A Change in the Weather Exhibition

Well the exhibition is open now at Minerva Gallery (237 Cuba St, Wellington) and it looks great. The theme is Climate change and we had a scientist, Howard Larsen, from the Ministry For the Environment say a few words to open the exhibition. We had planned to get my husband to do this as he is also a climate change scientist but he was away in Europe on the day.

The quilts are all about 50cm wide by 150cm long which is a good size for that gallery and gives a lot of nice space around the quilts.

The quilt above is mine and is about irrigation.

Making changes

I haven't written here for weeks because life got in the way. In that time I have organised volunteers to paint the inside of the scout hall and spent huge amounts of time down there myself painting and moving stuff back to where it should be and I have waited round for flooring people to arrive to give quotes to put in new lino.
I worked a few days teaching First Aid and then gave 6 weeks notice after a guy pointed a gun at me. It was one of those replica guns that are actually lighters but its pretty hard to tell when you are busy teaching and someone points something like that at you. That was the last straw and I decided that the really good classes no longer outweighed the terrible classes. So maybe I'll live on my savings and make a few quilts for a while.

I'm making a quilt for an exhibition called 'A Change in the Weather' which will be at Minerva Gallery in Cuba St, Wellington, in June and then at The Cloakroom Gallery in Queenstown in July. The theme is Climate Change and the group making the exhibition has varying levels of knowledge on the topic and includes at least one climate change sceptic which should make things interesting.
The exhibitors are all Australian and New Zealand quilters. Wendy Lugg, Margery Goodall, Dijanne Cevaal, Gloria Loughman, Sue Wood, Jenny Bowker, Clare Plug, Clare Smith, Ronnie Martin, Cheryl Comfort, Sue Wademan.

painting the hall (instead of fabric)

I've spent the week getting the local scout hall ready for painting, letting the volunteers from BNZ bank in to paint the hall, painting a second coat on a couple of side rooms, waiting for people to come and measure up rooms for laying lino and getting ready to a working bee on sunday to paint another coat on the main hall. It would be nice to paint some fabric and make a quilt. Maybe next week (after I have made the scout vests).
I have a bad habit of getting everything out of the way before I get on with my quilts, the trouble is - everything else never ends if you are volunteer.

The end of the exhibition

We just took down the Wellington Symposium exhibition and that is a rotten job. These are the things I learned.
1. Some of the most experienced quilters have the worst labels on their quilts (biro on a scrappy piece of fabric with crossings out).
2. Some of the most experienced quilters do not send any packaging to send their quilts home again or any courier tickets to pay to send them home (maybe they thought the quilts would sell?)
3. Send a good solid box or courier packet not a rubbish sack to get your quilt home again. Who knows who will put your masterpiece out with the rubbish.

At the end there was a massive pile of courier parcels and nothing missing . I hope never to be involved with packing up such a large exhibition ever again.
Clare

Pink Hair

I don't know who this man is but he is the ultimate patient husband. he was waiting for his wife to finish shopping in the merchants mall at the Wellington Quilt Symposium. Above him is the sign pointing to shopping.


I always wanted to have pink hair and as I was dared to dye my hair pink at the last symposium, I went ahead this time. I rather like it. It took my husband about half an hour to notice :-)
I am holding up someone's 'spiky tree' top they have made in class at the Wellington Quilt Symposium. I have finished teaching now and tomorrow I will take a class with Ann Fleeton.
Tonight there was a marvellous talk by Libby Lehman about organising your sewing room. Her room was so organised that after a while I felt like banging my head against the seat in front. It was very humorous but mission impossible for me.

Wellington Quilt Symposium

I have been helping to hang the quilts for one of the exhibition halls at for the Quilt Symposium. It looks really good and I learnt a huge amount about hanging an exhibition and making it look good. Kathy Morrison was the exhibition designer and she must have spent weeks moving all the little pictures of the quilts around to find the right ones to hang together and the exact spacing between them. Here is a picture of the quilt that I have in the exhibition. I only entered one because that is all I had at the time.

reverse stitching

Yesterday I quilted half a quilt using straight lines about 3 mm apart. Today I am unpicking them because the batting was too puffy and the backing got more and more tangled. I was trying to save money so used what I had, instead of buying what I needed. Poo