Auction Quilt

On the weekend, my son's school had a fair on and they had several activities in order to raise funds. Many classes had to prepare or donate something. Parents would then make a bid on it. There were many beautiful creations on display, many of them photographs of the children, quilts, paintings, trips with teachers, a car park lot at the school, recipe books compiled by the children with their photos in them. I was particularly taken by my girlfriend's artwork, she graduated from Princeton with a degree in Architecture and later on a Masters in Design from Harvard University. I loved her work so much that I wanted to bid on it; it was mixed media with coconut, recycled paper which she made and it was framed up in a beautifully. What stopped me from bidding was the children from Grade 2 had drawn their self portraits which I thought a parent was going to love buying for their own child.

Then, Matt suggested that I commission her to create something for us and I am very excited about it! Jenny and I will be meeting up sometime soon to talk about how much she is going to charge. This is what struck me: She is very confident in what she produces and is ready to be assertive when someone says, "May I commission you to make ...." whereas, I lose all confidence and do it for free, especially when friends ask me to create something for them. This is where my weakness lies. I know that I can take good photos, can create decent enough quilts but baulk when asked to sell my services.


Back to the auction. One of the things I bid for was a quilt. I liked it because it was quite a generic one, it was not class specific (some of the class quilts had their photos on it) It was a T-Shirt Quilt, with attractions from Singapore. I have always wanted to make myself a T-Shirt quilt with all the places that I have visited. Since there is a possibility of us moving from Singapore, I thought it would be a perfect purchase. I bid $50 and won! I am so happy because this definitely would have cost me more than $50 to make. The contribution was from a kindergarten class. The backing was made with Singapore Airlines trademark Singapore Girl uniform fabric. I love it!

Diorama

Some of the students at the school I teach at made a diorama of the Twelve Apostles and I thought, "Luckily when I was in school, I never had to do any of this rubbish!" I thought rather smugly.

When I went home that day, my Grade 1 son gave me a sheet from school.

"School Project: Diorama." It read. "You are to work with your child to make an Animal Diorama and a presentation about the habitat of the animal of your child's choice." Super.

We had a week to finish it because J had been ill and absent from school for almost a week. This weekend, we all chipped in and put together this snake diorama. It was really fun. Even the youngest joined in to collect twigs and stones. J and C cut up the bushes and made them into 3-D shapes.

Valentine's Day Project

J's schools gave out a Valentine's day project that sounds like fun to do but because we had the 100 day project last weekend, he was dragging his feet when it came to doing this one. So, this weekend, I found myself working on 20-something Valentine's Day cards for the whole class. The instructions are found at Enchanted Learning which was a quick project using paper and aluminium foil. Some chocolate will be stuck on to the cards when they are done. Last year, J came back from school with a basket of sweets, small erasers, chocolates and hand made cards from each of his classmates. As Malaysians do not really get into this occassion - it is seen to be an event between lovers instead of classmates, he and another child were the only one who did not do anything for the classmates. Yikes! I didn't want J to do the project this year, as I wanted to give him a break seeing that he had so much homework after school that it sometimes spills over to the weekends. So I ended up doing it myself! (Not that I minded anyway!)

Teapot and Cups Wallhanging Quilt Part 2

Was working simultaneously on this quilt while working on the denim one. Here it is, I will give this to my mother.

I had an unexpected two days off work and I was very productive! I had to go out shopping for some fancy ribbons. There are not that many good craft stores in Singapore - I went to Spotlight and Quilts and Sew Forth to search for these ribbons. The lady who worked at QNSF referred me to a shop just around Aliwal Street, which sold wholesale amounts of ribbon! Unfortunately the name was not an easy one to remember, like Chye Keng Siong shop or something like that.


I went into the shop and looked everywhere, so I asked the man who ran the little shop if he had the woven ribbons (he was tailing me, which I found disconcerting) He replied, without looking for the item, "Oh, don't have." Another sterling example of customer service there! As it was a quirky shop with goodies hidden from view, I finally spotted the ribbons behind another stack of ribbons. These were expensive. The shop generally sold ribbons by the rolls but he sold these by the metre! He told me that it was old stock I was buying and it had been in his shop for more than 10 years!

Sorry about the picture quality, it was taken with one hand and a shutter speed of 1/15 per second....

Happy with my purchase, I headed home and got down to work.

I cut out 9 pockets, deliberately making angles and lines which were not symmetrical.

I used my scrap fabrics, given to me by my girlfriend, Christina who had used them for her upholstery and curtains. These are a mixture of silks and heavy cottons from Jim Thompson. I love how the ribbons add a bohemian look to my quilt. This is the first quilt that I truly LOVE - all others I like but they are usually made for others in mind.

Front

This is the backing. I combined the fabrics - it seems like this is the latest trend now, to make the backing as interesting as the front. It won't be seen though because I am going to hang it up.

It ended up to be quite a heavy quilt. I did not use any batting at all because it was so thick.

By the way, I am a little challenged in the photo taking department at the moment. The sensors in my D70s has become weaker, thus the photos look very dark in natural light. I have to stand in the sunlight AND use a flash! Time to upgrade I think. The camera has been around since 2005.

Denim Pocket Wall Hanging

A while back, I passed a shop which was closing down and it was selling these larger sized jeans for $3 each. I went mad and ended up buying something like 8 pairs of jeans. It was left in my wardrobe for a while so I was itching to make another quilt when I suddenly remembered those good old jeans.

Excuse the cheesy self potrait here.

I had bought 7 brand new jeans in plus sizes. They had pretty pockets.

So I cut them out.

Stay tuned...

Teapot and Cups Wallhanging Quilt

Working on another quilt, I just love applique work so I was looking for a smallish project. I came up with one I had already made last year for my friend. Who says we can't make a quilt twice? :)

Next come the borders but I have been so busy at work that I have no time to do it!