Landscape art quilts are some of my favorite quilts to make. Simple, flowing lines are easy to applique, the sky is a fun area to play with painting, and of course, the free motion quilting can add a layer of texture and dimension to the whole piece. But what if you wanted to make a

Parabolic Curve Art Embroidery : As of late I've been obsessed with this particular type of zentangle; it's all based on using lots of straight lines to visually make a curve. Though it's pretty satisfying to draw, I wanted to do something more. What lends it's self more to straigh…

Melody Crust talks on her blog about the importance of selecting the right quilting pattern to make the most impact on your quilt top. Calling straight line quilting elegant, click HERE to learn mo…

Goodness I have been chilled to the bone these last few days at Chartres and meanwhile fire warnings were out not so far from where my shed is in Australia and places where friends live, so a bit of overnight worrying whether everyone and everything was safe. I am still at Chartres as the Croisements des Arts continues until 25 March when I go to Belgium and teach for three days at Adinkerke, de Panne, just over the French border.I am teaching the Traveller's Blanket/Plaid Nomad for two days and Tifaifai/machine applique one day ( there is still places in the Tifaifai workshop, which always delivers great results and students create their own designs.) If you are interested in joining email me please. ( 26/27/28 March). I have managed to do a lot of stitching on my blue and white piece which has now grown a name- True Blue ( it was called a walk on the wild side as this colour combination is a bit outside of my ken but things change...). As I worked on it I realised that the blue and white combination was very much in tune with my heritage as well as reflecting my love of blue and white ceramics and of course Delft's Blauw . So what to name this blanket was whirling around in my head and I coined true blue which I mentioned somewhere and someone said- but oh yes it also reflects Australia- in that true blue means dinky di or the real thing especially relating to Australianess- so the name reflects both of my worlds, my dutch birth and my adopted country Australia and of course my love of blue and white ceramics. This piece did not begin with a story but it acquired one and as it did I grew to like it much better than I ever expected. I hope to finish it this week, so I can commence another piece to meet this deadline I have made for myself . I sometimes wonder why I do so much stitching. but the texture it creates is a bit mesmerising. I am staying in the old part of Chartres in a little studio apartment called Studio-Adulaire, which is a nice brisk walk to where the exhibition is at the Collegiale Saint Andre. It means I can cook my own food and there is a good market for food in Chartres on Saturdays and everything is within walking distance.I highly recommend it if you intend to spend anytime in Chartres. The owner is very helpful and the studio is well equipped. And then i discovered the Depot-vente in Camphol- a kind of flea market, brocante all rolled into one....so much to see , so many good things, but what to choose? I could not decide and only came away with a book and a bunch of fish knives ( silver with marks for 2 euros) as they are great for mixing textile pigment with base extender- hmmm maybe these are too good for that! An archway near the cathedral- with gnarled some kind of vine- I wonder how old that vine is? One of the buildings I walk past everyday has these wonderful wooden pillars embedded in the wall. the motifs look medieval so again I wonder how old this is? The details has been weathered but even so they are still gorgeous. Traveller's Blanket On-line Class- I am still taking enrollments for the on-line class which is designed to help you record memories in textile and create a rich memory laden cloth that you will never want to part with! Just email me if you are interested. Course consists of the delivery of 4 pdf lessons, a private facebook group to discuss our developing stories/ blankets- and your very own memory cloth/blanket. It is amazing how these pieces acquire meaning as you work. There is a lot of time to invest in the process so a lot of time for contemplation , and it shows in every piece that has been made, I taught a one day workshop for the Traveller's Blanket at Gallery Cardamome last Friday. Of course one day is not enough time to make anything big. So we made a sample piece with one motif to try out different stitches and then a start was made on a larger piece which was a square of about 40 cm.

"The Jump" by Cristina Arcenegui Bono is based on an illustration by Sveta Dorosheva.

Here is a new design I've stitched. People seem drawn to it. It's very simple and gives a nice organic effect. So you start wi...

I’ve had this idea for years that I could build a quilt in a globe form and make it into an isolation chamber. And boy, are we isolated. My dreams had a room full of these things that people could put their heads into. They might see the inside of the outside idea. The undergrowth of the wild surrou

Create impressive geometric quilting patterns with these straight line quilting designs and foolproof walking foot quilting designs.

Sewing and Sowing in Central Scotland.

a4 sized frame made for the doll quilt swap www.flickr.com/groups/downunderdollquiltswap/ organised by Kate www.oneflewover-oneflewover.com/

Because I design a lot of free motion quilting patterns, I have a tendency to think I am cheating if everything I do isn't new and original! This is a shame, because there is so many wonderful ideas out there, and it is not as if quilters are not willing to share. So this design, whilst not copied from anything in particular, is not particularly original either. Seed heads are deservedly a great source of inspiration for artists across the board. I like to add a small version on the back. I love muted autumn greens, golds and oranges on white. I often match the lining to my quilting thread colour. In this case, as the cover what quite, I contrasted it with a stronger 'tray dyed' fabric. I used red, yellow and black dye, which of course mix to give the rusts and browns of autumn. Thanks for visiting... Hilary Florence Please find below a list of linky parties. I may not link with all of the every week, but with some of them most weeks. Please go and have a look at some of the other wonderful quilts and quilters there. Linky Tuesday at Free motion by the river­­­­ @ http://www.conniekresin.com/ WIP Wednesday at freshly pieced @ http://www.freshlypieced.com/ WIP Wednesday at TN + TN @ http://needleandthreadnetwork.blogspot.ca/ Off the wall Fridays @ http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.co.uk/ Lizzie Lenard @ http://lizzielenard-vintagesewing.blogspot.co.uk Finish Friday @ http://crazymomquilts.blogspot.co.uk/ Creative Goodness @ http://quiltshopgal.com/creativegoodness-weekly-linky-parties/

Paula Kovarik had her own creative agency specializing in corporate and employee communications and is now a full-time textile artist.

This has been the most fun project so far! Sometimes I get a little carried away with adding bling. Someone needs to restrain me. Seriously. But when I have an embroidery area that is fourteen feet long, it’s easy to let my imagination run wild! I didn’t have to hoop, and rehoop, and rehoop…. just to get an embroidery that fits a 60 inch table runner. I could do it all in one pass! No stabilizers! The back of my table runner looks as nice as the front does. Back to the bling….. I stitched this table runner on a black fabric that I cross-hatched with a 3/8 inch design in the back ground. I love the way it looks when a small cross-hatching is washed and thrown in the dryer. After a little checking, I discovered that Mylar for embroidery can go through the washer and dryer without any harm or change to it. Perfect! I enlarged my design from Embroidery Library, brought it into Grand Format Embroidery on my Innova quilt machine, and pressed GO! Pinning a layer of Mylar under each flowered area was simple. All you have to do is tear away the excess, and then move to the next area. When the runner was complete, I added my beads. Like I said, someone needs to restrain me because I am having way too much fun!

I really loved the LINE challenge. There are so many directions that this could go. I chose to take a literal approach, using one single piece of yarn to create a continuous line drawing. Later I added free-motion quilting lines to secure the yarn and add a bit of detail. To quilt the ballerina's outline and detail, I used purple top thread and black bobbin thread. I purposely used white fabric on the front and back of this quilt, and used white thread to quilt the background, because I was

I was thinking about what I can do to help all the beginners who are just taking up free-motion quilting right now. I decided to share a ...

Looking for some quilting inspiration? Try these Nine Patch block ideas.

Paula Kovarik had her own creative agency specializing in corporate and employee communications and is now a full-time textile artist.

Part 2 : Drawing the patterns One of the easiest ways to achieve success with these vintage pictures is to use the picture itself as a basis for your line art. So, as you saw in part one, you first take a picture of the desired design, using the macro setting on your camera. This allows you to use even the tiniest of catalog pictures. And even if they are on quite dark newsprint, you can play a few tricks. In this first pic, you can see how I chose to outline with a very dark ink pen, the very most basic lines, and then, since these were printed on very dark newsprint, I also needed to lighten the pics up. This is the same pic, lightened. And here, you can see the final result. Unfortunately, I kind of messed up a bit on the final line drawing, & I will redo it later, but for the sake of this post, it stays as is. ;-D And here are the rest of the patterns for these hats. If you copy them or use them, please link back to me, & please, I am not charging you to get them, don't you be selling the patterns to others. ;-D

Detailed line work piece using pen and ink. Drawn for the basis of an embroidery piece.

Modern Double Hanging DiamondsSize: .25" & 1" or .6 & 2.5cm Horizontal Line SpacingStyle: Background

I'm a big fan of anything related to textile art, so when I spotted UK artist Sarah Walton's dog-themed work on The Jealous Curator I had to share! See

Happy New Year to all my followers, friends and family! I hope it is creative and fun. Last year was very very busy for me and culminated in a two month residency at Atauro Island which was an unforgettable experience which stole my heart. The coming year is going to be almost as busy, but I will actually be in Australia quite a lot more. I hope to be able to build an ablutions shed at some stage this year money and time permitting, as I will have to get a workman to help me do that- having no tools or building skills. I think I have worked out what to do about the skylights in my shed which make it incredibly hot in summer- too hot to work. But meanwhile I have decided to rewrite some of my Travellers' Blanket on-line class, as my stitching has progressed since I first wrote it and ideas have progressed as well. I will be offering this class starting 21 January and it goes for 4 lessons delivered fortnightly as a pdf file. The cost of the class is $75AUS.I set up a private Facebook group to share information and images and I keep the group opne for quite some time as stitching a blanket takes quite some time The idea of the travellers blankets grew from the notion that if you travelled in times past and you wanted to make a memory cloth to record what you had seen you would snaffle fragments of fabric to detail your journey. The idea has grown and the blanket I am working on at present is of sea urchins. Urchins studded the beach on my dawn walks on Atauro island and I love their shape and patterning- so in a sense it is a reminder of those walks and the feeling that watching the sun rise evoked. In a sense anything can be made into a travellers blanket.It is a visual form of story telling which dictates its own pace and reflections. I call them blankets because someone referred to one of my quilt art pieces as a blanket- so that was grist to the stone! Email me if you are interested in joining the class and I will send you further details , how to pay and a materials list. The images are of work/travellers blankets I worked on in 2017. The blanket above was exploring embroidery to encapsulate the idea of communities, in particular indigenous communities which are whole systems of information. The blue travellers blanket is quite large and is a journey through the years of printing and linocutting I have been doing since I began with textiles as my full time work. The piece below is inspired by the urchins encountered on morning walks on Atauro island. There is a lot of colonial knots on this piece!

Thank you to everyone who commented on Monday's post. The general consensus was that it had to be a night sky with a shining moon, so here it is! I hadn't got any navy blue thread so I had to buy some, and I finally settled down for a spot of serious treadling this afternoon. Stitching the sky was tricky at times because the thread was difficult to see against the background. It was a bit like flying by radar. The stitched moon isn't perfectly round, and there is so much thread packed into a small space that it is stiff as a board. I'm really pleased with the result. It is my first stitched landscape and now I have a hankering to do some more. Linking up again to Leah Day's blog for Free Motion Friday - plenty of exciting projects for you to see there! And also Sarah's blog Confessions of a Fabric Addict for Whoop Whoop Friday.

A few more quilting designs to inspire you... Curvy designs are FUN and easy for me to draw... Feathers are my passion... and probably the easiest thing for me to draw and stitch out. Feathers and Bubbles I am trying out a few new designs for the raffle Quilt that I will be stitching soon: CLICK HERE to view my online Sketch Book CLICK HERE: to see My Quilts May Your Bobbin Always Be Full, LuAnn Kessi

The other day I looked around and had a choice. I could finish a number of pieces that are still in process, clean the studio, create new work or drive into the sunset. I decided to let the stitch tell me what to do. There was quilt back laying around from a piece that never did get finished. So I s

Tessellations are shapes that snuggle together without gaps or overlap, can go on forever, and can make fascinating interlocked designs. Among the best known are the tiles at the Alhambra Palace in Spain. The (relatively) modern world’s most admired tessellator was 20th century Dutch artist M.C. Escher who was heavily influenced by the Alhambra. His intricate and imaginative compositions contained creatures like fish and birds, sometimes morphing from one to the other. Several contemporary quilters are accomplished and original tessellators. Perhaps best-known is Jinny Beyer, who, in 1999, published easily the most complex quilt/craft book ever written: Designing Tessellations, The Secrets of Interlocking Patterns. In this Ph.D.-worthy tome, Beyer found that two existing scientific notation methods didn’t meet her needs, so she improved them, plus discovered some new ways to tessellate. Here's a Beyer stunner with gradated trees that read right side up and upside down. One of the amazing things about her work is that most things are pieced, a non-trivial accomplishment, because tessellated shapes' outlines rarely conform to e-z cutting or piecing methods. (Find her patterns and books at JinnyBeyer.com.) Another flippin' genius quilter-tessellater is Raymond Houston, who has developed accessible and enjoyable games that create abstract geometrical designs with straight lines, and, more recently, curved, flowing Celtic knots. Thrill to his work at nachograndmasquilts.com. (Houston fuses his knots, as seen here. His pre-Celtic work is here.) There many are other tessellation quilt patterns and books - please feel free to recommend your favorites in the comments. Here's my humble contribution to the genre. I'm calling this quilt 'Fish, Fox, Feline, Flowers, Pink Flamingos and Beyond.' Each of those entities is quilted into the top. Because everything I do is e-z, it's based on a fun tessellations game practiced by grade school students - cutting pieces off from a shape and taping them to the opposite sides. I was launched by this terrific tutorial by awesome art quilter and blogger Kay Sorenson. After cutting the basic shapes from paper (which resemble leaves), I went off in a different direction. I created “characters” for the shapes, a la Escher, and arranged them on-point, which dramatically reduced the need for pinpoint cutting accuracy, and made the quilt relatively easy and quick to fuse (since most "pieces" don't need fusing in place - they're pink background fabric.) (OK, I regret the pepto-bismol hue. Next time: Blue.) The characters are straight-line machine quilted into each piece. The reverse can be a high-contrast thread drawing that evokes an Escher sketch (or an Etch-a-Sketch, for those of us who are not drawing geniuses). Here's my reverse side: If you would like more guidance than in this blog post, I wrote up detailed step-by-step directions in a 15-page pattern, here. The most fun part is brainstorming ideas for the paper-cut shapes. Invent and sketch your own creatures, or borrow ideas from my two-dozen plus candidates, which also include: This is a fun activity to do in partnership with talented draw-ers, and/or an artsy-craftsy child (or child at heart). They will love playing with cut-out paper to make magic tessellating shapes, then doodling the characters into them. Want more tessellation eye candy? There's plenty in the ‘Tessellation Quilts’ section of Flick’r. UPDATE: You can also make your shapes into cookie cutters!

Here is a new design I've stitched. People seem drawn to it. It's very simple and gives a nice organic effect. So you start wi...

Paula Kovarik had her own creative agency specializing in corporate and employee communications and is now a full-time textile artist.