I have recently completed several large projects and so felt like taking a break and working on something much smaller and quick to finish. I’d had the idea in my head for these bougainvillea flower inspired fabric postcards and had even made a quick sketch while I was working on something else so this was the perfect project to work on.

I started off with some hand painted ’sky’ fabrics left over from other projects, then couched down several strands of  hand dyed embellishment yarn. I used a free motion zigzag and invisible thread for the couching. I took ...

A little while ago I got this piece of applique out to show some friends and I was suddenly inspired to get it finished. I actually started work on this design five years ago and have taken it out form time to time to do a little bit more.

The original design was inspired by a piece of Indonesian commercial printed batik sarong fabric  that I bought locally here in Brunei. I’d originally planned to use it for patchwork but I felt that the design was too nice to cut up but it took me a long time before ...

My blog has been rather neglected over the past few weeks as I have been so busy, but I haven’t been neglecting my sewing and this is a project I made several weeks ago for a friend. This is a departure from my usual hornbill designs, but a friend from my sewing group asked if I would make a wall hanging with a toucan on it for her as she has a property in Costa Rica and she often sees toucans there.My friend had brought me a picture to work from so I scanned it into EQ6 so ...

I belong to a yahoo challenge group linked to my Janome sewing machine and in March it was my turn to lead the challenge for that month. The theme I chose was ‘Going Green’ and it opened itself up to many different interpretations and it was interesting to see such a wide variety of different projects from within the group. Some people took an environmental slant and chose to use recycled goods and scraps. I was amazed to see how old pairs of jeans could be transformed into bags, book covers, dolls clothes and even cat and dog toys.

Other ...

After the sad loss of Millie and Hector within such a short space of one another we were not in any hurry to get another cat, but it left poor Molly very unsettled. Just over a week after we had lost Hector our amah came to me and said that her neighbour had some kittens. I was very reluctant to commit to anything because I still felt it was too soon, but I said I would go and look, but when I went with her we couldn’t find the kittens. I went back several days later with my husband ...

I recently started work on a new waterfall quilt and this time I decided I would make it a little bigger than the ones I have done before, although still using the same basic design. The first step was choosing all the different fabrics I would use, because although I have made this design before each time I do it, it’s like starting right from the beginning again. I have certain fabrics that I like, but then they run out and I’m always buying new ones, so the quilt always turns out differently.

inspiration photographs and some of ...

Millie was rescued by my husband eighteen months ago, a tiny scrap of orange on the side of the busy main road. He at first thought she had been hit by a car because she was so motionless, but she was just petrified, and when he stopped the car and scooped her up she quickly responded with loud purring. He brought her home and to the disgust of the two elder cats she soon settled in and made herself at home.

She turned into a beautiful cat with unusual amber coloured eyes.

As a kitten she loved to play in ...

Back in Brunei again, back to the sewing room and making another version of a hornbill wall hanging that I sold just before Christmas.

A few days ago, Traci, one of my Facebook friends asked if anyone did English paper piecing and it reminded me of the unfinished ‘Grandmother’s Flower Garden’ quilt that I probably started over thirty years ago. She was keen to see a picture of it so I dug it out of the cupboard so that I could photograph it.

In my opinion the top looks better in the photo than it does in real life ...

It feels good to be back in Boracay. We’ve been coming here for twelve years and every year we come back there are always changes and rarely for the better, but there is always a feeling of coming back to a familiar place and the welcome we get from the many friends that we have made over the time that we’ve been coming here.

The view from our cottage

The last two years we have been coming via a roundabout route, supposedly cheaper but involving so many stopovers, flights and taxi rides that I’m sure it must ...

crazy pieced fabric postcard with autumn leaves

My latest batch of fabric postcards were constructed on a crazy pieced background using lots of small pieces of batik fabrics that I had left over from other projects. I got the idea from a short instructional video that was on The Quilt Show recently. I’ve done a lot of crazy patchwork  type blocks using foundation piecing printed out from EQ6 and used them as backgrounds for some of my rain forest quilts.

I liked the method shown on the video because it is done in the more traditional way using a ...

Looking for new design inspirations I took my camera out into the garden this morning.

white allamandas against an early morning sky

It was still a little overcast after a predawn shower and the flowers and plants were wet from the rain.

Heliconia flower

The garden isn’t looking at its best at the moment as I have been too busy quilting lately to devote as much time to it as I should. Everything grows so quickly in this climate and the garden can very quickly get out of hand. Perfect for small cats to play hide and seek in ...

People are often interested to know how I make my gecko wall hangings so I thought I would put together some instructions on the method of hand appliqué that I like using. I find it relaxing and it is something you can pick up and do any time, so I hope it might encourage some of you to have a go too.

I start with a freezer paper template which I iron onto the right side of my gecko fabric. My favourite fabrics are batiks because they are tightly woven and fray less and also because of their  gorgeous colours ...

Just over a month ago we acquired a tiny black kitten as a companion to Millie our one year old ginger cat that my husband rescued from the side of the road last June. Our other cat Hector is sixteen years old and takes a dim view of being pounced on and generally  treated with disrespect so we felt that Millie needed someone nearer her own age to play with. My friend Karen just happened to mention on Facebook that one of her sons had just brought home another rescued kitten; I know that she doesn’t normally part with ...

I made some more fabric postcards last week and this time I chose plam trees as my theme as I wanted to practice my free motion embroidery and also I had some more of my hand painted fabric scraps that I wanted to use.

To make the palm tree I first drew out the basic shape on a piece of water soluble stabilizer and then assembled a sandwich consisting of a layer of water soluble stabilzer on the bottom, a piece of fine tulle and then another layer of stabilizer on top with the image drawn on it. I used ...

I have been working fairly intensively on various projects over the last few months but am now between major projects, and while I decide what to do next I thought I would try my hand at making some fabric postcards. It is another of those things that I have wanted to try for ages but wasn’t quite sure how to go get started. I bought a book by Francis Kohler called “Fast, Fun and Easy Fabric Postcards”, got some Fast2Fuse interfacing and I was all set to go.

For my first postcards I used some free motion embroidered leaves ...

Last month I wrote about the leaf rubbings I made using some dried leaves I’d collected in the jungle and paintstiks.You can see the post under “Paintstcks leaf rubbings”. I embellished the leaves with a blend of rayon and metallic threads then fused them to a black batik background and there they sat waiting to be finished until a few days ago.

I was going through my stash of browns and autumnal colours looking for fabric to complete another project when one of the batiks caught my eye and I thought it would be just right for my ...

In my last post I described how I created the pattern and started putting together my butterfly and flower design. Now, with all the pieces for the butterfly and flower fused to the background I added some thread painting with 40wt rayon threads which added a nice sheen and a little more texture.

Close up showing thread painting on the flower and butterfly

 I did all the embellishment before adding batting and backing because I wanted the butterfly to stand out from the background. These photos show the design with the quilting completed because the original photos I took didn ...

For a long time I have wanted to do something with a photo that I took in Thailand of a butterfly on a flower. Originally I had thought of creating a cross stitch design but never got very far with it, and then just recently I decided I would make it into an art quilt. I scanned the photo into the computer and imported it into EQ6 where I made it into an appliqué pattern.

The pattern drawn out in EQ6

With the pattern made, my next decision was how I was going to create the design. ? My preference would ...

I spent almot all day Friday working on a journal quilt for a timed challenge for my Janome Internet Challenge group. We had eight hours to complete a journal quilt from start to finish and weren’t allowed to look at the theme until we were ready to start.

When I looked at the theme I almost decided not to bother because all the images it conjured up just don’t go with living in hot, humid Brunei. The theme was “Hearth and Home” and I immediately thought of log fires, warmth, comfort, sleeping cats, and dark, warm colours, just ...

I bought a set of paintstiks several years ago and have used them from time to time but I have frequently thought that I would like to use them to make some  rubbings from leaves. Up until now this has gone no further, but recently inspired by my Janome Challenge group on the internet, the last time we went off on a jungle walk I collected a pile of dried leaves. I almost didn’t get them home because I’d left them by the car while we were changing and one of my friends, not realizing that I’d ...

I am back in Brunei now after spending a couple of weeks over in England, the highlight of which was my visit to the Festival of Quilts at the NEC in Birmingham. It was my first visit to the festival and only the second quilt show I’ve ever been to, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, having been a bit disappointed with the show I went to several years ago. This show more than lived up to expectations and I was very glad that I chose to stay there the full four days.

I traveled up from ...

Over the past couple of weeks I have been working on a new hornbill design for a wall hanging, based on this photo which I took a while ago.

I imported the photo into EQ6 and then because of the complexity of the design I decided I would draw out the pattern in two parts, first concentrating on the hornbill and then creating another layout focusing on the background palm fronds. I did this and then once the background was drawn I copied and pasted the hornbill into the background.

To create the wall hanging I started off with some ...