A treat

Not much is happening in the quilt show community at the moment. We are just waiting til early January when the raffle quilt will start its journey around to several local quilt shops in the lead up to the show.
Our bookmarks/flyers are ready for printing and invitations are being prepared for the traders we are keen to have selling their wares. A few new ones this year and I'm sure there'll be something in the quilty line to please everyone .
At the recent meeting at my house we had a really yummy brownie slice for supper so I thought I'd share it around. It's so easy and quick and tastes great.

Easy Brownies

MELT

125g butter

1/4 cup cocoa

1 cup sugar

in a saucepan large enough to hold the entire mixture

ADD

pinch of salt

2 eggs lightly whisked

1/2 cup SR flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

BAKE

20-25 mins in 8" sq tin at 180deg

That's it - enjoy!

Bloggers Quilt Festival - Fall 2010 , Mountain Magic

Our entry for the the Bloggers Quilt Festival is our Springwood Community Quilt Show Raffle quilt. It's only been finished for a few weeks so this is it's first outing. Thanks to David Stott for this wonderful photo that will be the publicity photo for magazine articles and flyers.

Mountain Magic is a pictorial quilt depicting the Three Sisters Rock formation, the Blue Mountains' most well known and popular tourist attraction at Echo Point, Katoomba, Australia.

Here's a photo of its namesake.

The quilt was designed by Petal Davies, a local quilt and wearable art teacher, although assembly has been a group effort by members of the Show commitee. I think we've all learnt some clever tricks along the way.

There's a variety of materials and fabrics incorporated in the quilt. Some beautiful Jinny Beyer fabrics that were our prize for 1st place in the group category at the 2009 Sydney Quilt Show.

Furnishing fabrics were made into tree trunks. Those tree fern branches have wires in the spines so they can be manipulated into shape.

Layers of different shades of fine blue organza became the misty haze the Blue Mountains gets its name from.

Sunlight reflecting off the rocks was created with a gold ice cream wrappers.

Hospital grade plastic bags were used to construct the forest undergrowth.
Soon the quilt will begin it's tour to the many quilt shops throughout the Blue Mountains region so people can buy tickets for it's raffle at the 2011 Springwood Community Quilt Show held on the last weekend of April.

A super big Thank You to Amy for organising the Bloggers Quilt Festival. Make sure you visit some of the other amazing quilts and wonderful stories about them. All you need is a delicious devonshire tea and it's like being at the Springwood Community Quilt Show.

On the home straight

Well the raffle quilt is finished and looks fantastic. It will begin its journey around the shops in early January so keep an eye out for it and your chance to buy a ticket.

The committee is well on its way to organising all the behind-the-scenes tasks that go into running a successful show such as designing a logo for all our advertising, new banners for signage, new tables for the Quilt Show Cafe and even calico shopping bags with the show logo on them which will be for sale over the weekend of the show.

The big news is that we have been given a BERNINA SEWING MACHINE!!! to use as a prize! Can you believe it - we are so grateful to Bernina and The Stitching Post in Katoomba for their generosity. Not sure yet what the prize will be for but it really is exciting to have this as a draw card.

As our guest quilter this year we have Karen Cunningham and all her beautiful mostly hand-pieced quilts. Karen is a very well known Blue Mountains quilter and her display is sure to impress everyone. She will be supported by the delightful Isobel Lancashire, one of the founding members of the NSW Quilters Guild who will be on stage over the weekend demonstrating her expertise at hand quilting.

You may have noticed on the sidebar we have a follower from Norway! Bjorg is a friend of Petal's and is keeping an eye in our progress from afar. Wouldn't it be great if you could join us at the show Bjorg. It would be lovely to have more followers - just follow the prompts - it's easy.

Patching with Petal

I'd like to formally introduce you to Petal Davies of Patching with Petal. A quilter, wearable art artist, a very popular teacher and the designer for the 2011 Springwood High School Community Quilt Show Raffle quilt, Mountain Magic. She has kindly answered some questions for us.

How did you become a quilter and how did you learn to quilt?

After being a dressmaker for 20 or more years, and making clothes for children out of combining different fabrics and appliquéing motifs on them, I decided the next step was to apply the same techniques to quilts.

I had previously bought fabric with designs on them that I could quilt around. This taught me a lot about the “do’s and don’ts” of quilting. I then attended a workshop to see if I was missing out on techniques.

At what point did you start becoming interested in different techniques and making art quilts?

Approximately 10 or 11 years ago, I did a course with Carol Wilkes at Fibre Forum. That opened up a whole new world, and I continued to attend forum each year and learnt a lot. Although, I don’t think my quilts are “art”, more pictorial, combined with the traditional. I also create “wearable” wearable art clothes.

How did you come up with the idea for the 2011 raffle quilt?

I had done the three sisters before in daytime colours and wanted to see them in sunset colours. As we live in the Blue Mountains and this is a mountain quilt show, I thought them appropriate.

Can you describe to us your design process?

This started with a background of mountains and the valley behind the sisters. Then the sisters [the girls, as I refer to them] were made as a separate unit. As I had help from some traditional quilters, I devised the 4-side triangle block so they could piece it together, for the background and for the borders.

Then the appliques were made to embellish the quilt.

You use such interesting fabrics [and ice cream wrappers]. Can you tell us about those?

I very much have recycled fabrics all my life. As long as the quality, colour and texture are what I want, then I use them, and that includes the ice cream wrappers.

Thank you Petal!

If you've got any questions to ask Petal just leave a comment or you can always leave a comment even if you don't have a question. Just say hello!

The Raffle Quilt is almost finished

We arrived on Sunday for our sewing day to find Petal has been very busy pulling the quilt together with her clever touches.

It now has a forest of tree ferns...
And a gum tree! This little cockatoo is just modeling for us. He's an old broach of Petals and he's just the right size as a trial. Petal will conjure up another one using fabric.
Misty clouds floating in the sky. This quilt really captures the essence of the mountains. It's perfectly named Mountain Magic, which is the theme for the 2011 show.
This mossy outcrop is the result of Erin's circle work at the last sewing day.
Some of the tree fern fronds are on wires for a 3D effect.
On Sunday we worked on the backing. No ordinary one fabric backing for this quilt! We're using our prize winning Jinny Beyer fabrics from our first place win in the Group Catogory in the 2009 Darling Harbour Show. These fabrics are so divine, the colours, the quality, the subtle patterns, love them!!

Here's Tania, Susie and Suzanne pondering placement.

So now it's just the backing, a few finishing bits on the front before it'll be quilted by Petal. The quilt then goes on a tour of several quilt shops throughout the region. We'll post the dates of the tour when we get them.

Besides preparing the raffle quilt, work and planning has started on signage, publicity, ideas for printing flyers and bookmarks, even organising tables and chairs has to be thought about. It's still quite a few months away but there's a lot to organise. Never a dull moment!

The More You Look the More You See

Last Sunday we met up at Petal's house to work on the raffle quilt. It really is a stunner!

As someone who tends to make up my quilts as I sew, I'm impressed at all the detailed planning and pinning that has gone into this quilt. There are so many small details that go together to make up the picture. It's truly a case of the more you look the more you see.

The blue sky is created with blue sheer fabrics over a browny khaki fabric. They add a sense of depth and create the misty look our mountain views are famous for.

Small touches of different textured fabrics and stitching add shadows and light.

The touches of gold are bits of recycled magnum wrappers!!!

More wonderful textures that look like moss.

The grey frame fabric was hand dyed by Petal. It shimmers as it draws the eye in, frames but dosen't compete.

The Jinny Beyer fabrics work really well. The square patches made up of odd quarters give a sense of movement reminding me of impressionist paintings.



Some of the faces behind the quilt...

Here's the quilt's designer Petal (right) and Chris discussing details.


Margaret was giving the task of sewing tree trunks. Note that she's sewing with 2 different colours of thread. One of Petal's clever tricks. The blended colours add interest. Just love those little details!!


Margaret's daughter Erin went round and round in circles- Literally!!! Sewing small circles onto a plastic that will be disolved leaving a pretty foliage, moss like textile.

Here's Petal again this time cutting little triangles out of green fabric strips.


Along with Tanya...


Creating green fronds.

To make tree ferns!!

There's still lots more to come!! So stay tuned!

Progress

At out recent quilt show meeting we continued to work on the raffle quilt for next year under the watchful eye of Petal - the designer of the beautiful quilt.

We sewed ...........


and we cut ....................


and we made rocks and grass and all sorts of foliage from disolvable "plastic" hospital bags.

This is a smaller version of the end result and would you believe there are Magnum ice-cream wrappers in there somewhere! What will these art quilters think of next?

It has been an interesting exercise for those of us who are more traditional quilters and Petal is a fabulous teacher of all things associated with this technique.

We are on a mission to improve our signage for the show and will be purchasing new banners for the highway bridges and foam-core signs to point the way to the venue over the three days of the show next April.

Stay tuned for more information on the show as it evolves over the next nine months.

Posts With The Most

In my travels on the net it's always fun to come across things people have said about the Springwood Quilt Show. Here's some links to some bloggers' pages who have posts about the show.

Janice from jannimary came all the way from the Central Tablelands, NSW, to see the show.

r00ruu mentions the delicious refreshments the students of the High School provide.

Jenny of Stitches and Seams had a stall at the show. See photos of it, and some lovely quilts here.

Chris from Patchwork Fundamentals has a post with pictures of the unique treasures stall and more wonderful photos of quilts.

Rachael (that's me) from Blue Mountain Daisy has her view of being a first time entrant and volunteer at the show.

If you've done a post about the show or do in the future make sure you let us know and we'll create a link.

In the beginning

Welcome everyone to the first of many posts about the Springwood High School Community Quilt Show for 2011. How exciting to be up and running in blogland!
This is where you'll come to find out the latest news on what's happening in the lead-up to next year's show to be held over three days from 29th April to 1st May 2011.
Work has already started on the raffle quilt for next year which is being designed by Petal Davies and it's all hands on deck by members of the committee to do justice to her great vision.

Here's a sneak preview of the first layout of Petal's rendition of our wonderful Blue Mountains scenery to be depicted in a variety of fabrics and techniques.
Below is the box of 150 fat quarters we received as first prize for last years raffle quilt in the Group Category at Darling Harbour.
The ones in front will be incorporated in the quilt with others to be pieced as the backing.

We've started early for next year as there'll be a lot of work going into this magnificent quilt so pop back regularly to keep up with whats happening and please leave a motivating comment.

If you've got any queries about the show don't hesitate to ask in the comment section or by email.