“The Grazier” – pieced and quilted by Anne Robinson. Photographed in the native bush at Newport Lakes, Melbourne
We love to celebrate successes of our members! We recently caught up with MMQG member Anne Robinson to find out about her quilt “The Grazier”.
I made this quilt for the Australasian Quilt Convention’s Challenge this year. The theme was “True Blue” and quilts had to be 90cm square and the competition was open to all quilters in Australia and NZ. Having seen the tremendously high standard of entries over the past few years, I was thrilled to find I was selected as one of the 30 finalists from over 100 entries. Professional quilters and teachers were heavily represented! While I didn’t win one of the two major prizes, my quilt seemed quite unique when I visited the display and the finalists will now be exhibited at the major quilts shows in capital cities over the next 12 months.
My inspiration came from my sheep grazing family background in northern NSW. I felt the Australian grazier was as True Blue as they come. As I didn’t have a suitable photograph of my Dad I used another image and hanged the colour palette to the blue range for emphasis. The pattern for this quilted was produced via the Youpatch website which pixellates a photograph provided by the quilter and produces a pattern which includes Kona fabric colours, quantities, cutting and piecing instructions. it is fabulous. I had a challenge collecting the 18 different Kona colours that I needed as I had left it to December/January to begin and many local and online shops were willing but unable to help me due to the holiday season for their distributors. Facebook and Google came to the rescue and I was able to get 14 colours locally and 4 from overseas. The quilt contains 1,231 pieces down to the smallest of 3/4 inch finished and there are many of those!
I quilted it with simple wavy lines with some gum leaves here and there, and finished it with a facing instead of binding which I felt suited its pictorial nature better.
Quilting detail.
It took about 6 weeks of solid work to complete and I only just made the entry deadline by photographing the quilt the morning of leaving for holidays in our caravan and finishing the hemming of the facing at night so I could submit it.
Many people make intricately quilted (or surface decorated) art quilts for these sort of challenges. Being a modern quilter made me think of using the value of the fabrics as a design feature and to let the piecing shine rather the quilting (which isn’t my forte!). I also left the background plain to emphasise the grazier figure.
Anne with her quilt at the Australasian Quilt Convention.
Congratulations, Anne!
The Australasian Quilt Convention Challenge theme for 2016 has just been announced – Tradition with a Twist. All MMQG members are encouraged to consider entering!!
Members, got a story to tell? Contact #loislane at vicepresident@melbournemodernquiltguild.com
