A Million Thank You's

Firstly I want to thank everyone who supported the sale of my work so i could raise funds to exhibit and teach in Europe in April/May given that my tour was cancelled. I can't thank you enough, and was so pleased to see so much work going to  people whom I knew or who had crossed my path in my teachings and exhibitions- it made me feel that I had not parted with much at all but had instead strengthened ties- an unexpected upside to it all and a gift in its own right.

We have been enduring the longest heat wave in the history of Victoria for March- 10 days  above 32 degrees celsius and I am supposed to be working on a biggish quilt for my exhibition at Quilts en Beaujolais- but  the afternoon suns shines on the window in the room where I work and it simply gets too hot. I am also supposed to be writing an article on breakdown printing/polychromatic printing and that too is affected by the heat as i work out in the sunroom , but as it is not insulated it is a bit like working in an oven- who would have thought the heat would go on for this long?

Have still been walking with my neightbour and  on Monday we walked along the Geelong foreshore- where the  clouds  just after dawn, gave promise of  maybe a cooler day only to disappear and herald another hot hot day.I love the reflection of the clouds in the still mirror like water.

 This is the biggish quilt I am working on-  it is kind of inspired by Norman soldiers and the Bayeaux tapestry- however on further reading ( after I  had pinned the quilt and started quilting ) I read that it was common practice for  the Norman soldiers to be clean shaven in the "english" style , and indeed when you look at images of the Bayeaux tapestry they are all clean shaven except for Edward the Confessor  and  a baker- so  I am too far along now to correct this inaccuracy, besides I liked how the  beard looked in the breakdown printing process.And though I took the Bayeaux tapestry as my inspiration my eyes obviously were not looking very well, and my imagination took over.

And another breakdown print- it's so hot in the sunroom that the manutex print paste  almost runs off the screen when I put it on the screen ( I tend not to work with really thick gloopy manutex partly because I don't want to  print more that 3-4 screens at a time as my screen is quite large)- this one is just a rough doodle.