Transfer Paints

My friend and I got together today to 'play' with some transfer paints. I've used them before but really did nothing artistic with them. To use these paints, paint or stamp them onto paper. Wait for the transfer paint to dry and then turn the image over and place it onto your fabric. Make sure to use man-made fabrics as transfer paints will not work on natural fabrics. When you have the image positioned on the fabric, iron over the image using the hottest setting allowed for the fabric. Do this for a couple of minutes to make sure the image has transferred to the fabric. I always turn up a corner to check.

The painted image can be used several times, however it will become faded after a couple of uses. Today I wasn't pleased with the intensity of the images when ironed onto the fabric. These paints are a different brand from the ones I used previously. However, I will try this again when I have a project in mind. Here's some photos from today's 'play' session. In the first photo, the paint was brushed onto ordinary white paper.  When it was dry, it was ironed onto the fabric. In the 3rd photo, the image was ironed onto polyester satin. It's hard to tell here, but the fabric gives off a lustre. I use this type of fabric for my skies in landscapes. However, I dye the fabric instead of using transfer paints.

It was an interesting day!

This was the temperature in my back garden when I got back home at 4 pm. We are having summer temperatures in May - not a common occurrence in Newfoundland!

Quilt Market

Five local vendors had booths at the Cabot Quilters' Guild Quilt Show - A Quintal of Quilts, this past weekend. They all carry a variety of fabrics and notions for quilting. Four of these vendors sell sewing machines, sergers and embroidery machines.

• Sewing World, St. John's - Singer and Janome Sewing Machines
• Sew Many Stitches, St. John's - Brother Sewing Machines
• C & M Crafts 'N' Stuff, Carmanville - Husqvarna Sewing Machines
• Piece Makers Quilt Shop, Conception Bay South - Bernina and Babylock Sewing Machines
• Thimblebox, Marystown - fabric, notions and crafting

Take a look!

More Quilt Show Highlights

Here are a few more quilts from the Cabot Quilters' Guild Show - A Quintal of Quilts.

Enjoy!

Happy Mother's Day

To all the mothers out there, flowers to you, from my garden. Yesterday morning this batch of tulips was getting ready to open. When the sun came out, they burst open, in all their glory!

Check out a couple of previous blog posts for Mother's Day HERE, HERE and HERE.
Enjoy!

It's Show Time!!

Today I went to see A Quintal of Quilts, an Exhibition, Sale and Auction, presented by the Cabot Quilters' Guild of St. John's, NL. There were almost 200 quilted pieces on exhibit and I took photos of every piece. Half way through, I had to leave to recharge my battery - literally! I thought the battery was fully charged and ready to go. No such luck! I forgot about all the outside shots I had taken of the spring flowers.

The quilts you are viewing today are just a taste of the beautiful pieces at the show and are in no particular order. Over the next month or so, you will see more of them. I will probably put all the photos of this show into an album on my flickr site. However, this will take time, as I have to process each photo.
Anyway, here are a few pieces for you to see.
Enjoy!

Daisies and Dandelion

A few posts ago, I wrote about a piece of wall art that I had completed as a donation to the Cabot Quilt Guild for the Mother's Day weekend quilt show. It is part of a silent auction. Well, here is the completed piece. It is framed 8" x 10".

The sky is hand dyed satin (this fabric gives a lovely lustre to the sky). The green hills / grass are strips of commercial fabric that have been stitched with the sewing machine. The tree trunk and branches are thread painted and sewn onto the background. The foliage is stitched on by machine to give a 3-D affect. The daisies were hand stitched and then added to the picture (again, the flowers are in 3-D). The dandelions are French knots. Most of my landscapes have dandelions somewhere in them (unless they are winter scenes). When I was a child, I would pick these flowers as a present for my mother. She would accept them with a smile.

Triplets!

My brother sent this photo to me this morning. These three young moose were standing around minding their own business in his driveway. His home is located in central Newfoundland on a beautiful lake with lots of wildlife around.

Here is a link from a previous post. The door crown is called Moose Walk. I created a packaged beginner's quilting pattern for this door crown. I realize winter is over (thank goodness), but some of the links might be useful to do for next Christmas.

Moose fact:
Newfoundland's 150,000 moose are descended from just four that were introduced from New Brunswick a century ago!

Enjoy!

More Eye Candy!!

As promised, here's the rest of the photos I took of Gertie Little's art quilts.

The green plaid quilt is her version of Newfoundland Tartan. It is all pieced together. "The Newfoundland Provincial Tartan was developed in 1955 by the late Sam Wilansky, a clothier on Water Street in St. John's, and was registered in Scotland as the Provincial Tartan in 1973." The tartan is green with gold, white, brown and red bands of colour. These colours were chosen to correspond with Newfoundland's Anthem, The Ode to Newfoundland. The green represents the 'pine clad hills'; gold represents 'the suns rays'; white represents 'the cloak at Winter's stern command'; brown represents 'the Iron Isle', a reference to Bell Island where iron ore was mined from the 1890's to the 1960's and red represents England's Royal Standard for which our Fathers stood.

As you can see, Gertie is a very accomplished quilt artist!
Enjoy!