TIME FLIES

This year has flown by in a flurry of activities - babies, quilts to finish, artwork to make, groups to go to and lovely weekends away.

Last weekend I was able to go with my patchwork group to Kurri Kurri in the Hunter region for four days of sewing, chatting and eating, with a small amount of walking and op shopping thrown in for good measure.

The view from my sewing machine was to a small vineyard and some lovely trees. There are probably kangaroos eating the grass but they are too far away. The place is absolutely beautiful, lots of bush around the perimeter and a large mob of kangaroos wandering around everywhere! The wildlife to be wary of are the Plovers who are very protective of their space.

The morning fog was eerie as I walked to breakfast. It soon cleared to a lovely, warm sunny day, so unusual for this time of year.

The best part about going away is not having to think about or shop for food and then not having to cook and clean up afterwards.

The staff at the Hunter Academy were wonderful and cheery, the morning and afternoon teas yummy, and the dinners were terrific. Those who had special diets were really well looked after.





Last light was glorious as well. All in all
a wonderful time away.

My small group from ATASDA - Frayed - is planning an exhibition in August next year. We are trying to motivate one of our members to take part and we have challenged her to make a black and white scarf. We are all taking part in the challenge and I hope we are able to come up with a few more challenges to make the exhibition interesting.

Here is my first black and white scarf, which I have given away. It is wet felted with circles of light grey (not really white) on both sides. Now I have to make

another one - it shouldn't be too hard as I have lots of ideas going round in my brain!

Sydney Quilt Show

The Sydney Quilt Show is about to start and the preparation behind the scenes is enormous. Last Saturday was the Judging Day and a team of very excited volunteers arrived in the rain to set up and get the ball rolling. Quilts were everywhere and people were unpacking, laying out, repacking and getting the next lot ready for judging. It is a fun but exhausting day and there is lots of excitement as quilts are chosen and photographed.

Tomorrow is set up day at Glebe Island and there will be many more volunteers on hand to hang the quilts and make sure everything is ship shape for Wednesday.

I have two quilts in the show this year and am looking forward to seeing them hung.

Deconstructed screen printing

Last weekend I attended an ATASDA workshop with Lin Wilson teaching us deconstructed screen printing.

It was a fun day with lots of really interesting screens being made and that wow factor when the print was pulled. It is amazing the different effects that can be achieved with such ordinary things - placemats, string, rubber bands, a shirt! (This was a really fantastic result).

Today I have been washing out and rinsing the fabric after batching in the sun for the last couple of days. They are now hanging on the line drying:

   

I really enjoyed this workshop and am very happy with the results. I can see a couple of pieces being used for a future challenge entitled "Nature's Trail" with my group "Frayed".

I still have a screen ready to put into fabric but I think it will have to wait until after our holiday.

Lesley Rippon Retrospective

Today I went to Lesley Rippon's exhibition at the Royal Art Society's gallery at North Sydney, together with members of my ATASDA group Frayed. We have been meeting together for three months now and decided an excursion would be a great idea - an opportunity to get out and about and also to get to know each other a little better.

Lesley's exhibition was a wonderful display of her art work and how she has developed and changed over the years. Her early work was from the 1970's and her pieces progressed through to the present day.

There were watercolours, oils, mixed media, textile pieces and combinations of all of these. Her work is still developing even though she is 79! It would seem that Lesley sees no boundaries as far as art is concerned. She uses old and new techniques and is constantly experimenting with new products, thanks to contacts she has made throughout her art career.

It was a refreshing exhibition and also encouraged me to look further into using different techniques in the one piece. It was also great to be able to get up close and look at the finer detail of her work and she the different techniques used.

After our visit we walked up to Blues Point Road and found a lovely cafe for lunch. All in all a great way to spend a day with friends.

Sydney Quilt Show

SYDNEY QUILT SHOW

I was very surprised and excited to receive two awards at the Sydney Quilt Show for my quilt Red Sherbet. This year the Quilters' Guild of NSW Inc had a special category for Red & White quilts. I received 2nd Prize in the Red & White Category, Contemporary/Art. This was truly amazing to me, but even better than that was the Excellence in Domestic Machine Quilting Award! This award covers the machine quilted quilts for the whole show. It was really hard for me to accept that the judges thought my quilt was good enough for this award. Even harder when I looked at the other quilts at the show. I am now settling in to the idea that it's ok for ME to receive this award - I worked hard to quilt it and enjoyed the process immensely.

Red Sherbet

The quilt was designed by Cheryl Arkison and was in her book "A Month of Sundays". Cheryl was excited about my award and I thank her for giving me permission to exhibit the quilt.

Now to think about what to enter in next year's show - it seems like a good time to tackle some of the UFO's I have in my cupboard!

Christmas is almost here

This year has been very full! The birth of two new grandchildren has added to the weekly activities with our usual get-togethers on a Tuesday plus a few other baby sitting occasions.

I have entered the world of art, art journaling and sketch booking this year. It has been a very exciting journey, learning all about the myriad forms of journaling that goes on around the world. There are so many blogs about these different forms of journaling that one can spend the whole day looking at them. I have to restrict myself or else another week has gone by and I haven't accomplished anything.

So far this year I have been very slowly working through Betty Edwards "Drawing from the Right Side of the Brain" which has told me that I can draw, I must needed to learn how to see. I have enrolled in two on-line workshops - one by Design Matters on Sketchbooks and another by Jane LaFazio on Sketching and Watercolour. These courses have been really great and I hope to continue next year with Design Matters and finish their full course.

Learning about watercolours has been really fun. I have always loved the effect of watercolour painting - the lovely washes of subtle colour and the delicacy that can be achieved. There is no doubt that my efforts are very basic at this stage but I will definitely persevere with this particular medium and hope to become quite competent. Below is a Mango that I painted as part of Janes's course.

 It was quite hard to get the colours blending as it was a large area and the paint dried very quickly as the temperature was around 30C that day.

The year had flown with Christmas less than two weeks away. It is time to look forward and see what next year will bring.

I found a journaling group called The Documented Life Project and have decided to join this group and follow along with the weekly prompts to see how my journaling will progress. A side group of this I found is Documented Faith which is a Christian group doing a journal with a Biblical focus. As my word for next year is FOCUS I this would be a great thing to do a well. So a full year ahead with, I hope, a really good Focus to start with. I do pray that my life will be Christ centred this next year and also art focused.

Blessing at Christmas and a Joyful New Year ahead

Pam

MUDGEE RETREAT

I have just spent four wonderful days with some ATASDA friends doing textile related things with the theme of Feast of the Senses? It has been a great time to relax, do something new and become immersed in the atmospher of a bunch of creative people. We did Eco dyeing, drawing, painting, laughing, eating, walking, listening to Jan Irvine-Nealie talk about her art journey - all wonderful things to do. I am energised and revitalised and ready to get some creative work done. Perhaps I may even get back to blogging on a regular basis. Photos to come!