WAQA Friendship Day (Maddington)

Lizard of Oz http://www.lizardofoz.com.au/ was invited to be one of the shops at the WAQA Friendship Day held at the community centre in Yule St, Maddington last Saturday. This was an easy "appearance" as the car was still packed with all my goodies from the Hexagon Club Christmas in July meeting the day before. The other shops at the WAQA Friendship Day were Calico & Ivy http://www.calicoandivy.com/ (recently taken over by Debbie) and Kraft Daze http://www.kraftdaze.com/ owned by Jenny. There was a good turnout and I think the feedback was such that WAQA will hold perhaps 3 or 4 of these per year. The hall was great - plenty of space and quite light. There is a raised stage so it was easy to see all the Show & Tell. I didn't think about taking photos until late in the day when I suddenly remembered I had my camera with me. This is a photo of Rae with the quilt she made for her son about his desert adventures. Rae used Lizard of Oz Fusables for the geckos. As far as I can tell the difference between lizards and geckos is that lizards have toenails and geckos have rounded "sticky" toes. There was also a wonderful hexagon quilt by a lady who was an "original" (one of a group that started the WAQA many years ago) but she'd gone before I remembered my camera was in my bag.

Hexagon Club Christmas in July

The Hexagon Club invited me to bring my goodies along to their Christmas in July party last Friday. They had also invited the Mandurah group to join them for the day so there was a great crowd - so many they met in the main hall instead of the usual meeting room. There was a huge spread of food for Christmas lunch complete with little "puddings" covered in chocolate - yum - and Christmas crackers (bonbons). They kept me busy with my "shop" and I was a bit late remembering that I had actually got my camera with me so I didn't take many photos. This is Norma (not that you can see her!) with her Supernova table runner.

Field of Diamonds Progress

I had the chance to add quite a bit to this at the weekend. These are 3/4" hexagons. There are 59 red diamonds in my drawing so I only have 45 more to add on!

Voile Scarves Update

The light on these photos is really strange - I rushed outside to take a photo inbetween stormy showers so the sky was looming really dark. I grabbed them off the line and rushed back indoors just in the nick of time!

This top fabric has been randomly scrunched with elastic bands and dyed with Magenta, then rescrunched and dyed with Navy. The Magenta was too bright and pink for my liking so I overdyed the whole thing with a weak solution of Violet in an attempt to make the pink and blue become more purple overall.

This second fabric was folded in half across the width and then rolled diagonally over a cord which was pulled tight and tied into a ring. First dyed in Magenta and then retied and dyed in Navy. I also put this in the weak Violet dyebath as I didn't like the stark white areas. I do like the symmetrical pattern.

This third fabric was folded in half along the length and then twisted until it curled onto itself and looked like a skein. Magenta first, refolded and Navy added. Then undone and weak Violet added.

I may put a weak Navy or Cobalt Blue wash over all three. I have been making some stamps and may stamp over them as well. I haven't decided yet.

Customer blog referral

Boy it sure feels good when you stumble over a great referral about your products from a customer. I'm beginning to think Nicola has made more quilts from my shapes that I have! Check out the March 27 entry for http://harmanyquilting.blogspot.com/

This is a photo of work in progress on a challenge at the Designing Women group I belong to. We all have the same size stretched canvas and have to produce a work which portrays what Piney Lakes means to us. To me, that Saturday meeting once a month is about thinking outside the square. I dyed the organza at a workshop and used it to make the squares on the painted background. I have stitched them down with invisible thread. Now they are attached I will do more embroidery. This is to be finished for our exhibition later this year.

Voile Scarves

I hemmed 5 pieces of cotton voile 2m long x width of fabric to turning them into scarves. I experimented with different hems. Then I experimented with ways of scrunching the fabric to form a resist to the dye on 3 of them. These 3 had a first dye bath of Magenta. I'm not sure I like Magenta - it's too much of a pink-red for my liking. I always planned to overdye them anyway. I had time to put one of them in the navy dyebath. This one was just scrunched and held together with elastic bands. I quite like it but I plan to overdye this in a weak solution of Violet to tone down the pinkness and make the navy more purplish. I hope :-) Depending on what happens with that will affect what I do with the 2 still soaking.

Field of Diamonds Progress

I have been steadily adding to the pile of red diamonds made from 9x three quarter inch hexagons. To make a quilt approximately 34" x 44" I am going to need 59 red diamonds and about 500 cream hexagons for the paths between them. So far I have made 35 diamonds so I need to make another 24. For these photos I laid them out with some cream hexagons in between to give an idea of what the layout "Field of Diamonds" will look like once it's put together.