The Nut House

Another first from my visit to Sweden: a quilt exhibit in a greenhouse!  As a special side-trip the day before the Rikstäcket annual meeting began, one of the guild members exhibited some of her work at a greenhouse/tea room called The Nut House close to Upplands Vasby (the town where we stayed for the meeting).

It was a lovely sunny afternoon and a few of the Board members took me to see the exhibit before the large bus tour of guild members descended on the place. Anna-Greta Lindstrom displayed several of her art quilt wall hangings and had this gorgeous watercolour quilt hung at the end of the greenhouse. This quilt was on display at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham (perhaps last year?) and with the sun shining behind it, the quilt took on the appearance of a stained glass window.

To celebrate a milestone birthday, Anna-Greta was selling lottery tickets for a chance to win one of 5 wallhangings she's made over the years. All of the money raised would go to Medicines Sans Frontiers - I thought this was a brilliant idea, so I bought a ticket. She promised to post a quilt to Canada if I won. Well, guess what?! I won! I don't have a photo of the quilt yet, but I'll share it when we get some light here and I can take a decent photograph. Here are two of her other creations that were on display:

"Energin Kommer Inifrån" I love the fun Kaffe Fassett swirls overlaid on the solid grid background 

Here is a great example of batik playing nicely with printed cottons in a beautiful forest abstraction.

Sweet stitched details and applique from the quilt above.

I took an opportunity to walk the property, look in the garden shop and take some photos from the working greenhouse, which was by now winding down for autumn.

This country estate was next door to the Nut House, but I couldn't find out any information - I was curious how old the home was, but the two properties are not linked according to the woman working in the greenhouse that day.

I've almost caught up and completed my Sweden posts, but the stories of my trip to the north, as well as photos from my workshops, are still to come. Plus, you still have to see the beautiful quilt my new friends gifted me!!

Woolfelt: Utility to Art

While in Sweden last month, Jo and I had a free morning to visit an incredible exhibit of work by Norwegian artist Inger Johanne Rasmussen at the Sven-Harrys konstmuseum (located in the Vasastan district of Stockholm).  The museum itself is a wonderful modern steel and glass structure build around the historic home of Sven-Harrys. We knew the address and rough location, but Jo and I couldn't find a local person on the Saturday morning sidewalk to point us in the right direction - we'd arrived on the opposite side of a large city park from the museum.  Finally, a handsome young Viking looked at my tiny iphone google map and pointed us across the park in the right direction!

En route, I was amazed to see this uber-civilized stroller parking at the playground. Every stall has a number!

Finally we came to this gorgeous building entrance, after having enjoyed a delicious sidewalk cafe fika!

A few members of the Rikstacket Board (the national quilt guild that had brought Jo and I to Sweden to teach) recommended that we check out this exhibit on Saturday morning while guild members attended their Annual General Meeting. They told us it was a fibre art exhibit of hand dyed and painted, recycled wool. I had no idea what to expect, certainly not the scale and intense colour that immediately captivated us when we entered the gallery.  

All of the work shown here was created by Inger Johanne Rasmussen and photographed by me with gallery permission. Please click on her linked name, then on the WORK tab of her website to see more photographs from this exhibit and other gallery shows of her incredible work!

detail from larger piece, shown above

Jo takes a closer look at "The Home I could Not Find" 2014

detail from larger piece, shown above

"The Land Between Dream and Reality " 2010. 
 To give you an idea of scale, this piece is 208 cm x 303 cm

"Magic Carpet" 2011
This piece lies completely flat, the curled corner and overlapping bottom edges are illusions created by the artist.

"Misplaced Heritage" 2007.
This was my favourite piece in the show. The colours appear so subtle in this short exposure, however when I opened my shutter for a longer, over-exposed shot below, you can see much more variation in the dyes. The workmanship in this construction is phenomenal - keep in mind that every piece is inlaid and butts edge to edge with neighbouring pieces.

An over-exposed photo of the piece shown above.

"Passed Down" 2005
Such clever use of perspective in this Trip Around the World variation. Can you spot the chairs?

"Attempt to Construct a Flower" 2013

detail from larger piece, shown above.

The only English material available for the show was a one-page handout of the artist's credentials and list of sponsors. The only reference to this specific work was to describe the material as "army footwraps". It appeared to me to be natural-coloured melton wool (that had been dyed), about 1/16" thick.  There were no English translations of artist statements for the individual pieces that I can share with you, but I was able to find some of the titles on the artist's website. 

This was certainly a most inspiring morning spent in Stockholm with a lovely friend!

Bloggers Quilt Festival Fall 2012

Once again Amy has organized a whopper of an online quilt festival for us all! My one big quilt finish of the year was complete in time for Spring Festival, so I'm going back in the archives a bit to show you one of my favourite little swap items that I sent away. Swapping was such a wonderful way to find new friends when I first started blogging and sharing on flickr. I pushed myself to design original work; sometimes that was really hard. Usually, I relied on my photographs for inspiration, as I did here for this row of birdhouses on fence posts.

This is a tiny little art quilt measuring less than 8" x 10", I think.  It is made from felted wool appliqued onto a canvas basecloth. The wool is secured with machine and hand embroidery and there a few wee buttons and french knot Queen Anne's Lace for extra embellishment. You can read more details about the construction here.  This mini was sent off to Nanette but we also shared it's image with all of our family and friends because we used the photo as our Christmas card in 2010!

Here is the inspiration photo for the little quilt, taken not far from my parent's cottage on the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario, Canada.

Near Stokes Bay, Ontario

This is quite different work than many of you are used to seeing here on Poppyprint - I hope to do some more work with wool over the winter months.  Be sure to check out what I'm sure will be the hundreds of other amazing quilts in the Bloggers Quilt Festival. You can nominate your favourites in one of many different categories and in a couple of weeks, cast your votes!  Click on this button to get there:

Fantasy Becomes Reality

You know when you really love someone else's work and you sort of make a little wish that one day, if you were really, really lucky a little morsel of their talent would make it's way into your life?

Well, I got extra really lucky at retreat when Krista (aka K2) brought along this sweet little fantasy quilt just for me!

Krista's a huge fan of Heather Ross and she uses Heather's motif-driven fabrics to great effect in her collage quilts. Every quilt feels like an image from a beautiful dream. It doesn't get much sweeter than two unicorn friends hanging out under a fantasy fruit tree.

Birch bark is one of my favourite things in nature. Ever since Girl Guides, when I learned that fallen birch bark is nature's most efficient fire-starter (and also makes fun notepaper for letters home!). I also learned that you are never, ever, to peel it off a living tree, right kids? It's okay to cut birch fabric though, especially for friends. Isn't that one birch tree strip on the right edge genius?

Completing everything is the lovely, swirly quilting over all the special fabric scraps that make up the background of this mini quilt. I've got it hanging directly across from my sewing room chair, so that whenever I look up I can admire my special gift.

Thank you, Krista. I just love it!!!

For those of you that have asked, Krista doesn't currently have a blog; she's a flickr swapper-extraordinaire under flickr id lolablueocean. Rumour has it that a blog may be in the works. I will be sure to let you know when she gets it up and running!

Bloggers Quilt Festival Fall 2011

Hi there! Welcome to Poppyprint if you are clicking your way through the Bloggers Quilt Festival listings. Here is my favourite autumn quilt, which is hanging on my office door for the season.

I first saw a photo in Quilter's World Magazine of this wallhanging by Ellen Stuckey (I believe she's from Indiana, but I can't find a blog or website for her). I hung on to a colour photocopy of it for several years and finally found the perfect fabric. All of it was hand dyed by my friend Kathy, except for a few of the lighter fabrics, which are batik.

This entire quilt is free cut with scissors, no rulers or rotary blades. I pieced it on my annual November retreat a few years ago and made a massive mess of my work table and the floor around me! Free-piecing can be pretty wasteful, but all of the scraps were so beautiful I saved them for other, tiny projects. The quilt is not bound in the traditional way, but with a facing instead. I really liked the way Ellen had defined the two panels with an asymmetric top and bottom edge -it's a unique quilt finish.

I had a lot of fun with the quilting; using different thread colours, some free motion in the leaves themselves, but mostly straight line quilting with a walking foot on. In some cases, I used the quilting to define more leaves, like the one pictured below.

If you are not a regular Poppyprint reader, you may be interested in my recent free-cut project that I just made earlier this week in a workshop with the Quilters of Gee's Bend, Alabama. You can read about it here!

Thank you so much for stopping by. Be sure to visit Amy's Creative Side for a complete listing of participating blogs and check out all of the other amazing quilts in this Festival by clicking on the button below!

A Friendly Process

Like many of the amazing friends I've met online over the past two years, Amy is someone I turn to for advice and email conversation often. And, like a few others, we've become such good buddies that it seems I've known her for ages and can't quite remember exactly how we met. It may have been through her first Potholder Pass swap on Flickr (which I just missed out on), or the 2nd and 3rd potholder passes that I did participate in!

Many of you will recognize this "Process Mini" because Amy already posted (far better) photos of it on her blog a few weeks ago. It features her sweet "quilting process" silk screen print, some extremely accurate piecing and very thoughtful fabric choices. How about this seed packet print? Perfect!

Included in my little private swap package were three other specialty prints done by Amy - her freezer paper stenciled flower fabric 'sticker' (already backed with WonderUnder for easy applique!), some pieces of her latest vintage kitchen silk screen and a generous hunk of pretty laminate.

Her talent knows no bounds, nor does her productivity. She's a busy Mom of three small children. I don't know how she gets all this stuff accomplished During Quiet Time!! Check out her latest hexie case pattern and various prints for sale in her Etsy shop.

Amy has requested a thread catcher in return and I think I have just the right fabrics picked out. I'm already feeling like I got the long end of the straw on this swap!! Thank you so much Amy. You're such an awesome Friend.

Scan Me Full Frontal

Possibly my naughtiest post title ever. Love it.

My guild held a summer sew-in today and I was able to complete the quilting and binding of my QR Code Quilt. I kept scanning it along the way to make sure the quilting stitches and the blue binding would not affect the scan-ability of the quilt. You can even scan this photo of the quilt with your smart phone and it works! Pretty cool. Thanks to my GO! Baby I was able to cut all of the 2" squares I used to construct this quilt in about 20 minutes (I did cheat; some longer strips were used wherever there were more than 5 squares of one colour in row. I'm not that obsessed with piecing!).

I quilted the entire quilt in a simple grid pattern using King Tut Superior white, 40 wt. 3-ply thread. The batting is bamboo/cotton blend. Check out the cheeky backing:

Perfect foil for a totally functional, mod quilt, don't cha think? That's a hunk of Alexander Henry's "Home Sewing is Easy" that I got on sale as a bolt end here last fall.

If you would like to make your own QR Code quilt, I've done a tute here. If you would like to WIN a GO!Baby, then enter your comment here before Thursday, July 28th.

Go ahead, scan it! You know you want to!

Bloggers Quilt Festival Spring 2011

Welcome to Poppyprint!

This is my third Bloggers Quilt Festival and while I'm a bit late for this one, I am still very excited to share this tiny quilt with you. It is one of my most favourite things I've ever made (1) because it was inspired by one of my own photographs, and (2) it is made entirely from wool which was a new experience for me, and (3) it ended up being our 2010 Christmas card!

The inspiration photo for my little art quilt, taken in rural Ontario near my parent's cottage

I don't actually have this quilt. I made it for a mini-quilt swap on Flickr. I was very sad to see it go, but I had faith that it's new owner would love it as much as I do. The theme was "houses" and my partner is a major bird lover and well-known on Flickr for bird motifs in her work.

This is how our Christmas card looked after I'd framed the photo in a museum mat and increased the colour contrast in Picnik

Now, while this may not be the kind of thing you expect to see in a quilt festival, I can tell you it does have three layers, all joined together with some stitching, and it is bound as well. I created it without using any templates, just a sketch, some wool, sharp scissors, steam-a-seam lite, embroidery floss and my machine. The large background wool areas were butted up to each other on a canvas foundation and top stitched together with a zigzag stitch.

I free motion thread painted the grass over top of some spikey wool cuttings that I had fused on. The Queen Ann's Lace are french knots and the fence wire is embroidery floss couched on with some stitches where the 'wires' cross.

I think my favourite parts are the round bales of hay, though. Here is a picture of the whole mini complete with it's thicker-than-usual binding.

Thank you for stopping by to visit Poppyprint in the festival (and thank you Amy for giving us the chance to meet so many new quilting friends through sharing our work!!) - I hope you'll come again soon!

If your coffee/tea cup is empty, head for a refill and come on back to enjoy the rest of the festival right here. There are over 300 quilts entered already!!!