Busy Times–a holiday required

Hello All.  A long time between drinks, but life has been chucking us wobblies as well as some good times, leaving me precious little time to create. 
In between all of it I have been throwing a bit of paint around some paper and fitting in a bit of art work whenever I can.
My house is becoming a trash can as I save all sorts of recyclables and odds and ends that I think may make some kind of arty mark.  Everything is eyed off as a possible stamp, mask or stencil – LOL – nothing is sacred.  Different papers and ephemera are cluttering up the bottom of the cupboard too.  All fun!!!!
Here are some prints from the humble egg carton. 


The end of the celery makes a lovely rose print.
We have a very small vegetable garden now but we managed to grow some beautiful broccoli this winter. 

Last weekend we went out to Leyburn Historical Sprints for my DH’s birthday.  Luckily it was a sunny warm day with no wind – an interesting day out is all I will say, but DH and his brother in law enjoyed it.

DH, Brother in Law, Ian and DH’s sister, Catherine.

A much needed holiday is just around the corner, so until next time, enjoy your arting and crafting
………………Dianne.

A Finish - Old Fashioned Cookery & Handy Gadget

The Ferris Wheel Quilt is FINISHED!!!  YAY!!  Marvellous what a deadline will do.

I hope the recipient likes it and that it brings her much comfort.
It was difficult to get a good shot of it because of it’s length, but this is the best I could do.
Mathematics is not my forte so my DH had to step in and work out a nice arc to dissect the squares for the quilting pattern. I also quilting in the ditch.  In the end, I was happy with the quilting.


We were gifted some green tomatoes by our neighbour.  What to do?  My late maternal grandmother made THE best green tomato pickle, so I rummaged around and found a recipe which I thought might be close to the one she used to make. In the past I have never been able to replicate them. She never had a recipe, and when we asked how to make them, it was ‘just a handful of this, a spoonful of that etc.’

This was the end result and I was really pleased (and surprised) at how good they tasted and how very much like my Nana Mac’s pickles they turned out to be.  We made many, many bottles and we have been gifting them to family and friends who seem to be enjoying them too.  Chuffed with that!

This is one of the handiest tools I have owned.  Gifted to me by a dear friend whose darling husband made it.  Thank you my friend
I use it mainly for guiding patchwork under the foot of the machine and it is better than an awl or unpicker because it hasn’t got the extremely sharp point to accidentally poke yourself with.  It seems to grip onto the fabric too and stops the piece from slipping.  It is also very useful for poking out corners. 
Are you a pinner or non-pinner?  I used to be a ‘fly by the seat of the pants’ non pinner when I did patchwork, but now I pin obsessively and I am much more pleased with the results. 
Until next time………happy crafting……….Dianne.

D Days – Deadlines * Drawing * Done

It has been a busy time  here at EPQ central. 

There has been family stuff going on and lots of frantic work being done due to deadlines.  Thank goodness for those DEADLINES – it seems to motivate me to get things DONE.

The first thing done and finished was the art quilt for our exhibition in September.  The theme was ‘Botanica’.

Here is the reveal of my piece “From the Seed”.  Lately I have been fascinated with seeds and seed pods and the first thing that came to mind for botanica was this very subject. 

Readers may recall when Shirley and I experimented with dyeing fabrics from botanicals.  It was loads of fun with some success and some we won’t talk about.  Some of the fabrics I have used in this piece are from those experiments.

As you may know, I have been doing lots of collage both in fabric and paper this year, and after seeing Jane La Fazio’s work, I was inspired to lay down the foundation of the piece with fabric collage and use lots of hand stitching and other techniques to bind the components all together.  Make sure you visit Jane’s site HERE and go to her gallery to see her beautiful fabric collage pieces and other creative works.

The top of my commissioned quilt is DONE.  It is the Ferris Wheel pattern from Karen Griska and it was loads of fun to put together – albeit time consuming.

Now just for the quilting which I hope to achieve over this weekend.

I can DRAW! 

When Lilian and I were playing with painting over the school holidays, I refurbished some of my background pieces in my little repurposed diary art journal.

 

This background was too busy and there seemed to be nowhere to go with it, so I made up my mind that I could draw something really simple and I did.  The pear was drawn with a charcoal pencil and then I filled the background in with gesso.

Another busy background was painted over with this white urn which I splattered with dark grey paint.  If you say you can draw  - YOU CAN (so they say).  My next aim is to draw a face in one of my journals.

I am quite fond of this collage I did some time back incorporating some really cute selvedges given to me by a friend. The dressmaker model clip is from Karen at the Graphics Fairy. 

In the past two weeks we have celebrated a life and a marriage.

Our dear brother in law, Tony,  passed away suddenly and he will be sadly missed by all of his family and friends.  He was just 59 years and 11 months.  Tony was dealt quite a bit of rubbish in his life and he always faced things head on and got on with it and never complained.  A valuable lesson we have learned from him. RIP Tony

My DH’s nephew got married and we celebrated with them this past weekend. We thought we were going to their engagement party and they surprised us and got married.  It was a beautiful day.  Congratulations to Daniel and Elisha – a very handsome couple.

Lilian enjoyed herself at the wedding on the jumping castle. You can see around her mouth where she really enjoyed some orange slushies too  LOL.

Until next time – happy creating – Dianne.

Out and About

It has been a busy couple of weeks with appointments and a trip to Brisbane but at last, today, I have a day at home to catch the breath.
Our beautiful daughter, Bonnie, turned 30 this past Monday.  We went to Brisbane and took her to lunch on Sunday and spoiled her a little bit.
This is the card I made for her with one of my new stencils from Crafter’s Workshop.  The stencils were on sale at one of my fave online stores for all things crafty , Craft Online.com.au.  Their service is exceptional and they have a really good overall selection of scrapbooking and craft supplies. 
  
This stencil has a whole lot of possibilities.  I painted the background of the card in the gold colour and used dylusions sprays over the stencil in purple and aqua.  After this photo I toned down the ‘30’ a bit and made it blend in a bit more.  The flowers were accented with a white gel pen from pentel.

When it comes to coffee, I am very conservative and usually order a cappuccino or a latte.  After our lunch at the very nice ‘Boathouse’  at the old Regatta Hotel, I indulged in my fist macchiato.  It could have been hotter for my liking but it was enjoyable and I would definitely have another. It is very strong though and nearly blew my socks off – didn’t need any more caffeine for the rest of the day.  Luke (Bonnie’s fiancee) had a cold coffee which was in layers.  Condensed milk on the bottom, double shot coffee and a top layer of cream.  His could have been more chilled to make it more enjoyable.

It was a glorious sunny winter’s day yesterday, so DH and I went for a little drive to Warwick to take in some of the Jumpers and Jazz Festival which is on all this week.
A lot of trees in the main street were yarn bombed and there were some very creative ones.  The main street of Warwick was ablaze with colour.


The Town Crier was there outside of City Hall and he introduced the Warwick High School band who played some jazzy numbers.
It was lovely to see all the girl saxophonists.  When I learned saxophone at age 13 it was a bit of a novelty.  There weren’t many girls playing saxophone in those years.  Hearing the saxophone still evokes wonderful memories of my teenage years spent playing the sax in a couple of different bands and enjoying entertaining others.  Perhaps I will entertain again one day – in the old people’s home?  LOL. 
There were 2 wonderful exhibitions in the Warwick Art Gallery.  I was thrilled to bits to be able to see the work of Cas Holmes up close and in the flesh.  Her work is an inspiration to me. Do visit her website and be blown away by the work that Cas achieves
.
By Cas Holmes.  I think this work was called From the Tea Garden.
There were many more wonderful works of textile art in the Exposition Exhibition by six Australian artists and six international artists.  Of course, I took many more pictures for inspiration.
What about this ‘Knitchen’

This display was amazing!!  Everything in this kitchen was either covered in knit or crochet or made entirely by knitting and/or crocheting.  Yes, even the tiles on the floor.

In the Rose Shopping mall we found another textile exhibition featuring the humble Tea Bag.  The pieces made by the artists were quite extraordinary.

These two pieces were made by Svea Bjornsson of Federal, NSW.  Svea must have drank lots of cups of teas!!

The artist, Jaunita Wellings of Clifton Qld called this piece Zen Tea Tangled.  Very clever.

I loved this piece called Zen Garden by Rhonda Jenner of Clifton Qld. 
A wonderful day out.

Until next time, happy creating……………………….Dianne

Stamping, Printing , Playing & a Quilt Finish

Lilian and I had so much fun playing with our art stuff last week.

We made our own stamps with adhesive foam stuck to pieces of cardboard and also some stamps from foam trays.  We didn’t have a geli plate so we used a plexi glass shelf from an old fridge as our printing plate.  It worked okay, but probably not with the same results you might get from a geli plate.

Here are some prints we did on paper. They will make interesting backgrounds for collage.

This is the foam stamp I made from a supermarket display tray.  I used the end of a paint brush to make the grooves and I was really happy with how it turned out. I have done a pattern on both sides of the tray – good value!!

 

Another stash buster quilt and still the stash is far from diminishing.  The scraps just seem to multiply.

This is Luke’s quilt – made for our younger daughters fiancee for his 30th birthday.  In the top left hand corner I have quilted a surfboard in perle cotton as he loves the ocean (hence the colours chosen for the quilt),  and surfing. 

Each seam has been embroidered with herringbone stitch in perle cotton and the quilt has been tied.  Some of the larger blocks were quilted also.

Grandad put Lilian up in the tree for a photo shoot.  She is not scared of being high up in the tree anymore!!

Until next time….happy creating………………………Dianne.