Nearly ready!

Just finishing off the last few bits and pieces before the Whitireia residency starts. One article for New Zealand quilter for their 'websearch' page and a few things to post to exhibitions and then I'm off and running with the new techniques. I hope to have the first experiments on this blog on monday evening 29th Feb., if not before. If anyone who reads this has any ideas for new things to try, please let me know. I have some heat set charcoal donated by Jenny Bowker and some 'colour intense' Derwent pencils which work on silk, which I will be starting with.

Last exhibition piece

This is the last quilt for the exhibition 'Southern Lands' curated by Dijanne Cevaal and going to Germany and France. I managed to get the whole lot in the post today - 3 day courier to Germany. Not cheap but hopefully safe. I also managed to get the commission for the Wellington company done and in to their office. Now I am excavating the floor to find all the bills and reciepts I have left all around the house. I might even manage to cook some dinner for the kids tonight before rushing out to a meeting. I don't know if anyone will read this blog but over the next 5 weeks I intend to put the results of my daily experiments which I'll be doing as part of my 'artist residency' at Whitireia. I'm happy to share techniques if anyone wants to have a go at the same time.

Southern lands exhibition quilts

Here are three quilts which I have made for the 'Southern lands' exhibition curated by Dijanne Cevaal, which will be shown in Europe. I need to make one more of these 50cm square quilts before tomorrow so that I can post them. The top one is called 'Waterways' and was inspired by a photo sent to me by a geologist friend who likes to use Google earth to home in on old ruins and interesting textures.

Commission no.2

I have also just finished a commission for a company. They wanted a quilt made of squares of different types of fabrics, lots of textures i.e corduroy, silk, leather, furnishing fabrics, cheesecloth.
I put out a call to friends to ask for shades of mid to dark blue in different weights of fabric and managed with their help to collect enough of a range that I didn't have to buy 20cm lengths in order to get 3inch squares. Thanks Coastal Quilters and Jude Hutton!

It is quite a traditional quilt in dark to mid tones but has white machine embroidery over the top. It wouldn't win any prizes in a quilt show but is going to be changed using computer imagery and have images projected over the top. Part of the brief was that it had to look 'handmade'.

Hopefully I will eventually get to see what they use it for. Like most commissions, the time frame was quite short and I did have to extend my working day to 2am on a couple of nights. Housekeeping and cooking has been non-existent the last week.

Long time no blog

I didn't realise it had been so long since I wrote anything here. I have been working on several commissions, a set of quilts to go to Germany for an exhibition which Dijanne Cevaal is curating called 'Southern Lands' and I have had bits and pieces of casual work. I just forgot about the blog. However, for the month of March I will be 'Artist in Residence' at Whitireia Polytechnic helping the textile department get their new Textile Mastercraft course off the ground. I get a room to work in, the use of the studios when they are not being used for teaching and a chance to take time for some experimentation with techniques that I have always wanted to try but have never made time for.

So I am currently trying to finish all the outstanding exhibition and commission pieces. Here is the very nearly completed grasses piece which is going to the U.S as soon as photography is completed. The first picture is a detail shot, I forgot that I needed to put the photos in first then do the writing!