secondary colours - purple, green and orange.

The first photo is a design of a quilt I want to make...simple but effective.

I love curved flowing lines - they remind me of my Burmese cat's whiskers......