Fresh Sewing Day: goodbye October!

What has been going on here at Ella & Nesta's Little Room during October?

Skinny Pincushion for the Across the Pond Sew Along

The Maxi Trivet Patchwork Wheel inspired by September's Global Scrap Bee block

The last project for the super fun Patchwork, Please Zakka Along: Giant Prettified Pincushion!

Laura Armiraglio's Tutorial for making a Sew (Knit not) Wool Cowl Scarf

and then the challenge, joining the Blogger's Quilt Festival with these two entries:

The first entry for the Quilt Photographer category is my Phoenix Stealing Happy Hexagon Trivet

The second entry for the Art Quilts category is my Lago Maggiore Quilt:

You can read more about my Lago Maggiore Quilt in my post here.

If you would like to vote for my entries, you can in the Quilt Photographer category here and in the Art Quilts category here starting from the 1st of November until the 7th of November over at Amy's Creative Side. To vote click on the heart in the corner of the photo when you scroll over my entry!

Linking up with Lynne at Lily's Quilts for Fresh Sewing Day

Quilt Italia magazine feature - Lago Maggiore Quilt

My Lago Maggiore Quilt has been featured in this issue of Quilt Italia's magazine. I was so surprised: I was turning the pages and then suddenly I saw my work! How exciting. Read more about this quilt made for the exhibition Afghanistan Inspiration here.

I had better get busy making new quilts now. I wish somebody would invent a day with flexy hours: the hours for quilting should last much longer!

Lago Maggiore Quilt - Afghanistan Inspiration

In my 13.08.2012 post I said that I would show what I've been up to in the year I stopped writing this blog. Recently my Lago Maggiore Quilt has come into my hands again and now I'll explain to you why. Here are some photos of my quilt:

The quilt was originally made in occasion of an exhibition called  "Afghanistan Inspiration" in 2011, a touring exhibition that stopped on Lake Maggiore too, thanks to Francesca Miglierina from Tessilesa's hard work. She in fact not only organised everything to make it possible for "Afghanistan Inspiration" to be exhibited in the Museo Internazionale Design Ceramico in Cerro di Laveno Mombello, she also had quilts on show in all the town's shop windows and asked her students to make quilts dedicated to the theme of water and the lake (Progetto Acqua e Lago). The quilts had to be 150 cm long, 15 cm wide.

My Lago Maggiore quilt uses different techniques such as "Shanghai" for the beach part with covered buttons applied as stones and Raku stones too. The central part of the quilt uses a cut-out technique to represent the waves on the Lake. In the top part of the quilt the mountains are made using the "tagliatelle" technique and the sun is a crazy log cabin that expands into the sky. Using a lot of Shantung fabric reproduces the effect of the sun's light reflected on Lake Maggiore's landscape.

The "Shanghai", "Tagliatelle" and cut-out techniques were all learnt during Roberta Sperandio's fantastic courses. The crazy log cabin I learnt from Aneela Hoey's "Crazy Scrappy quilt a long" (see the button on the right!). The Raku buttons were made (one was made by Rossella!) during  a laboratory organised the day of the opening of the exhibition at the Museo Internazione Design Ceramico by the energetic Atelier Capricorno. It was a great experience making pieces to add to our quilts using this ancient technique.

Thanks to Sabrina Colonna, Delegate for Quilt Italia in Lombardia, some of the quilts from the project Water and Lake were on show at Quilt Italia's stand at Bergamo Creattiva from the 15th to the 17th of February. There's some photos of the stand on Sabrina's interesting blog, well worth reading! 

I will post some photos of the "Afghanistan Inspiration" exhibition soon with works from all over Europe. Visit oneearthtextiles for more information.