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!

Something New

It's not November yet, (when I would normally update my blog) even here in Singapore, where we are a day ahead of North America, but I couldn't wait to show off our lovely little granddaughter under her little quilt. In the minutes between cuddling and admiring her, I have managed to make some progress on the appliqued fan blocks that I brought along as a traveling quilting project. There are 26 of them and they will form the border around a printed panel given to me last Christmas, which depicts a Japanese lady holding a fan. Sorry no pictures yet, but I will put it on my blog when I have it all pieced together. In the meantime, the tiny work shown above far surpasses anything else that you might want to see! Isn't she beautiful? Her doting grandparents certainly think so.

Happy quilting!

Singapore

We've been in Singapore for over a month now for the long awaited birth of our grand-daughter. Although I've been busy sewing - curtains for the nursery, sheets for cradle and crib, and diapers - yes, diapers. Our children are very environmentally conscious and realizing the effect that so-called "disposable" diapers have on the environment, have opted for non-disposables. So grandma has up-dated her skills from the time she sewed diapers for her own little babies and having found some "nappy flannelette" (as they call it here) at a bargain price of one Singapore dollar per metre, got to work.

But even with all the baby preparations, I've managed to connect with a quilter friend from my last visit. Marianne Bos is a quilt artist and has produced a variety of beautiful work which you can see on her blog http://www.mariannebos.blogspot/ . Through her I have been able to visit a group of quilters who meet every week. They are the ANZA (Australia and New Zealand Association) quilters, one of several ex-pat quilt groups who meet here in Singapore. Like quilters everywhere they are a friendly group and it has been a pleasure to sit and sew with them and to see the variety of projects they are working on.

Of course, I never travel without a quilting project of my own, so this has allowed me a quiet space of time for my own work.

As we'll be here for two more months, with a little perseverance, I should be able to finish them before I leave.

What a difference a Month Makes

This photo is quite a change from the dreary picture of my last blog. We've had some spectacular sunsets lately and this is one of them. The improved weather has meant that we've enjoyed some side-trips to towns within a day's drive of Edmonton. The most recent was to Camrose (about an hour's drive) which was celebrating "Founders Days" and among the festivities was an arts and crafts display. I had a lovely time seeing the quilts of the local quilters' guild and chatting with Judy Hoehn who had several of her lovely "multi-fabric" quilts on display. Since I've been trying to use up my own left-over pieces of fabric, I was interested to see the variety of designs which she had used and received more inspiration to continue down that road myself.

Last month's blog showed a multi-fabric work in progress and I'm happy to have it completed. I changed the title to "Blooming Garden" and as you see used a watering can for the centre panel. This was a Quilt-As-You-Go" design of my own, inpired by a number of sources.

I've already prepared a little project to take with me as we travel to Singapore next month to welcome our little granddaughter into the world. I hope to meet some quilters there and be inspired by their work, too. Until next time,

Happy Quilting

Great Weather for Ducks and Quilters

The above picture was taken from my window today. The rain is falling and the lake is rising. We've had one of the rainiest summers of recent years which is bad news for lots of folk, but looking on the bright side, a day like today is good weather for quilting.

So I've continued to work on my quilt in progress, which is another attempt to use up the stash. This quilt (which I've provisionally called Garden Flowers, for lack of something more interesting and because I used mostly floral patterned fabrics) is my own design but derived from a number of different sources. It begins as a disappearing nine-patch and I decided to make it a quilt-as-you-go pattern.

When the nine-patches were sewn and cut into four, I stitched a narrow strip of green along the seam lines of each quarter.

Next I cut same-sized squares of batting and backing and layered the squares together. I stitched along the edge of the green strips and stitched a leaf design in the largest square. This is the back of the block.

The next stage will be to sew the blocks together in rows using sashing strips. Here is part of the layout with strips of fabric laid on the blocks to show you the idea.
There is a centre panel to be made yet. But that will be next month's blog, if I get it done by then. In the meantime, I've lots of keep me busy. If the rain continues I'll have a nice cosy quilt to put in the ark!

Change of Pace

After bingeing on baby quilts for the past two months - six and a half finished and the binding left to do on the seventh- I've turned to something totally different. It's been several years since my little show of fabric landscapes. These are not quilts, but use fabric to make small (5x7 inch)landscape scenes. I've put them in note cards to be given to special people, but in the future I hope to make mini-landscape quilts, or perhaps, postcards. It's fun to be back working with fabrics to create an imagined scene or re-create a scene from a photo.
Here are a few that I've finished so far.