The Great Breeze of Language

A couple of weeks ago I visited Te Papa and discovered that John Reynolds' work Cloud has been installed up in the top gallery. I'd read lots about the work but nothing compared with standing beneath the piece, looking at it swirling around the walls.

Just breath-taking. It did for me that day everything that great art should - took me out of my head and the worries that I had that day and into a totally different place where I was spell bound by the ideas and visual images in it.

The work is a series of small canvases which Reynolds has written words on from Harry Orsman's New Zealand Dictionary - all words that are a special part of our version of the English language - and then he has formed them into a enormous cloud of words. Our very own land of the long white cloud - a great breeze of our language.

See it here on a blog announcement from Te Papa. It even has a short clip from You Tube of John Reynolds talking about the installation of the work.

Be warned though - this is only a pale introduction to the real thing - it really has to be seen! If you are in Wellington made sure you make a bee line there before it leaves at the end of August.

Happy endings and exciting beginnings

Now that I'm firmly focused on the To Do list I'm surprising myself with how productive I can be. Its strange, but I tend to not get to the last few things that will complete something - I guess its a form of procrastination, or maybe just a sign that I get another idea and find it hard to resist the temptation to move onto the next thing.

First up was the quilt I started at the Mini-symposium in Picton last Easter (I say this as a reminder to myself on the perils of procrastination). All that remained to be done was the binding on the top edge of the quilt, a label and hanging sleeve - not exactly a lot. I'd had it in my mind that I would finish the top edge with binding made of the blue linen - but when I finally tried it, it just didn't work. In fact a more honest quilter would say it looked awful! So after some pondering I finished it without a binding at all - it is turned to the back on the to edge and I really like the look of it. It's now hanging happily on the wall inside out back door and has been admired already - why did I wait so long to finish it? Who knows!

Next up was "Friday Morning Coffee". This has been waiting for me to find just the right pieces of tatting to finish the top off. I took it to our Quilting Guild several months ago and told people I was looking for some tatted pieces and have since been very kindly given a number of beautiful pieces, some of which are now on the top of this quilt. The beautiful piece above was given to me by a dear friend who was given it by a customer at the quilting shop she works at. The customer asked Marilyn if she knew someone who would appreciate it - and lucky, lucky me it rapidly found it's way to my house.

The only piece I have put on it that isn't tatting is the piece above which my mother gave to me and told me was called hairpin lace as it was made on (you guessed it) hairpins.I'm now in the process of putting the finishing touches on this quilt and then only have the label to - more photos and the full story to follow in due course.

Of course temptation (and ideas) got the better of me and I also started something new - it grew out of an idea I had having pondered the odd combination of those photos of the heat mats from my daughter's science class and the amazing work of Rex Ray. It has a tentative title of "Pigeon Holes" to remind of a previous life of mine as a recruitment consultant. I'm thinking its going to be part of a triptych, as I still have other ideas I want to play with.

Here's a detail of it.... it was so much fun
and so satisfying to not only finish things, but to start something new as well. Here's to many more happy endings and exciting beginnings!

Getting to the 'To Do' List

I've given myself a good talking to over the last week and got cracking again behind the sewing machine - and not before time! First off the list was the collaborative quilt that I had started with my daughter. I'm pleased to say that it is now finished
and only waiting for the label to be written on by my daughter so it can be sewn onto the quilt.

Naturally the birthday girl it has been made for hasn't seen it, but both her parents have and they are certain it's going to be a complete hit. Funnily enough my daughter came home from school this week and told me that she and her friend had been talking about the impending birthday and what sort of present she would like. The birthday girl had told her that all she knew was that she didn't want any store vouchers from people, as no thought at all had to be put into these, and she would far rather have a gift from the heart, even if it only cost $1. From this we concluded that our gift would qualify.

I'm rather looking forward to seeing her face when she opens it up.

On a completely different note, I've just been listening to an item on National Radio about choreographer Ann Dewey who is developing a new dance work on why people knit. All the costumes and even the set have been knitted by 25 people spread across the world and Ann has also taught all the dancers to knit as part of the process. Unfortunately it looks like the it is only be performed in Auckland, at the moment. It sounds like a marvel and just the thing to lift us from the gloom of a cold winter. Perhaps a trip to Auckland is in order....

A little bit of something I fancy

It's a long weekend here (always a favourite) and while I'm sitting here waiting for my daughter to arrive home from babysitting, I thought I'd pop up a couple of shots of some inspiration from Symposium - soon to feature in my neglected sketchbook I suspect.

Of course they did cause some concern with the aforementioned daughter - she thought they looked just like the heat diffusers they use in science (which of ocurse they are). I on the other hand saw great texture and shape that I want to get into textiles.

As I always try to tell the kids, its just all in the way you look at things.

Sensational Symposium - Onto the Classes

Welcome to neglected blog - life had been a whirlwind of bad weather, sick children, distractions and very little stitching..... But enough.... as promised more on Symposium

So after two days of being an angel it was time for me to get my sleeves rolled up and get going myself.

The first class I did was a one day class with Merrilyn George. I really had a hard time deciding what classes to enrol for at Symposium but I knew I really wanted to do a class with Merrilyn - it was just that I didn't think I could fit in her two day class on Patterns of Polynesia, which one of my friends did and loved. So the class I did with Merrilyn was 'Sacred Art in a Secular Country' which focused on the painting of icons. I wanted to learn Merrilyn's technique for transferring images from the computer to fabric. Then we painted the icons directly onto the fabric. The icon I choose is revered in Russia and Merrilyn told us that she is worshipped as part of the preparation on Friday for the sabbath. She is also regarded as a saint for all things womanly. I was instantly entranced with her, given Friday is the day I try to keep aside for coffee with close friends and then as many dedicated hours in my sewing room as I can squeeze in before the kids get home from school.

I decided that my icon needed to be enhanced with the womanly skill of embroidery to properly play homage to her status - and that's why mine (the icon on the right in the photo above) is still a work in progress..... She will be the patron saint of my sewing room - who could want more?

Next up was two days with Sandra Meech who was over from the UK to teach. I felt very lucky to be in her class - 'Inspired Sketch and Stitch Books'. We were flat out right from the moment we started painting papers and into our sketch books to create surfaces to work on.

We went through most of the exercises that Sandra has in her book, Creative Quilts. The exercises were based on materials that we had to bring to class that we were interested to develop up into textile pieces. It was great fun and gave me tons of ideas - you can see that the curves attracted me, as ever

It was great - and utterly exhausting, and now I just need to get back into that sewing room and get onto it before it all disappears from my grasp

Sensational Symposium - Where do I begin?

I've been having such fun visiting quilts on Amy's Quilt Festival that its taken me a while to get back onto posting my own news. There are so many marvellous things to tell about the 2009 NZ Quilt Symposium, which we have just hosted here in Wellington over Easter - infact there are so many marvellous things that it has taken me a couple of weeks to recover from the excitement, the sensory overload, the people to catch up with, the great classes to attend, the wonderful exhibitions, and the odd glass of wine or two with friends at happy hour. In short it was great - and also exhausting.

We had over 1200 women here in Wellington for classes which were held over 5 days, with tutors from all over NZ, Australia, the UK, USA and even from Africa. There was 200 days of teaching done by our tutors. There was, literally, something for everyone.

I volunteered to assist for two days in classes, in the role of "Angel" - as I said to the classes I assisted with I was somewhat misnamed! On my first day I helped out in a class with Sandi Cummings - and I was delighted to be assigned to her as I have previously made two quilts from her book "Thinking Outside the Block" which this class was also named. I had great fun making those quilts for my sons and it was great to see her demonstrate her techniques of cutting and inserting fabrics into blocks to create something unexpected.Several of the samples that she showed used fabrics which changed in colour and tone across the face of the fabric which bought real interest to the blocks that she created. I know I have a number of these type of fabrics up in the stash which I have always tended to use them by cutting out the particular colour or tone I am looking for at the time. These gave me some great ideas for experimenting and playing with. I spent a lot of the day tearing around sorting out sewing machines, food and other things that can sometimes cause teething problems on the first day of the big event. Obviously I did enough to keep both the tutor and students happy as I was instructed to try and get myself reallocated to them the next day.

The Angel who was allocated to them on day two told me that when she arrived they all looked at her and gave out very disappointed sounds - she didn't seem so pleased when she met me, but on the up side she said I had them so well trained that they hardly needed a thing done for them. I snuck back into the class to see Sandi's slide show of her work (I'd spent quite a lot of time getting the projector set up and ready to go so figured I had earned the show). It was so worth it - her work was just stunning. If you aren't familiar with it you can see lots on her website.

My tutor on day two was Ineke Berlyn, from the UK. She was teaching a one day class on making recylced jeans bags and other bags. It was a very small class so it was quite the opposite from the day before with not so much for me to do. It really had my fingers itching for the piles of old denim that I still have stacked up in the sewing room, left over from all those curtains that I made for the boys last winter.The denim bags were great and the other bags she made, such as the next two photos, offered up a ton of ideas for trying. The fabrics on these were fused onto a heavy canvas to create pictures and then sewn over to secure and embellish them.Ineke is Dutch, but has lived in the UK for many years, so the bag with tulips was an obvious one for her to try out. I particularly loved this one and want to give something similar a try. I can see myself carrying it to work through the Botanical Gardens come next spring when the tulips and magnolias bloom - and the time frame might even be achievable!Come the end of the class Ineke told me I'd been such a good girl that she gave me a full set of her notes and patterns from the class so I could try some out myself. Maybe the name of Angel wasn't so inappropriate after all (ha ha)! You should also check out Ineke's work if you don't know it. She makes beautiful stylised landscapes and also does lots of work with sheer fabrics.

Probably the highlight from the day for me was the thermofax screen I bought from Ineke. She demonstrated it with one student in the class using it to print doiley like patterns onto denim for the bag she made. You won't be surprised to hear I found this completely irresitable. Stay posted for the pictures once I start the experiments. I'm thinking my old jeans will shortly be in for a major make-over!

Stay tuned - next time I'll post about the classes I did and what I made.

Blogger Quilt Festival - My Favourite Quilt

How exciting - a quilt festival that I can put my quilt into! We have just finished our National Quilt Symposium here in Wellington (lots of posts to come on that) and I can tell you that it was wonderful. My only regret (and it is a small one) is that I wasn't able to submit my quilt into the exhibition. Unfortunately it was just a few months too old to be eligible.

So I was very excited this evening when I found this quilt festival that is being hosted by Amy at Park City Girl. What fun. What a great idea.

I have posted about this quilt before, and it features on my banner, but it is very special to me as I made it in memory of my maternal grandfather, so I think it bears repeating. My grandfather was a fantastic embroiderer, but it was the family secret. He never wanted people to know that he stitched and would hide what he was working on if anyone ever came to visit - it was the 1940's after all. He used to stitch with my mother and my grandmother, who was also a wonderful seamstress. My mother has dozens of pieces of linen that he stitched and I regard them as priceless family treasures.

Its a large quilt - so not the easiest to get a good shot of it all, so I thought details would be just the thing....This quilt has one piece that was stitched by my grandfather - it was very worn so my mother had cut the cloth up a long time ago. His stitching really was perfect and in many pieces it's difficult to tell the back from the front. The other pieces in the quilt are ones that I have found in second hand shops or been given by friends.

"In My Grandfather's Den" has also started me off on a series of quilts which are similar. It brings me so much pleasure - and really, you can't ask more of a quilt than that.

Have fun at the Festival - I certainly intend to. Make sure you visit them here.