It was really hard to choose a quilt, but it came down to which one I had the best photos of. I designed Zen Courtyard after seeing a shattered nine-patch and thinking there was a better way to make it and carry the stained glass stripping right to the edge. I wanted to use fat quarters and try out quilt- as -you -go which I had never done before and couldn't follow in patterns. I had a lot of ladies in classes at the time who only wanted to make machine made projects. So the quilt is QAYG, completely machine made, intensely quilted, Stack and Slash and contemporary. Even the binding is all in one machine made in Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr's stile from Modern Quilt Workshop.I loved the Lonni Rossi fabric designs at the time and made a whole lot of quilts with her fabrics. This was and still is , my absolutely most popular workshop and I continue to teach booked out classes for the quilt 3 years after making it. It won 3rd prize Contemporary Quilts, in the Brisbane Exhibition, Quilts Across Queensland, Show and was published as a project in Australian Quilters' Companion. I still get phone calls from people making it from the mag, or asking permission to teach it. (Unfortunately I have also seen it in quilt shows and heard of it being taught with out acknowledgement or permission!)
This is a close up of the front quilting. I have become very good at quilting in spirals, and I would say, thanks to this quilt I have become a MUCH better machine quilter.
The quilt is reversible and the quilting looks great on the reverse side. I usually have it this way up on my bed. There's Dolly - she just can't resist a new quilt! You can see the label below and some quilting on the back.
I have also been asked for several commissions of this quilt. The one below is made with Pacific prints for my Papua New Guinea family (In an earlier post).
This one is queen sized and uses some furnishing fabrics as well as the Oriental ones to fit in with the client's decor.
Finally, the last version of the quilt is this small one I made for the Down Under Quilts 2009 Calender competition. The theme was "The wonderful World of Colour" and I based my quilt on Christina Rossetti's poem , Colours. The quilt is made from hand dyed raw silk which I fell in love with and bought a fat quarter stack from Dyed and Gone to Heaven. It looks like very soft suede.The quilt made December in the calender!
Thanks for looking and enjoy the show,
Ann.
