Quiltshow

Every year (2014 for the 6th time) Sigrid Poeschl, owner of a quiltstore here in Vienna, hosts a quiltshow in her house. The quilts are on the walls, on the beds and on the sofas which is a rather different setting to hanging in a "normal" quiltshow.

The quilts have to be made mainly be hand-dyed fabric - that is the only restriction. There were more than 100 quilts to see - here are some of them

"Birke" ("Birch tree") by Monika Turnwald of Austria

"Kontrolliertes Chaos" ("controlled Chaos") by Hermine Keck of Germany

"Strukturen" ("Structures") by Melanie Lengsfeld of Austria

"Grünes Land" ("green land") of Hermine Keck of Germany

"Das große Ganze" ("the big whole") by Ursula Gsella of Germany

Worldwide Sketchcrawl

Today was worldwide sketchcrawl. All around the world sketchers gathered and went out to sketch together. The Viennese sketchers met at an open air market to sketch. As the temperature here in Vienna was pretty low (below freezing) with a pesty wind to complement the cold my friend and I decided not to sketch outside but in the Museum of Natural History.

We thought it a good idea to have animals that didn't move as models but used to sketch in the zoo it was rather creepy seeing all these dead creatures standing around and gathering dust. So I only did two sketches .......

........... and then we went to the cafeteria for coffee and tea. Sitting there we had these views in every direction with stairs, cupolas, arches and columns.

It was a great idea with a lot of fun and laughter and some sketching too.

Emil Nolde

Another great exhbition

EMIL NOLDE - In Radiance and Color

Emil Nolde (1867 - 1956) is one of the big names of Expressionism in Germany. His paintings in oil and in watercolors of the landscape at the North Sea where he lived are simply stunning. An abundance of glowing colors, scenes that drag you into the paintings - and did I mention the colors?! A really great exhibition in the beautiful building of the Belvedere. If you have the chance (until February 2nd) - visit! You won't regret it.

Fabric Storage

On the Quilt Art list the question was raised how we store our fabric. I don't have a studio but a sewing table in the bedroom and as for the fabric and other quilting stuff I just have to try to find as much room as possible.

My fabric is stored in one and a half cupboards of Ikea. Each drawer is for one color family: yellow, orange and brown in the first, red and pink and purple in the second, green and turquoise in the third and blue in the fourth. In the second cupboard there is one drawer for white and one for black fabric.

Special fabric (novelty prints, very colorful fabric and fabric dear to my heart) and my rather large collection of fat quarters are stored in boxes under my sewing table.

The hand-dyed fabric is stored in boxes in my closet (yes I had to get rid of some clothing) just in front of my large stash of marbled fabric (you never can have enough marbled fabric can't you?).

Sewing and quilting threads are stored in this wooden containers which I painted myself with acrylic colors and a sponge. The small children's sewing box on top holds my thimbles and some other small stuff. On the right is my quilting journal.

Special threads, scissors, rotary cutters, pins and ebellishment is stored in a container with drawers and wheels under my sewing table.

And I think you might want to see my sewing table is well (which is never as clean as on this picture) with my trusty Elna sewing machine.

On the lamp in the back is my sewing buddy - Edgar the owl. I got it for Christmas to add another piece to my rather large collection of owls.

I would love to see your fabric storage and sewing area as well. Leave a post in the comments and be sure to add your blog-address. I will certainly visit and take a look.

Gone

For three weeks we enjoyed our Christmas tree. But today it had to go. And instead of the sparkling beauty

all that was left was a pile of ornaments.

Matisse and the "Fauves"

We have a lot of great museums here in Vienna and "Albertina" is - in my opinion - one of the best. Every exhibition is worth seeing. Since September there was this extraordinary show with works of Matisse and some of his colleagues, showing the begin of the Avant-garde movement. And today - on one of the last days of the exhibition - I managed to get there. What a pity it would have been if I had missed it!

When exhibited for the first time in Paris in 1905 the works of Matisse, Derain, Vlaminch, Dufy and Van Dongen caused a lot of irritation, because they broke with realism. Therefore they were dubbed "les Fauves" (= "the wild beasts") by critics. Shadows were painted in red and blue, faces in orange, buildings in purple and perspective was not taken into account. A scandal at that time and the most wonderful paintings today. I'm so glad I made it!

My wall calendar

Some time ago I started to make a kind of wall calendar for each month. I created a quilt block approximately 14 x 14 inches with a theme I thought fitting for this month. And then I sewed a piece of plain fabric in the same size at the bottom of this block. This was as far as I got at that time.

End of December I decided to finish these ufos and use them as my wall calendar for this year.

The name of the month was fused to this fabric and then secured by satin stitching. The whole thing was layered and quilted. I quilted with my machine in the ditch around the stars and between the two halves. The bottom part of the quilt was handquilted with perl cotton with some (very naive) stars.

All three layers were sewn together (left sides out) leaving an opening at the bottom of the quilt. Then the right sides were turned out through the opening and the opening was closed with tiny hand stitches.

Here is my quilt aka wall calendar for January. (By the way - the name of the month is in German, so no mistake here.)

And here is the calendar in full use. A month-at-a-glance page was pinned to the quilt, an inspirational card is clipped to the other side and post-it note with a shopping list adheres very well to the fabric too.

A very happy New Year

A very happy 2014 to all my readers!