Welcome and Introduction

Thank you for visiting! It's still nearly the beginning of 2012, and a good time to finally put myself out there with an individual blog. I have been a member of the group blog and challenge group "Art quilts around the world" :

http://aroundtheworldin20quilts.blogspot.com/

since its inception, but as I am spreading my creative wings this year and entering the world of teaching Patchwork and Quilting, I thought I should celebrate and consolidate by setting up my own blog. Much of it will be my excursions into art quilts, but also into other textile art areas, such as eco-dyeing. Speaking of which, this weekend my daughter and I have been re-claiming silk shirts hunted out at op shops: We used eucalyptus leaves gathered from the ground on a recent bushwalk, as well as fresh strawberries, rose leaves (saved from a recent birthday bunch) and red prunus. Oh, and leaves and gumnuts from a couple of branches that had fallen in the carpark of our local shops during Melbourne's recent wild weather. I have been loving eco-dyeing since a workshop with India Flint last year.

If you have traced me from "art quilts around the world", you may have seen some of my quilts on that site. For example:

Endangered June 2011


Ammonoid September 2009

The tree of life August 2008

My other big challenge for 2012 is to re-organise my tiny, over-stocked, packed to the rafters studio and keep it that way! About 3 times a year I tidy it all up, but before too long it is out of control again. I know I have way too much stuff, and keep stumbling across more treasures, but I also find that I often have stashed away just the right tool or piece of fabric or ribbon for a project, if I can just get to it. So I figure if I post a public photo with a promise to update it with a gob-smackingly awesome one of everything in its place and a place for everything, it will help me keep on track.

my quilting corner

the benchtop

Finally, a word about the title "Contextile Quilting". Contextile is a contraction of the three main foci for the blog - writing (text) about textile art and providing a context for my work. A reminder of the saying: Without context, there is no meaning.

So there you are - the longest journey starts with a single step and all that. This is the first step in charting my creative progress, diversions, side steps, mis-steps and all, in blog form.