Exhibition all set up

Tonight, with Tony’s help, I set up my paintings in the Patchwork & Quilting Group’s exhibition which opens tomorrow. The women have some amazing quilts and hand knitting – beautifully crafted goods and really colourful. These women don’t buy into the idea that textile work has to be expensive; many of their materials are sourced from second hand clothing shops. Beautiful silks and cottons and velvets, all for a song.

I have displayed a variety of work, from small abstracts on 4×4 canvas at just $24 through to a couple of 15×50″ Tuscan landscapes in the $300+ range. You just never know who might be passing through Patea during the festival. It’s an incredibly busy time in Taranaki

Jelly Roll Quilts

I am reading a lovely new book called “Jelly Roll Quilts” by Pam & Nicky Lintott. Am I a quilter? Umm, no. Not yet anyway! But that doesn’t matter because this book is just so lovely to look at. The photos and colours are in inspiration regardless of the medium.

It’s something I have said before – I think one of the joys of being an artist, and one of the learned skills, is to really look, to really see, the world around us. I read books about anything just to see the world and have it inspire me. What have you *really* looked at today?

I bought it at Minerva in Wellington, a beautiful textile art bookshop and gallery. Fabulous, but totally lethal to the credit card 🙂

And doing some quilting

Never done this before, but figured how hard can it be?.

*the colours in the photo are brighter and redder than irl*

The backing is lime green, and the front panels are based on bright pink felt. The quilting lines are done in blue/green variegated thread. The bottom layer of the front has strips of ribbon and fabric fused onto the felt.

The centre pink felt panel has a layer of bondable Angelina fibres, and on top of that some Tyvek that I painted and ironed to crinkle and shrink.

The only bit I am stuck on is how to do the binding but I borrowed a couple of library books today. All good fun 🙂