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!

   

To Lorraine: "Leaf" - by Kay D. Haerland

                      

I made this "leaf" close-up using water-soluble 'Ultra-Solvy' as my stabiliser and free-motion stitching for the veins, om top of black bridal-veil tulle. I also added wool rovings and some chopped wool bits.

I attached the cording with my free-motion foot, and shaded it with a little orange paint. The small green veins hang free from the background.

Enjoy...

X  KayH

Deb - 'WELCOME'

Finally! my quilt for Lynn.
We knock on doors and pass through many doorways in our lives, and of course we always hope for a big welcome!
I chose some contemporary door designs on the internet for my images.
Thank you for an interesting challenge Lynn.