Welcome 2013....

I have been very quiet.....   There were a few reasons, nothing serious though....   My son occupied the computer as he was preparing for his exam towards the end of November and I took time out from my quilting activities after a very busy year....   I did some redecorating at home, oversaw routine maintenance work to our house as well as the garden which was so nice for a change....    In the meantime it was the Festive Season, then January came and our little family went away on a holiday, great fun going away with adult children...    I really needed time to reload my batteries as it was very flat....    I now feel rejuvenated and ready for action...

I had lots of time to rethink many things - I often need to this...   I have now shared My Journey with you.   My quilting career has been an incredible one to date and I feel very blessed to have achieved so many things.    It has been incredibly good for me to write down this passage of my life as it enabled me to put so many things in perspective.   Thank you for reading it....

It sounds very fancy to refer to myself as a quilt artist, but in my heart, I am just a normal quilter and a proud member of our local Guild.   As a quilting veteran of 29 years, I think I can safely predict that I will always be fascinated by fabric, design, threads, paints etc....   It is however intimidating to read blogs of other quilt artists and it sounds as if they quilt every day....    Good for them, but I actually cannot quilt every day....   Maybe because a lot of my work is experimental and I do a lot of my work mentally...   Maybe many of you can relate to this...

This year it is time for the National Quilt Festival again, this time in Bloemfontein in July.   As the official Festival Programme is now available, I can share the two workshops which I will teach there.   More information is on the Workshops page.    Currently I am doing a lot of experimenting with fused small squares and triangles - ideal for using scraps.   I never throw scraps away, sometimes even the last threads of fabric are used for projects!   I have also collected a palette of silk fabrics of which I use small pieces and it just adds something special to a piece....

The first workshop will be Freestyle Ways on 1 & 2 July 2013....   A little story about this one.   My good friend Yolande Bowman and I thought up a concept of a skinny quilt for an informal challenge between some fellow quilters of the Dias Quilters' Guild in 2011.   As my program was so full, I decided to make my entry and use it as a new workshop which I presented to the 2013 Kaleidoscope National Quilt Festival Committee.     It is always a challenge for me to prepare new workshops as I feel I need  to teach the students as much as possible.....  

Freestyle Ways

Small squares of cotton and silk were fused in a colourwash format to a background piece of fabric and it was decorated with embellished silk strips.  This is a machine stitching workshop and various embellishing techniques are demonstrated in the workshop.   More information on the Workshops page.

The second workshop is Bag-a-Square on 3 & 4 July 2013.

Bag-a-Square

Fused cotton and silk squares complemented with paper cut tiles at the bottom, embellished with beads and cords and constructed in a specific way to form a bag.      More information on the Workshops page.

I hope to see some of you at the Festival in July.....!