I did enjoy your choice Rosemary as it was colourful and full of fun and I really enjoyed working on my piece. The first thought that came into my mind was to do something  playful and colourful and stuck with this idea.  A Juggling tortoise?  Great fun and in my first drawing I incorporated some of his images into the three balls but they didn't really work for me so I used some African designs,  which are similar to the Mexican designs but not quite so I worked around the two.  Really enjoyed doing this piece and used colours I love to work with.

Fiesta - Inspired by Fernando Andriacci

I was not too inspired by this artist's images, but I did really love his colours, so that is what I used as my inspiration for one of my "Colour Explosions." I have a show coming up next week, so this was a great opportunity to expand my colour palette and make a new piece to kill 2 birds with one stone. This piece is made of dozens of small pieces collaged onto a background and heavily machine quilted with added hand  stitching as well. It is mounted on a painted canvas. 

This is my inspiration piece:

Pukeko

I loved the choice of this artist - it was such fun to play with his ideas.  I wish I had had a bit longer to work on the design, but I immediately thought of New Zealand when I saw lots of spirals in his work, which fitted in fine with the theme I was working on before I took some time out.  Of course, New Zealand is famous for it's birds - any mammals on the islands have been introduced at a relatively recent date. I selected two of our favourite birds from my photos of our trip there, a Pukeko and a Red Stilt, and added Mick and I into the picture.  I kept the birds reasonably realistic, though with a few extra spirals.  Perhaps if I get time later I will add more detail to the background.

No stitching on it yet - that will have to wait until I have a studio again.  The picture is slightly brighter than shown here, I ran out of daylight for taking the photo.

One more teaser ........

I have not used all the colours!

Another teaser

Not my usual style but, have I had fun!?  Only two days to go...   Hilary

Back in the fold

It was lovely to catch up with lots of people at the FOQ, especially the members of this group.  I too was beginning to worry that I had left starting this challenge too late - I kept hoping for my new studio area to be ready to use, but alas it's still got no flooring or skirting boards.  So now I have a couple of days to devote to my piece, but still no sewing machines set up.  And I nearly made a fundamental error - it's so long since I have taken part I mis-remembered the size of the challenge.  It was only as I was taping together my 24 inch by 24 inch pattern that I sensed something was wrong and went back to check on the website!  Ah - 16 inch by 16 inch seems much more feasible in the time I have left.

So, my piece is likely to be made using fusible applique, but the chances of getting it quilted before the final date are extremely small.  OK, back to a very hot, stuffy upstairs room to put together the new, smaller, pattern now.

Linda

Rosemary and I have just spent a wonderful week at our National Quilt Festival which was held here in Gauteng and was hosted by both the Golden Rand Quilters Guild (Johannesburg) and Jacaranda Quilters Guild (Pretoria).  I entered a piece in the challenge which was on the Festival theme "Connecting Threads", the only criteria being that it had to be 40cms square (16 inches) and have the colour orange incorporated in the piece and to include the theme into our piece.  My piece was called "Threads of Life" and hence the DNA Helix denoting the threads that connect all life forms.  I was very honoured to receive a Highly Commended in this category which I attach below and which I thought you may be interested to see.

My model for the Andriacci quilt

   This is JP (short for Jean-Pierre) who has kindly agreed to model for my Andriacci quilt. He isn't our cat: in fact I don't think that he is anyone's cat (what cat is come to think of it), as he is very wary of humans, and it has taken two years and a lot of patience for me to get within a metre (and no closer, thank you very much) of him. JP  will also introducing  his 'friends' on the 31st. For once I have finished my quilt early, except for the facing which I will finish tomorrow, as my Mum arrives from England tomorrow and then we are away until reveal day. I hope everyone's quilts are coming along ok. I am looking forward to seeing them.

Counting down to reveal day!

I was thrilled to be able to briefly catch up with Mai-Britt, Linda B and Linda F at the Birmingham Festival last weekend.  I only had one day there and had booked to hear Michael James talking about 45 years of studio work which I thoroughly enjoyed.  I have had 3 workshops with him over the years and he is high up on my list of top quilters.  A really nice man and a fabulously talented quilt artist - well, that's my opinion!

I saw very few quilts and seem to have reached the stage where quilting friends are more important than quilts - can that be possible?  I certainly don't have any more room under my bed for
more large quilts.  Our small 12 pieces are perfect for my life-style now.

What gave me great comfort was that none of us (Linda B excluded as she is on sabbatical) had started our Fernando Andriacci pieces - phew, that was a relief.  I thought I was going to be the odd one out again.  Well done if you have already finished yours.  But, once home, I sat down and started sketching and the ideas kept flowing.  I have settled on #3.  It is in final sketch stage ready to proceed to the next stage - if only life would stop adding things to my to-do list!  This was such fun as I gave myself permission to be as ridiculous as possible!  Did you do the same?

Allison, I hope you have your artist ready to announce straight after reveal day.  This will then be the end of Series 3 which I think has been very successful - I'm sure you all agree.  This also means I need to sit down soon and work out the results of your preferences both theme and size-wise for Series 4.

Enjoy what's left of the summer, happy days,

Hilary

Explosion in a jam factory

   When I first saw Mary Pratt's work I was amazed by photo-like quality of her works and the skill  involved. However, I found it  difficult to find inspiration in her subjects and spent a lot of time wondering how I was going to tackle it. One thing I was attracted to was the glowing colour in this photo of the jars of jam.

I decided to use explore that and included 'bubbles' inspired by the decoration on the glass jars. I used some cold wax, which I bought nearly 30 years ago and never got round to using, to make the bubbles on  pieces of hand dyed lemon cotton and organza at the same time, which I then overdyed with gradations of orange and red. I had wanted the edges to be a little darker, more of a plum colour, but it came out more of a dried blood colour. The hand seed quilting took forever, which is why this is so late. I had thought that I'd started it in plenty of time, but despite quilting almost every day until yesterday, it took a lot longer. My apologies for the lateness.

 

Marmalade

Sorry for the delay in getting this done.  Especially since Mary was my suggestion.

I had taken a picture of the shells left of the Seville oranges which had been boiled, the flesh scraped out, and just jumbled in a bowl awaiting slicing.  I liked the light on the oranges and kept thinking of how Mary used ordinary, day to day images.  I did chicken out trying to paint a clear glass bowl though.  But I did paint it using my Cretacolors, because she was a painter. 

The next artist is .......

Here in New Zealand it is 1st June so I thought I should introduce our next artist .
In 2015 my one son married our daughter-in -law on the Yucatan Peninsular , Mexico . We so enjoyed the chance to go somewhere which we otherwise would not have visited . Because of security issues we stayed in a resort called appropriately "Dream Resort" and we certainly had a dreamlike time there, wedding ceremony included . In one part of the resort's garden  I saw a tiled wall on which were painted fascinating naive animal and bird shapes filled with equally bizarre shapes of other animals and human faces or vaguely geometric shapes . I loved it and took several pictures . Here are a couple of examples :



I found his work happy,  amusing and delightful and have already made a couple of quilts based on it. His name is Fernando Andriacci . So ladies enjoy- with this artist anything goes!! His work is readily available to see online and is very recognisable .