Textile Events In New Zealand

The next New Zealand Quilt Symposium is in Taupo which is in the centre of the North Island of new Zealand. The dates are 18-23rd July 2013. Click here if you would like to register to receive information about Taupo symposium. 

There is also a mini symposium to be held in Nelson in 2012. Patches of Tasman will be held from 12th - 16th April 2012. I will be teaching my 'Modern Wagga', 'Fabric Painting & Printing' and 'Putting it into Perspective' classes there.

Queenstown Quilt Symposium

I have just got back to Wellington after a week as a tutor at the Remarkable Symposium in Queenstown. We all had a lovely time and it was nice to catch up with old friends (and new) in such a beautiful place. The autumn colours were really beautiful.

I arrived 15 mins before the tutors meeting on Monday because the plane was delayed  due to high winds in Wellington. There was snow on the mountains as we flew over the South Island.   I then worked 5 days without a day off to look around. There was an exhibition at a church that I never even managed to see because by the time I finished in the evening it was usually too late to get to it. It was very frustrating to not be able to see all the exhibitions but the quilts I did see were pretty amazing.

This morning I managed 1.5 hours looking in the Queenstown shops so I feel like I've done more than teach, eat, talk and stay at the hotel.

My students did amazing work in the 'Next Step' class which was on Tuesday and Wednesday.  My class sample for them looked like this

and the students were warned beforehand that their designs would not look anything like mine because of the process we would be following.

Here are some of their designs, published on this blog with the students permission. NB. If you made one of these quilts please email me you name so I can put it beside your quilt.

I was blown away by how different they all are. Thank-you to the Remarkable symposium 'Next step' class for letting me share these photos on my blog.

On Wednesday I taught the class' Modern Wagga'. A wagga is a 'utility quilt' often made with old clothes, tailors samples or whatever is to hand.  Here are some examples of quilts made in my class.

 We were lucky to have a small class and a large classroom so each student was able to use 3 or 4 tables to construct their 'wagga' and each was at least single bed sized which made them hard to photograph even when standing on a chair. Again, if your quilt is here tell me the colour and your name and I will attribute your work.



Here are some images from the flight home

Costume making

It has been a busy couple of months with study for the costume course and a few extras. We have to do an industry placement and I have been working with Mr Peter Rigby who is a well known Wellington character and Tailor to make a jacket for a member of Alf's Imperial Army. Each week I have been going over to the Hutt Valley to learn how to do the next step in making the jacket. I have never made a mans jacket before so I have been learning about shoulder pads and sleeve head caps!

The jacket is pretty lurid and has strange badges and buttons but I have learned a lot about its construction and fitting. pretty much every seam has been unpicked and resewn at least twice! Unfotunately I don't have a male mannekin so it doesn't show how fitted it is (I tried it on my son but he is so skinny it looked ridiculous).

As part of the course I have also made a corset and combinations and am in the process of designing and making costumes for dance. After that a few of us will start making enormous hats for a show in May.

Not much time for quilting but I will be teaching at the quilt symposium in Queenstown so am making class samples and writing notes for a new class on Sashiko stitching.

Tsunami in Japan

We were glued to the TV on Friday night watching coverage of the Tsunami in Northern Japan then started emailing our Japanese friends to see whether they are all alright (yes but shaken mostly).

Today it became more obvious which areas were affected and one of the worst places seems to be Matsushima which we went to in January and really liked. I bought two Kokeshi dolls in a little shop there from an elderly couple and I do hope they managed to evacuate the shop before the tsunami hit.  Here are some photos of Matsushima.

Costume Construction Course

Hi everyone
Last week went by in a whirl. The whole week was filled with orientation activities, done in mixed groups of acting students, entertainment technology (backstage) students and theatre design students as well as us costume makers. One of the days we had to run around wellington on the Amazing Race. My team insisted on running and I felt bad that I was holding them up. Here is a photo of the whole of yellow team stuffed into a red phone box.

Above is our 'artsy' photo of the team silhouetted against the architecture in the tallest building in Wellington.

Unfortunately the week was marred by the Christchurch Earthquake. Many of the students had only just arrived in Wellington from Christchurch and were very worried about their families.

Thank goodness this week is normal classes and we can stop running around or putting on group 'plays' (script by committee, aaargghh) and get on with the business of making 'double piping pockets with a flap' - this tailoring class is HARD!

Here are some links to some non-quilting textile events/workshops.

http://www.hellodollies.co.nz/classes.php  Hat-making classes with Jill Taylor

Blog for Leimomi Oakes who is a textile historian and also reproduces historical garments and is a great speaker too

Handmade 2011
This is a weekend of craft classes being held in Wellington at Queens Birthday weekend.

Ghost House

I haven't done much of anything quilty since I got back from Japan as my sewing room is very hard to get into (all the tidying up from Christmas is in my sewing room).

So here is something that caught my eye over the holidays. My son and some of his friends went cycling in the Wairarapa and I was 'support person' for a day. Near Stonehenge Aotearoa (a replica Stonehenge in concrete) is this house which locals call the Ghosthouse. Apparently a local farmer bought the house and transported it to his property in 4 bits. Unfortunately he didn't have the money to get it completely sorted and it has been slowly decomposing ever since the 1980s.

It also reminds me of the Andrew Wyath painting 'Christina's World'. Which seems to be a woman having a picnic in a field until you find out that she is paralysed and has to crawl to the house.

Classes
I have two public classes coming up
Machine Quilting - 20th March 9-4pm
Fabric Dyeing- 20th february 9-4pm

Both are at Tawa College, Wellington, NZ on Sundays. For information and to enrol please go to www.tawacomed.co.nz

Tokyo Quilt Show Flickr slideshow

I hope this works. Click on Tokyo Quilt show photostream at right side of blog.