My Website is UP Giveaway!

Yes Folks!  My new Website is up and running:

Jokamamo Textiles

Here you can find:

 beautiful Hand dyes, Shirbori Dyes, Tie Dyes,Ice Dyes, Distressed, Rusted and Discharged Fabrics

Leave me a message telling me what you think of my site

 and I will send the first 2 people to reply a fat quarter of 

one of these ice dyed fabrics!

A Huge Big Thank you to Seth from Plectrum Communications for all his hard work - It looks great!

p.s There is also a link on the side bar

Shibori Dyeing

After a week long family holiday in beautiful Vietnam, it was great to get back into dyeing some fabrics.  I had been given a plastic pvc pipe from the maintenance man at school and was ready to do some shibori dyeing.  (I think he must have thought I was a little mad asking for pvc pipe and rusty things!)

Wrap fabric around pipe together with  twine and scrunch to the end

Soak in Soda ash then paint on purple dye

Finished orange/purple

Finished white/purple

There is still more purple dye left so today I will be doing another batch.  Absolutely LOVE this technique and the results!

I was delighted at getting a pvc pipe from school and then yesterday I noticed the words on it.....

"Sewer Pipe"  Hmmmm.......

Marbling, zentangles and more.......

Its been a week since I last blogged and I have soo much to tell....Firstly, it was my birthday last Friday (28th) and my husband suprised me with a 3 day trip to Phuket, Thailand.  We had a wonderful time!
My children also bought me some books:

Lee Child - The Affair  ( Love Lee Child books!)
Pat Ferguson - Zen Quilting Workbook
Velda Newman - A workshop with Velda Newman adding dimension to your quilts
Susan Brubaker Knapp - Point, Click, Quilt!

I have since read these from cover to cover and my head is now so full of great ideas!

On Wedesday I decided to try my hand at marbling fabric.  I have had a marbling kit for a while and just never started it.
The first attempt was done using water in a dish, adding the paper floating dots, adding the ink and stirring around the dish.
I found the dots were not very easy to use and much of the ink ended up on the bottom of the dish.  Maybe next time I need to add a oily layer to keep the ink on top of the water.

Using the water method

I wasnt overly happy with the result so I used some shaving cream in the dish instead:

Shaving cream method

Here are the results for the shaving cream method:

Using the shaving cream method

These colours are brighter but less marbled.  I suspect that the shaving cream was too thick.
Maybe I will need to try this again some time in the future!

Lastly this week I finally finished a project that I had started months ago.

A friend of mine  (Terence) makes zentangle artist trading cards and he gave me one a while ago.

I have tried to reproduce this with machine embroidery on the  sewing machine and finally it is finished:

Frog Zentangle Quilt

The original ATC with quilt

Quilting Detail

I can't be more thrilled with the quilt and especially the quilting in the background.  After reading Pat Ferguson's book I'm sure there will be more zentangle quilts in the not to distant future!

Happy Quilting!

So much to tell.....

Last week was an incredibly busy week.  We had friends Ron and Wendy come from New Zealand to visit (for Wendys 40th birthday) and the kids had a week school holidays.

On Monday my husband, son Luke and daughter Celine and I  finally went and visited Universal studios here in Singapore on Sentosa Island.  The weather was perfect as it was not too hot.  We went on a couple of the rides but we all gave the huge rollercoasters a miss.  Brooke was at home busy making a gezillion cupcakes for a school fundraiser.

We sent Brooke off shopping with Wendy on Thursday and I went to the water treatment plant with Ron as that is his line of work.  It was really interesting and seeing I'm not much of a shopper (except for fabric) it was a good solution. During the week we ate at a couple of local hawker centers which is much much cheaper than any of the hotels.  (and pretty yummy too) Friday we all chilled out at the beach on Sentosa.  Misty came along too and is really getting the hang of swimming in the sea.

Misty at least was smart enough NOT to get sunburned....unlike the rest of us.

Friday night, Ron and Wendy took us out for dessert and drinks at the 57th floor of the Marina Bay Sands.  The view was spectucular although it was VERY VERY high.  Dessert was yummy and even more yummy was the Cloudy Bay Dessert wine that was given to us by the staff.

We sat way up at the top!

Today everything was back to normal. (what's normal?!) I started off the morning with a long walk to get rid of all those extra kilos that I accumulated last week.  Then it was back into the sewing room to work on my new project (not yet finished).  This is a project from Gloria Loughmans book. I am hoping to also do a version in red and in blue.

Well I think we are all up to date again.....happy quilting!

Help to find my fabric please

This is the new quilt that I am working on. It is made from a jelly roll that I bought at Joann's in Houston when I was there in November. The problem is that the roll said it had 3.5 yards of fabric in it but there were a few fabrics that just did not fit with the rest and now I dont have enough.

I also dont know the name of the fabrics or who makes them so ordering more is impossible. Does anyone know the name or make of these fabrics and where I can get them?



Thanks



Marianne

Only two more sleeps......

Yes it is only two more sleeps until I go to Holland and then Houston to attend the Houston Quilt Festival and I am SOOOOOO excited!

I will be picking my friend Hennie up in Holland and then we will spend 5 days in Houston at the Quilt Festival.  We went for the first time last year and it completely "blew our minds".  The sheer size of the exhibitions and market hall was astounding.  I cant wait to go shopping.  (yes I know I hate shopping but this is different...this is quilt shopping...completely different!)

On another note, the darned quilt top is nearly done but that will have to wait until I am back from Houston.  It has been a really enjoyable course and am delighted with how the quilt has turned out so far.

Check out quilt university for more information on the courses they run.

Tonight we will be going out for dinner to celebrate my 40th birthday which was on Thursday.  What does being 40 feel like?  well its pretty much the same as 39!

happy quilting

Marianne

Darned Quilts

After 4 days of a splitting headache and most of Sunday asleep,  I finally relented and went to the doctor yesterday to get some antibiotics.

Today the head is feeling a little better and I managed to get some time in my sewing room to work on my "Darned Quilt" from Dena Crains class at Quilt University.

Today I added more embellishments and stitching to the quilt top and then proceeded to cut holes in it (literally) change them around and reinsert them into the quilt.

I am really enjoying this class and am hoping that I will have a lovely quilt at the end to show for it.
Will keep you posted....

After all that hard work its time for Misty and I to go and take a snooze before picking kids up from school.

Progress report - Darned Quilts Class

Here is a photo of the progress on the Darned Quilts Class with Dena Crain: I still need to add more embellishments such a ribbon, wool , etc.  Maybe I will get some time to do that today.

 

Bye for now

Another one bites the dust!

The Circles quilt is finally finished!  Today I put the final touches on it and sewed the label and sleeve to the back of the quilt.

Hopefully this quilt will be entered into the exhibition at the British Club in November.

The next quilt will be in a class with Dena Crain at the Quilt University called Darned Quilts.  Yes it is circles again.....

I have done a class with them before and it is a great way to learn a new technique and its nice having other students in the class from all around the world.

Well thats all for now...
Happy Quilting.

Circles continued

Today I added the backing to the circle quilt.  Then I actually "handbasted" it together...something I haven't done in years but seeing that this quilt will have a lot of quilting I really didn't want things to shift while quilting.

I have discovered that I cannot baste in a straight line and so had to draw lines using tailors chalk! Very sad!
Thankfully I still have some of that dutch basting thread (rijgaaren?) and that is better for basting than normal thread as it breaks easily when it comes time to remove it.

Then it was off to the machine to start the quilting...and unpicking...and quilting...and unpicking!

About a quarter of the quilt is done...still plenty more to do. I am enjoying trying out different stitches that I normally don't use.

This week I have friends staying with us from New Zealand and they are busy sightseeing around Singapore and are planning to spend a couple days in Indonesia as well.  Only a 1hour boat trip from here.

Tomorrow I am hoping to check out the ANZA quilting group here in Singapore.  Very exciting!

Happy Quilting!

Circles quilt

Not much to blog about today.  Had a slow start this morning....must have been the weather!  Big dark thunder storms this morning with lots of surface flooding on the roads.

My DH  (aka tall, dark, handsome) hung up my Geisha quilt in the hallway today.  Looks good but very small compared to the big white wall.

Added the batting to the circles quilt today but then found that the batting didn't want to flow smoothly through the machine and so the circles ended up wonky!

There is some unpicking to be done and then I will add the backing fabric first using the escape hatch method by Melody Johnston.  Hopefully this will then glide through the machine better.

Will keep you posted.....

Going round in Circles!

There hasn't been much opportunity to sew much the last few days as general household things have gotten in the way.  I did manage to do some sewing today and here is a photo of the progress on the circles quilt.

Today I cut away the excess fabric (light squares) from the back of the quilt and added some more circles.  This is now ready to be made into the quilt sandwich and more circle quilting added.

Its been fun trying out some of the stitches on my machine that I normally don't use.

The "Geisha" quilt is still waiting for "tall, dark, handsome" to help me hang this up in the hallway.....

I've also joined the Artful Quilters Blog Ring.  Check out the link on the top right hand side of this blog to see some more great art quilts!

Today I also had my first "conversational mandarin" lesson.  I enjoyed the class but I know that it will be a challenging  language to learn!  Lots of practicing/homework before my next lesson on Thursday.

Until next time...happy quilting

crop circles

Today I spent the day "playing" with my circle maker on my sewing machine.

I layered the light squares under the dark squares from yesterday and pinned them together trying to make sure that all the seams matched.  There are about a million pins in this and I kept pricking myself on them during the day. Ouch!  This quilt has my own hand dyed fabrics in it.

Then I made lovely circles and cut away the excess fabric to expose the lighter colours underneath.

The small picture that is hanging next to the quilt top is a quilt by Libby Lehman which is my inspiration for this quilt.  I saw  this on the Quilt show and just loved it!   Not that my stitching would come anywhere close to be as good as hers as she is an expert!

I used to religiously watch the show "Simply Quilts' in NZ and was completely gutted when they cancelled it.  Imagine my delight to find that I could subscribe to the new show "The Quilt Show" online with Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims! Its shows like this that really promote our craft and I have learnt so much from these two shows!

Last night Hennie and I booked our classes for the Houston Quilt Festival.  Yippee!

Anyway thats all for now

Happy Quilting!

It's finally finished!

Today was a great day!  I got to spend the day in my new sewing room and finally finished the horse quilt for my daughter Celine. (With some helpful support from Misty!)  Celine is mad about horses and used to go horse riding in NZ but unfortunately that is not possible here in Singapore.

I even started planning my next quilt.... Watch this space....

But the best part of today was that when I finally ventured out of the sewing room, the good little elves had been around and cleaned my house.....

Yeah!