News Flash - Studio Out Book Sale

I have, at last, started listing my surplus books for sale on Trademe. (if this link doesn't work, go to http://www.trademe.co.nz/ and my seller name is wennn) So go have a look and start bidding! I will continue loading up more books, patterns etc over the next few days - so keep checking back. I can only have 50 listings at a time so will have to wait until some sell before I can list more.

Country Day Quilts

Here are the pictures from the Quilt Exhibition I helped to Judge. There was meant to be a first, second and third, but we could not just leave it at three prizes so we gave a merit prize to this quilt "Enter the Dragon"

The Third Prize quilt was this lovely quilt "Licorice Allsorts" it uses lovely rich Bali fabrics.

The Theme was "Diamonds are Forever" and this second prize quilt was for a Diamond Wedding Anniversary. It was simple but very effective and the basis of the design as a Chrysanthemum Flower. The maker of this quilt is in her 80! year - how fantastic this that.

The Winning Quilt called " Diamonds from the Rainbow" A lovely Quilt inspired by the book "Strata Various" The workmanship and quilting was fantastic. Please excuse the not so good photo

Busy Busy

What a terrible blogger I have been, with working full time and "working" on the new house has left little time for creating, hence no blogging. I am aiming to get the books onto Trademe in the next couple of weeks - so stay tuned :). I do have some work in an exhibition at the moment "The Silk Road" once I finish full time, this Friday, I will go in next week and get some photos and post here.

I am meant to be working on exhibition pieces for our COOTS exhibition at the Festival of Colour in Wanaka next year! We have a meeting on Friday and are meant to take one completed piece for photographing - oh dear!

On Friday we have the High School Blues Dinner (a sports and cultural awards dinner). The Speakers are Hamish Carter, Olympic Athlete and Sheena Haywood local photographer. Hayley is excited about what award she might receive.

The local Patchwork/Quilting Guild are hosting "Country Day" in Queenstown this weekend and I was asked to Judge the Quilts the theme was "Diamonds are Forever" I am hoping to get some photos and will post them here next week.

More Studio Clean Up

I have sorted through my books and taken out the ones I no longer want (the above pictures), once my studio has been cleaned and sorted I will list my "no longer required" piles on Trademe, to raise money for future purchases, of course.

This is part of my newly tidied library cupboard, I wonder how long it will stay this way - I can't fit any more books into it. And the ones scattered around the house will have to stay scattered.

Second Workshop at Conference

The Second workshop I did at Conference was Ailie Snow's "PhanTasy". My theme was "Queens and Princesses" here are three of the six pages I did, these pictures are works in progress. Ailie uses Batik Flannel as her background and she supplied us with these. Have a look at her website her work is very inspiring. She was a lovely tutor although our class members were a bit ho hum and the way the seating was arranged was not conducive to chatting and interacting with others. There were a few ladies who, had we rearranged the class to be more interactive would have been very entertaining.

We met some wonderful ladies at the Conference and are looking forward to the next one in Hamilton in 2010.

Embroidery Conference

I have been away from home for ten days and although I took my laptop - the motel where I was staying were charging an arm and a leg for internet access so I just didn't do any blogging or surfing - only checking business emails ... boring.

So onto more interesting things - the ANZEG (Association of New Zealand Embroiderers Guild) Conference. (Their website is a shocker but they are updating it in August and changing providers). The Queenstown Branch of the ANZEG sent two of us to, in Hastings, New Zealand (not UK). We travelled to Hastings via Christchurch (where our name was paged over the PA system - opps) we didn't realise we had so little time to change planes. Then to Wellington where we shopped and stayed overnight, notice I said stayed and not slept - we had some drunk men trying to get into our room - hmmm not really what you would expect staying at one of the more upmarket hotels there. We left the next morning in a very very small plane to arrive in Napier. We were collected from the airport by a lovely Guild member there and taken by car to Hastings (20 minute drive). We spent the afternoon and following day exploring Hastings and Havelock North. We really enjoyed Havelock, a little village with boutique shops - just lovely. We had two days of Conference. A presentation by a member who had received a study grant and travelled to the Royal School of Needlework in the UK. The key note speaker was Carol Naylor - a machine embroiderer from the UK - she was a very entertaining speaker and had a power point presentation of her work.

I was lucky enough to have a two-day workshop with Carol. Machine Embroidererd Landscapes. I choose to do a picture of Moeraki Boulders. Apologies for the quality of the Photos - Carols picture have been taken from her catalogue as my camera was not working while at conference. And my piece is mounted behind glass. I will post more later about my other workshop

Snow

Look what we woke up to on Saturday morning. Beautiful eh.

Studio Cleanup

My Studio is an absolute tip - a definate non-creativity zone. So over the next few months (thats how long I anticipate it will take) I plan to sort, tidy and sift through the "stuff" and purge what I don't need. I started with my beads. Here is a before and after shot.

Did you notice my little helper in the first shot on the right hand side? Hopefully by the time I finish sorting my studio - It will be time to move into my new one! Hopefully in March next year.

Fabulous Find

A friend and I travelled down to Invercargill at the end of last week to visit a "Quilt Shop" called Kitz and Thingz here are some photos of the "Shop". It was a house on a diary farm in the middle of nowhere. But what an Aladdan's cave. I didn't get a picture of Bedroom 1 (sorry, was initially too overwhelmed to think about photos). All rooms had lovely book cases loaded with fabrics. The children's room looks small in the photo - this would only be a quarter of what is in there. These pictures only show the tip of the iceberg. There were four Bedrooms containing:

Bedroom 1: The largest range of Flannels I have seen, Batiks and Asian fabrics.

Bedroom 2: Amy Butler, Valorie Wells, a huge selection of Black and Whites, numerous wide fabrics for backings, patterns, jelly rolls, charm packs, and a massive selection of bright and colourful fabrics.

Bedroom 3: Jinny Beyer, Country fabrics, patterns, jelly rolls, etc.

Bedroom 4: Childrens Fabrics including flannels and a selection of lovely toys.

The Hallway: near the entrance - Christsmas Fabrics, down the hallway further Fabric Panels.

The Lounge: Quilting Supplies, other bits and pieces

The Dining Room: Filled with bolts of fabric at half price!!

Needless to say we boosted their bank balance at the expense of our own...... now to find time to get to the machine and turn the purchases into something. Don't go to this shop with your husbands - unless of course they are willing to part company with their $$$, and be prepared to spend some time. We were there for 3 hours!!!

We also went to a little shop in St Andrews Street, Invercargill - of which I cannot remember the name. It was something like "New Vintage" It was tiny and very "Amy Butler". Quite lovely. I purchased some lovely linen to make a skirt - and I go the new Amy Butler book.

Riversdale Arts

Feels like Home
Into the Light
Ophiir Bridge

I have been invited to exhibit at the Riversdale Arts Exhibition in July. Here are the pieces I am sending. I don't seem to have done any new work for a long time - its time to get the studio sorted and get some new work done.

School Production

Here is a copy of the cover of the High School Production's Programme. It is a copy of one of Hayley's pieces from last years NCEA 2 Design Panel. That is actually her in the background. There was no credit anywhere on the programme to say it was her work!!

Quilting Gallery

Here is a fantastic website/blog with some awesome tutorials on it - well worth a look http://quiltinggallery.com

Layers Lunch

Today was Lunch with the Layers group, an off-shoot of COOTS. Five members from our area have formed this group to cater to our insatiable need for knowledge and encouragement in the fibre field.

I did not like my Karen Eckmeier Quilted Village (sorry can't find the original photo of it) so the Layers girls encouraged me to turn it over and cut it up. So here it is. I have gessoed a piece of the front (coloured) and a pieced of the back (black) - I quite like the effect, I'm not sure what to do with it next but it was quite liberating to chop it up and I won't be daunted in the future to do this again as I can see more potential.

This next piece is from a Textured Landscapes workshop I did at the Picton MiniSymposium. I didn't like this much either so once again I chopped it - it is in need of some stitching now but I like it more.

Here are some more pictures from my Layers book. You may notice a theme here - I am fixated with architecture at the moment - maybe driven by the fact that we are currently not living in a home of our own - we are renting and we always get a bit unsettled. I am fascinated with old buildings, decaying and no longer used, flakey paint, etc. These next pictures are painted and stamped papers, writing about derelict abandoned buildings and photocopied photographs of the Old Drapery at Ophir. I ripped these up and wove them back together.

The next two are layers of felt, magazine pictures, transfer dyes, writing, organza, and photographs

These lunches are great - we go away thoroughly recharged and ready to produce more work. The emphasis is more on exploring and playing and not necessarily producing a "finished piece" we are all heading in different theme directions.

We are having a COOTS exhibition at the Festival of Colour in Wanaka next year. For our Artist's statements we are using the "I am from .... " poem. It has been fantastic, insipiring and different way to introduce ourselves.

Finished

I have finished my "Shaded Face" from the workshop I did with Anna Williams She is a great teacher and if you ever get the chance to take a class with her go for it. This class was done at the Picton Mini symposium at Anzac Weekend.

COOTS at Kinloch

A couple of weeks ago the Coots (Central Otago Outside the Square) ladies went to Kinoch Lodge for the weekend. We made Felt (wet felt). Here is of my pieces, a book Cover front and back. It was a fabulous weekend and we achieved alot. Some of us used an embellisher machine and as a result three ladies put their order in to purchase one.

After Sassaman

John Gehl - Metal Artist

Ruth Gehl Sunflowers
Fiona McArthur Honouring Peonies
Doris Schoen Nasturtium
Jenny Tayler Tomatoes
Merilyn Williams Dandelions Galore

Dorota Fraser Artichoke
Sheila Emslie A Quilted Garden I and II

Anne Carter Magnolias
Heather Munro La Royale

Robyn Van Reenan - Kowhai
Jenny Taylor - Hallucinogenic Poppies
Wendy Ward - Hellebores
Alison Naylor - Singapore Orchid

We have finally finished our pieces from a Jane Sassaman Workshop in January 2007. The finished quilts are being exhibited at the Cloakroom Gallery in Queenstown until Monday 2 June. Here are some pics of the quilts.