Night Owls

Although it's not quite the end March, I'm getting a headstart on my April blog. With the arrival of our little grand-daughter (and parents) tonight, for a two week stay, I will have other joys to occupy my time and no space for quilting. Her play-pen/crib is already set up in my sewing room, and it testifies to this grandmother's love that only for Gracie would I be willing to give up my quilting space; and then only for a short time!
However, I've just completed a project that I'm very pleased with. So it is a natural time for a break.

Two years ago when we were in NewZealand, I bought a copy of the New Zealand Quilter magazine. As I paged through it, a picture of a wall hanging called "Two Little Ruru" by Jenny Hunter caught my attention. Ruru is a Maori name for the morepork owls which means "big eyes."  I thought to myself then, that it would be fun to make something similar. It took a while, but last summer I worked out a pattern for two "Canadian" owls, based on the owl pattern in the magazine, but didn't get around to actually making the hanging until this past month. These owls look very wide-awake in a dark Canadian forest, which inspired the title "Night Owls."  They have already 'flown away' to the home of a friend, who fell in love with them the moment she saw them and is very much enjoying their company. Here they are.



Night Owls

That's all for this time except to wish all of my blog readers a blessed and happy Easter.

Back to the Landscapes

After finishing a few UFOs and some larger traditional quilts, I returned to my fabric art. I find it's a good change to work on something small after wrestling with larger projects. Here are a few of the pictures. They are matted and measure about 8 x 10 inches with the mats and yet to be framed. 

On the left is "Red Sky at Night" and on the right "Remembering Vincent." Below these is "Water's Edge."

 

Meanwhile...

In my last post, I vented my frustration at not being able to find a suitable pattern for the fabrics I had looked forward to using in a "special" quilt, and I had pulled out the blues and some yellows in my "leftovers" boxes and began to piece a log cabin quilt. Here is the result:

I used a straight furrow setting and am rather pleased with the results.

And all those lovely fabrics I pictured in my last blog post? And my frustration at not finding a suitable patttern in which to use them? After a lot more deliberation, I finally settled on a pattern called "Windflowers," and got to work cutting out the pieces. Laying them out on my design wall, I called in my "quilt advisor and quality control man" whose critical eye was not yet satisfied with the combination of two of the fabrics. Reluctantly agreeing that he was right again, I re-arranged the pieces, which produced a more satisfactory result, but it also necessitated another shopping trip to buy the extra fabric needed for the new design. To make a long story short, I finally put together the top.

I think perhaps it needs another border, but I'm happy with the results so far. The ironic part is that I've only used just one of the original seven fabrics!

Does it need another border and if so, what would you suggest?
Meanwhile I think I'll take a break from the traditional and those other six fabrics and return to my fabric art.
Stay posted!

Searching for the Perfect Pattern

    There is an age-old question that says: Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? For quilters this could easily be re-phrased to say: Which comes first, the fabric or the pattern?  As I'm beginning to realize, it is much easier to select the pattern first.
Having arrived home with a collection of fabrics in my suitcase, but no specific pattern in mind, I've spent the last week hunting for the perfect pattern for the collection.

   As with nearly every quilt I make, I start out wanting to do something original and out of the ordinary but within the limits of my capabilities.  Possibly these are conflicting ideas, but I'm ever hopeful. I got out my pencils, ruler, eraser and graph paper and sketched some ideas. One in particular seemed promising, so I decided to test the block design by gluing small pieces of the fabrics onto a half size photocopy of the pattern. And it was a good thing I did, for it was clear that my fabrics didn't work in my original design.

    Abandoning, my design tools, I turned to quilt books and back issues of quilting magazines for the perfect pattern. This took quite some time, as I examined pattern after pattern, in between reading the interesting articles that I came across in the magazines.  By now, I was getting quite frustrated. I really wanted to get going on those fabrics, but, couldn't find a pattern that appealed. Finally, I decided to lay the fabric collection aside for a while, get out my machine and do something that required no originality, but would diminish the boxes of scrap fabrics, which always seemed to be full and, hopefully, my frustration. Log cabin blocks seemed a good choice. So today, instead of using these lovely fabrics

I'm sewing these 'wonky' log cabin blocks:

I hope by next month's blog, I'll have found the perfect pattern or at least have a log cabin quilt well underway. 

Batik in the South Pacific

Since coming to Singapore in September, I've been learning a lot about batiks. Of course the internet is a great source of information, but there's nothing like seeing the fabrics before your eyes, and this region is the place for that. There are quite a few places in Sing

apore itself that sell the traditional Indonesian batik fabrics. The designs are quite complex and at one time were hand drawn and dyed using a wax-dye resist method. Most of these are now machine printed on cotton and are sold very reasonably to the mass market. Here are two patterns I've acquired here.

On a recent trip to the island of Langkawi, off the west coast of Malaysia, I had the opportunity to visit a batik workshop and see a different style of batik. This time the design was handdrawn onto cotton, outlined with wax, then handpainted before the fixative was added and the wax removed. You can see by the following photos the very different results from above. These are handkerchief-sized pieces which I purchased at the Pisang Arts and Handicrafts centre.
There are also batiks made by tie-dyeing and stamping, techniques I'm hoping to see when we go to Bali next week.

If you are a CQA member you can read more about the Langkawi visit in the spring edition of the Canadian Quilter.

With Christmas preparations in full swing here in Singapore, may I send my best wishes to each of my blog readers for a happy Christmas with all the blessings is can bring, and many happy quilting experiences in the New Year.

Japanese Fans Photo

Japanese Fans

Although most of my time in Singapore has been focused on our little grand-daughter, I've managed to do a little quilting. The picture shows the completed top for a wall-hanging which I call "Japanese Fans." I was given the centre panel as a gift last Christmas and decided to add the fan borders and do some quilting on it before I finish it. The fan blocks were machine-pieced and then appliqued to the backing squares. I will layer it and quilt it when I get back home in January.
I've also made a foray into Arab Street, which is a wonderful experience for anyone interested in textiles. The street is lined on both sides with shops, which sell mainly silks in gorgeous colours and for a quilter or anyone who loves vibrant colours, it is a real visual treat. I did find some cottons among the silks and other fabrics, and of course there are lots of traditional Indonesian batiks, with their intricate patterns, available, but they didn't tempt me, as I've found them difficult to use in my quilting in any quantity.
A visit to the Singapore Botanic Garden, especially the Orchid Garden, gave me inspirations for a number of future projects and we also visited the World Orchid Conference Show, which featured 50,000 orchids from all over the world. What an amazing show! Words fail me to describe it! Another surfeit of colour with orchids of all sizes, from the tiniest which almost needed a microscope to be seen, to the large showy "corsage" style. My mind is awhirl and I've still almost two months more before we return home in January. I'm sure my sewing machine will be very busy for the rest of the year!
Happy quilting!