A Purple Christmas - Helen

Thank you everyone for the lovely quilts that we're seeing here - they will make a great display. Can anyone believe that the Silly Season is here!!
Packs of purple and green baubles 'caught my eye' while I was retail browsing (and trying to deny that Christmas was approaching). This lead to my purple christmas tree.
Happy Christmas. Love, Helen

Oh Dear Another Tight Squeeze - Ngaire

Hi Helen.
We can't have the silly season without our fat and jolly friend Father Christmas.
I am sure you are like me and have been bought up with the idea of him coming down the chimney. I'm not sure how the children see it nowdays when you think about all the heat pumps in lots of the houses.
Merry Christmas everyone.
Ngaire

Three Wise Penguins by Kay W.

I always intended to make a Christmas Quilt.  For many years I bought a new pattern every July, vowing to have it done by Christmas.  Of course it never happened!  Then one year I discovered a book, "Friends for Christmas" by Lynette Anderson (2003).  It was full of Christmas stitcheries, placemats, stockings and decorations and what I thought was the most beautiful Christmas quilt ever. It had six large blocks, a Santa, reindeer, a sleigh, a snowman, a penguin decorating a tree and the block that sold me on the whole package, "Three Wise Penguins".  You saw the date, 2003 and it is now 2014 and all I have done is read the book and look at the lovely pictures - often.  I once bought some penguin fabric, but I used it for something else!

Thank you, Helen for reminding me of my favourite block in my favourite Christmas quilt design. My penguins are smaller than the pattern to fit our size requirements and whilst I know they are not original, I have finally made a Christmas Quilt!

Source:  "Friends for
Christmas" by Lynette Anderson (2003)

A Turkey's Lament - Judith

Merry Christmas everyone here we are at the silly season again, how quickly it comes around. 

Helen I had fun making “A Turkey’s Lament” for you, I hope it brings you a smile or two.

With best wishes, Judith  

The Christmas Tree by Anna

Decorated Christmas trees are synonomous with the silly season. I do love putting them up and decorating them with the grandchildren. I also love taking them down as suddenly the room seems bigger again and tidier!!. Hope you all enjoy your Christmas and have a Happy New Year whichever side of the ditch you happen to be. Anna

Oh Christmas Tree Oh Christmas Tree By Kerry

I do love the smell of a real Christmas tree. We have now started the alternate year thing so I guess it will only be every second year we will decorate a real tree. Helen I have decorated this tree with some charms please do re use them they are really gorgeous. I am starting to get the hang of working in miniature and have a treat to make for my own challenge. Friends.  Happy holidays to you all ,some of us here in NZ will be getting ready for Symposium . Perhaps the following one in 2017 we could all come to the Christchurch one. Food for thought.

Baubles By Mary

 Helen - we need bling at this time of the year to remind us of all the fun things in life

Have a Happy Christmas everyone and I hope you find time to be creative too.

Mary 

"CHEERS!" By PAM FURNISS

For Helen

Have loads of love, fun, hugs and happy times over the Silly Season time.

I so enjoyed making your little quilt.

Cheers,

Pam 

"LIFE IS A GRIND" - By KAY D. HAERLAND

"Silly Season"is upon us, Helen...

We take seasoning quite seriously in our family, to the point of having broken or discarded a number of pepper grinders and pestles. Still, I think it was Szechuan Pepper that did this one in, - silly thing! 

Fun Challenge,  Helen!   Happy Holidays from Kay H…

Silly Idea - Lynn

Who wants to eat Christmas Pudding in an Australian Summer? What a silly idea !

Have a very happy Christmas, Helen.
Best wishes from
Lynn

"A silly game for the silly season" - Margie

 stitched by Margie

For Helen who has made thousands of Suffolk Puffs; also known as Yoyos; and sometimes irreverently referred to as cats’ ****s!  So here is a silly version of the party game Pin the tail on the donkey.  My game  is  Pin the bottom on the cat.

'Silly Song - Silly Season' - Lorraine

'A Partridge in a Pear Tree' so says the song, among other quite way-out and impossible situations. 
Apart from that, thanks for the challenge Helen, I enjoyed making and stitching the felt pieces for the little quilt. Thanks,  

from Lorraine

Deb - 'Bah! Humbug!'

Bah! Humbug! I hate the silly season, and I found this challenge the hardest yet! I had a few different ideas and tried a few things out but didn't like any of them! Bah! Humbug! Finally settled on a very traditional Xmas tree design (not me at all!) Bah! Humbug! Tried adding ricrac and beads to the edge - didn't work! Bah! Humbug!

PS.  Helen - you know me well enough to take all of the above comments with a grain of salt!! (I hope!!) and I did enjoy doing the little trees!

Star Light Star Bright By Kerry

Late Again Kay I am sorry , I have had this quilt in my mind ready to make since you announced the theme. But been to Brisbane India and Auckland and did not want to rush it. I have used Shiny Indonesian Ikat for my stars and Indian sheen for the binding. Piecing miniatures take as long as a big quilt especially when making 1" flying geese units. Hope you enjoy a little traditional Quilt Kay.

Now just a few weeks for the next, better get my skates on.

Bright Sunshine for Kay by Lorraine

Bright Sunshine with lazy days, I feel summer is coming on. Enjoy your little quilts Kay
cheers Lorraine

To myself...... (feels strange)

I can't seem to shake this forest/trees theme that I have, but I wanted to experiment with  a really dark/black edge to the forest with the blinding "brightness" that comes with the shafts of light showing up the autumn foliage.

Kay D. Haerland

**********************  Hello Everybody,

I am having a wonderful time receiving your beautiful work. I am putting the "brights" up on my design wall as they arrive. It gives me such a good, positive feeling, looking at them all together.

…a big thank you! 

                                       X  K 

Lots of "Bright Ideas" for Kay

The idea was a long time coming…

but I got there!

Have fun, Kay, with all your "bright" quilts

       Pam

Bright Version 2 by Judith

The name says it all. “Bright” proved quite a challenge. Version 1 was all but finished, the binding attached, etc when I put it aside, there was something missing, and began Version 2. This version was fun I do enjoy playing with the various threads and stitches on the machine just to see what happens.  

Enjoy.

Canola Fields by Kay W.

Apologies for my late posting.  Until last week when Deb emailed about wonderful things appearing on the blog I was thinking I had another three weeks because this was another one due while we were away and I would have to get my good friend Helen to do the posting for me again.  Don't know where that idea came from, but it was there and whilst I had an idea I had done nothing about putting it on fabric!  So I had to get busy, quickly!

This may seem like an almost 'normal' quilt for me! A few weeks ago we had to drive to Tamworth because my mother was unwell.  For the New Zealanders and anyone else not familiar with the route, the drive takes two full days from Adelaide, across the Mallee, the Hay Plain, through the Riverina and Mid West districts of New South Wales and finally into the North West Slopes and Plains.  Much of this is grain country and for a large part of this trip in September all we could see, for miles and miles were green fields of young plants, cut across in great swathes by acres and acres of bright yellow canola flowers.  It was stunning - and not the colour scheme that one usually thinks of as 'Australian'.

Fabulous Felt - Helen

I recently spent a relaxing two days in a workshop with Wendy Williams working on her wool felt applique techniques, making mainly felt birds and flowers. The Bright theme presented an ideal opportunity to add to the stash of felt and threads (essential!) and to create more felt flowers.

Rainbow Bright by Ngaire

During the last couple of months we have had a few good downpours followed by some lovely bright rainbows.
Here is my version of one of those rainbows.
Ngaire

BRIGHT Circles from Lynn

Recently, I did a workshop with Kerry using some of her special rulers, and one involved cutting and inserting circles into a background fabric. Bright fabric circles seemed appropriate for this challenge.
Here are some inserted circles, machine pieced and quilted.
Enjoy all your little quilts, Kay.

Bright Kiwis by Anna

It seems that words are the 'in' thing at the moment. I was given the bright Kiwi fabric so thought it was ideal.  Hope you enjoy receiving our quilts Kay and I loved using fabrics other than black and white for this next round of quilts. 

Bright
By Mary for Kay

Hi Kay
Of course it had to be flowers - I can't seem to get away from them but am dabbling with other things.
This is a result of our art quilt group where we used free machine couching to have a bit of fun.
I enjoyed using my growing collection of cords and threads - must stop collecting them.

Enjoy your quilts!
Mary

Deb - BRIGHT

I had lots of 'bright' ideas for this challenge but decided to be quite literal and use bright fabrics for the word BRIGHT. I quilted the background before I added the applique. And this time I had my little quilt finished in the first week instead of leaving it until the last week!!

"The bright side of life" stitched by Margie

Such a joyful theme, Kay. It immediately brought to mind the lyrics from Monty Python  “Always look on the bright side of life”  by Eric Idle:

If life seems jolly rotten there’s something you’ve forgotten

And that’s to

 laugh and smile and dance and sing.

When you’re feeling in the dumps don’t be silly chumps

Just purse your lips and whistle – that’s the thing.

And…

Always look on the bright side of life

Helix By Kerry

Apologies for the lateness of my posting Lorraine. I had fun with this little quilt, DNA was not the thought that had been in my head the last 3 months it was to be blood, but the lack of ink in my printer made me re think the Design and I am really glad I did. Loved couching the outline and as always enjoyed using variegated thread. On its way to you today. Now that's completed need to think about Kay's Bright.

Up Close - from Pam

Enjoy your little quilt, Lorraine.

Finally found some time to get your small quilt finished Lorraine.

Once I got the idea it took off.

I did however have a hick up when I tried to wash a small mark off the background fabric.

The red on the border started to bleed into the quilt.

I was talking to Lynn Hewitt who told me of an article she read.

Natural yoghurt spread over the dye for about three hours will take away the problem.

I was amazed. It worked!

A good idea to remember.

Pam 

Up Close Among the Pansies By Ngaire

After lots of starts and stops and a second go at this I have finally completed up close among the pansies. I collected a lot of these fabrics and made a quilt for my mother when she had her 90th birthday so it was nice to be able to use them again and remember her at the same time.
Lots of great quilts.
Ngaire

Knit one, Purl one by Anna

Ngaire was looking at my fair isle cardigan and it gave me the idea for 'Close Up' . I am experimenting on creating a shadow with bias strips so was a very useful excersise. Thanks Lorraine for an interesting topic. Cheers Anna

PS. Good to catch up with you Kerry at Rose City Quilters the other day.

Inspector Swan Investigates - Judith

Close Up was a very interesting challenge.  After thinking and rethinking a number of possibilities I decided to revisit the swan photos I had worked with some years ago. With the aid of Photoshop I manipulated the photo to give it a painterly effect and once printed it was heavily stitched.  This quilt combines two fascinations, the digital world and my love of stitch.

You have some wonderful quilts coming your way Lorraine I hope this one also gives you pleasure. 

UP CLOSE AT MONARTO

Recently we visited Monarto Wildlife Sactuary east of Adelaide and were delighted to be 'Up Close' with the huge giraffes. They are such gentle giants and seemed to be interested in seeing who had come to visit them - or was it the food offered?
I am enjoying receiving the little quilts - they are beautiful and will be on display in my sewing room.
Thanks ladies, cheers Lorraine

When you stand 'UP CLOSE', do you smell the gum leaves? From Lynn.

I love gum leaves and they are so typically Australian. I enjoyed meeting you in Sydney, Lorraine, and it was a pity the visit was not longer.  Enjoy your quilts. Lynn.

Feather - by Mary

Hi Lorraine
This one had me stumped for a while but when I found this lovely fragment of a chiffon scarf I decided it was just perfect for a peacock feather.

Hope you like it

Mary

Deb - 'Up Close'

My plan for 'up close' was to do an interpretation of my close up photo of a giraffe's eye from our visit to Monarto Zoo last year but once I'd drawn it up it just looked like lots of brown and black blobs! So onto the internet to find another image - a magnifying glass and ants. A disturbing fact is that there is a lot of information and images about how to burn ants using a magnifying glass and the sun. Macabre!!!  

I already had an ant stamp which I used to do the little ants, and I knew that 'ant' fabric that I bought in the US last year would come in handy one day! 

A Street Named Up Close - Helen

One description of a close (noun) is "a street closed at one end". I looked through the street directory for Adelaide and suburbs and discovered that we have Abbey Close, Thornbill Close, Pacific Close, Jackson Close, Marlborough Close and many others - but no Up Close (surprise!!). I suspect that my idea for a street sign for Up Close is unlikely to ever be required.

Waiting at the Lights by Kay W.

One day while waiting for a right turn arrow I found myself staring at a green traffic light.  It suddenly occurred to me that lights are no longer plain disk of colour, but are made up of lots of little lights in concentric circles.  Must be those new LED lights or something very technical, I thought.  This led me to look carefully at the lights every time I was stopped.  Sure enough, on almost all of them, all three colours are the LED (?) type, although I have found a few of the old kind of lights still exist.  I know that by now you all think I need help, but this provided my inspiration for Up Close.  So here is my Green Light, up really close.  I chose the green one because I happened to have shiny green fabric!

Note to Lorraine:  Somehow I got a bit carried away with the placement of my green circles and did not pay sufficient attention to the boundary lines I had marked on the fabric.  They were all stitched on before I realised I had exceeded the 9" width - and I wasn't going to start again.  So this one actually measures 9 3/8 if I am being really pedantic or 9 1/2 if measured roughly!

"Rosa" stitched by Margie

The roses in the Christchurch Botanical Gardens were in full bloom when we visited last November – here is a close up; machine pieced and hand quilted with some hand-stitched detail.

Another abstract version had to be discarded when I was silly enough to use a hot steam iron on the hand dyed fabric!