Rosalie Quinlan Designs

Looking forward...

I seem to be blogging a little less at the moment, which is due mostly to a very uncooperative computer. I know that some of you can relate to having a post almost ready to go when the "Blue Screen of Death" appears on the computer monitor. I think perhaps we need to have someone come look at the computer or maybe we should just compost it or something!

Anyway, on a less frustrating note, I thought I would share some of the fun things that are coming up in the next while. As you know, I have been busy on my "Advent Angels" wall quilt. You guessed it, it is also an advent calendar! It is looking so cute and will make a fab project for 2010. I will share more photos of this soon. I am also currently choosing the colours for my second range of fabric with LECIEN. The designs are done and I LOVE THEM! The colouring is so much fun. I have loved playing with colour since I was a little girl. In fact the first award I received in primary school was for mixing paint colours in Art class. It is amazing what some positive encouragement can mean to a young child. I grew up believing I was good with colour because of that wonderful Art teacher. Who knows what impact those words have made on my chosen creative path. I am very thankful for those words.

I am also proud to have been asked to participate in Quilt Fabric Delights "Bagalicious Club". Check this one out, as there are some fabulous designers involved.

 I will also be participating in Quilt Aid again next year. It was great to be involved this year and I believe that the donations made through World Vision for treatment of fistulas in third world countries made this project so worthwhile.

Leanne and I will be teaching in Townsville, Toowoomba and Nowra this year, as well as hopefully in New Zealand. I hope to catch up with some of you there.

I almost feel like I need a "Nanna nap" thinking of all the things that are coming up! In the meantime though, there is Christmas with friends and family and a beach holiday with Melly to look forward to!

Enjoy!

P.S. Have I ever told you how much I love Christmas candy canes? I just think they are the cutest things. I have just arranged several vases full of them in my Christmas home decorating. I think their red and white stripey-ness is sheer perfection!

stitching bliss.....

Remember those gorgeous cosmo threads I showed you earlier???

Well, I'm putting them to good use on a gorgeous new christmas project called "Advent Angels". I have always found it difficult to design Christmas projects at any other time of year than November/December. This can be a problem as it is too late for you all to make the project in time for Christmas. I have however turned a problem into an opportunity by creating a detailed design which can be worked on throughout 2010 and ready for Christmas 2010! Here are some sneak peeks...

 

 

 

I am having such stitching bliss as I work on this project and am looking forward to sharing more with you as Christmas approaches.

Enjoy your creation!

Rosalie xx

P.S. I have been contacted by some stores and told that they have the Cosmo threads. You can get them all at The Quilter's Store, and some of them at Patchwork with Gail B, Foothills Fabric and threads and Tinkers Cart. There are many more stores which are begining to carry them. If you are a store who carries the thread and would like to let people know, why don't you leave a comment on this post to let them know. As you can imagine, it is a difficult job for me to list everyone.

Mixed Emotions

Yesterday I came home to one surprise and one piece of very sad news. The first surprise was a gorgeous bunch of flowers delivered to my door from the beautiful folk at Charles Parsons. They were to congratulate me on the success of Grandmother's Flower Garden and to thank me for helping at the AQM. I wasn't expecting them so it was lovely to receive them. It was very good timing as this week was my Grandma's (Oma's) ninetieth birthday and my fabric range was obviously dedicated to her. As a first generation Australian of Dutch descent, I really miss my family in the Netherlands. I would have loved to be at my Oma's celebrations this week.

I have put the flowers in the Lounge room (formerly known as the Abyss) and they look great with the "new" pieces of furniture and stitcheries from "A Stitch In Time".The wall looks very brown in this photo but it is actually a deep port wine type of colour (got to get me a better camera!)

The sad news came later in the day with an email letting us know that a member of my Breast Cancer support group lost her battle with Breast Cancer on the weekend. She was a young woman with a young family. She and I were diagnosed around the same time and the news is very hard to hear. She was an example of bravery and courage and she will be missed by many. It has been just over three years since my own diagnosis and my life goes on much the same as it did before. News like this brings all the feelings back home. It is with a strange mixture of loss, sadness, gratitude and hope for the future that I write these words. It is also with a prayer for the cure to be found quickly for the sake of all our daughters.

Rosalie xx  

Schoolies week

In Australia we have whats known as Schoolies Week. It is a week of fun and celebration when final exams of the final year of school are over. I have had the same feeling this week. All my official work and teaching and trade shows are over and I have had my week of celebration and relaxation. Hence no post! Sorry guys! I always love November through January as the designing and pattern writing I do during these three months seems to be very "no pressure" after the rest of the year. I think I do my best work when The pressure is off. Anyway, I promised photos and details of the AQM. It was a fabulous time and I really enjoyed getting to know the Guys from LECIEN a lot better. We spent quite a bit of time together at the show and had lunch together on Monday when it was all over. The next photo is of the set up with Grandmother's Flower Garden fabrics. The colours of the photo are quite wrong but the lighting was terrible.

The following photo is the fire screen which I hadn't shown you yet. I needle turn appliqued the vine on the panel using all my fabrics. It looked great!

You can also see the new version of my "jelly-roll project bag" I made it using the Jelly-roll of Grandmother's Flower Garden".

The next photo is my section of the "Creative Abundance" booth

 
All in all, it was a fabulous weekend!

Until next time,

Enjoy your creations,

Rosalie x x

A quick note

Just a quick note to all of you who want to know where to buy the Cosmo threads in Australia. Let your local patchwork store know that they can contact Charles Parsons to order them in. I think it will be a matter of letting the stores know that you want them and seeing if they order them. If there are any stores in Australia who are stocking them, let me know and I will mention it on the blog.

Thanks,

Rosalie xx

thready goodness

Look at all the thready goodness that arrived in the mail this week! LECIEN sent me the full range of their delicious Cosmo multi work two strand embroidery floss on the spool.

Sigh..... I think I am in love! Look at all the delicious muted colours and 88m per spool! I have 74 spools to play with- can't wait.

How wonderful will it be for stitchery to have two strands ready to go at any length??? I think this is what I will be playing with over Summer. I will let you know how it goes but if its anything like the rest of the Cosmo range I'm excited.
Less than a week till the AQM and the furniture for display is going well. Check out the blouse chest

I know that it looks great but you don't want to look too closely! There are some bubbles and this is totally devastating! The amount of work that went into getting it right and now I have some bubbles!!!! Feeling sorry for myself- sniff...sniff... I knew that watching the Lifestyle channel was going to get me into trouble! The question is - Should perfectionists attempt DIY furniture projects with no idea of what they are doing????? I think maybe not! The Mrs Perkins brigade don't seem to mind though

Till next time- enjoy your creation!

Rosalie xx 
 

Tassie and AQM

Tassie was fantastic! Deirdre and Leonie sure know how to put on a beautiful sewing day! Here is the hall all set up and waiting for the ladies to arrive

Here they all are having a lovely day of sewing, chatting and eating. It was such a lovely time and Leanne and I were thrilled to teach ther

The Quilted Crow ladies had also set up a beautiful store with all sorts of sewing goodies including my new fabric range which had just arrived in time for the day

It was pretty cool seeing all the bundles of my fabric wrapped up so beautifully

We were staying in the Historic town of Richmond which had some amazing shops and also the oldest bridge in Australia

 On the afternoon when Leanne took the above photo, we went walking around the town and found an old catholic church which meant we could wander around the graveyard (I know, a bit weird but an activity I really do enjoy!) It is quite amazing what can be learned about the history of an area while walking around the graveyard. 

Well, we are home again now so back to work! Here is
the photo I promised you of the screen. I used the teal house fabric from "Grandmother's Flower Garden"  It looks great. It will be all ready for the AQM. I am working on the rest of the furniture and some projects using the PVC coated fabric. I am really looking forward to the AQM next week as several of the girls will all be staying in the city in a lovely hotel. I think it will be heaps of fun (a bit old for pajama parties???)

Till next time,

enjoy your creation,

Rosalie xx
 

Going to the "mainland"

My MIL has told me that Tasmania is actually the "mainland" of Australia. It is to this mainland that Leanne and I will travel tomorrow to teach for Leonie and Deirdre at The Quilted Crow. We are quite excited to catch up with the girls again! Actually, they were both in Houston so Melly and I have seen them recently. Quilt Market just isn't the place to catch up with friends when you have a booth to attend to!

The girls from the Quilted Crow spoiled us terribly the last time we taught for them and we are so happy to be coming back. I'm sure we will meet some of you and also catch up with the women we met last time.

Since returning home, I have set my hand to some furniture "renovation". I purchased an old screen room divider, was given an antique fire screen and have an old blouse chest. These pieces have been stripped, sanded and painted. They are starting to look quite good actually.

The next step is to create the fabric panels for the screens and cover the blouse chest drawers in fabric. I bet you don't need three guesses to work out which fabric I will be using! I am making over these pieces for display at the Australian Quilt Market. Charles Parsons will have a booth featuring their fabric companies including LECIEN. As part of their booth they will display "Grandmother's Flower Garden". After seeing all the gorgeous displays at Houston I was keen to put my fabric to good use in the booth here. In Houston Melly and I are forced to put a booth together with string and pins. It is much more fun to have access to furniture and props when a show is in your home city.

I will show you photos as (if) the pieces come to life!

Rosalie xx

P.S. I think I deserve a special gardening award for letting a dandelion weed grow to 8ft tall before I found it in my garden! Not everyone is that talented!

Home from Houston

Well, where do I start??? Houston was amazing! What a blast! Melly and I had an awesome time with our husbands at the Quilt Market. After setup, I spoke at School House with Brenda Riddle about our new fabric lines with LECIEN. It was very exciting but also quite nerve-wracking! It was a full house with standing room only and I must admit that nerves almost got the better of me! I think it went quite well though. The next event was our booth at Sample Spree. We had not done this before so didn't really know what to expect. When the doors opened at 8pm hundreds of women came flooding in to buy whatever they could get their hands on! It was a bit of a feeding frenzy especially around the Moda booth. I did manage to purchase a delicious fat quarter bundle of the new French General fabric called Rural Jardin. It is gorgeous! My fabric bundles with LECIEN sold out in the first half hour so I was very excited! We also did really well with our sample bags of patterns so it was a worthwhile thing to do. I am sure we will do it next time also.

The next day was the first day of Market and here is a photo of our booth

The next two photos are from "stop staring and start sewing" I hope they don't mind as I have very few photos of my own as we didn't have time to take very many!

Here is a photo of Melly, Brenda and myself. It was such an honour to meet Brenda after all our emails back and forth!

LECIEN had made a whole booth just to display "Grandmother's Flower Garden" which was a huge thrill. Elizabeth from "The Late Bloomer" and Pam from "Pam Kitty Morning" Had made some gorgeous samples from my fabric for this part of the booth. It was great to catch up with those girls again! One of these years I'm going to have to remember to take some more photos at Market! If anyone has any good ones of our booth PLEASE email them to me!

Well, I do feel like I'm back on deck after feeling a bit jetlagged for a few days. I am longing to get into my studio and see what comes out! I promise it won't be this long between posts again.

Enjoy your creation!

Rosalie xx

 
 

Nellie's Sewing Bag

I am still making new samples for Houston. I really enjoy all the new looks I am achieving. Here is the "New" Nellie's sewing bag....

 

Of course I made two - why not? This time I used my fabrics and Matilda's own bag batting which is my new favourite product. It has given so much structure to the bags. Here you can see the inside pockets.

 

It all ties up by threading the handle through the two loops in the top.

 

Anyway, I know lots of you have made this cute little sewing bag but it's always been a favourite of mine.

The preparations for Houston continue and it is all becoming quite exciting now. We can't wait to see friends we have made over there. I hope Pam and Di are up to sharing a meal at our favorite teppanyaki restaurant! We are always so happy to visit there and get some fresh vegetables (fairly scarce in Houston!) Six sleeps to go!

Rosalie xx