Flowers & Fashion 

Exhibition of 11 artists around the theme of Fashion in the Flower Art Museum, the Netherlands.

July 15- October 10 2021

The Flower Art Museum is located in a former pump cellar in Aalsmeer, opposite the monumental water tower. It is definitely one of my favorite museums.
The museum organizes exhibitions in which the representation of flowers and plants in contemporary art is central.
I personally love flowers and nature, so these themes  frequently appear in my work.
The exhibition rooms are beautifully spacious with great attention to detail and lighting.
The work shown is very diverse; from jewelry, hats and paintings to colorful wearable art.

Agnes van Dijk 

Pieter Wagemans

Sylvia Blickman

Schoolchildren visiting

I had 5 pieces in this show: 
Another visit to the Garden

No Roses without Thorns 

Flora

It's a Jungle out there

Synapses

I taught a Textile Collage workshop in the museum on October 10.

Key West Vibes

Key West Vibes

I made this quilt for Floridian Flavors , a SAQA regional exhibit in Florida.

The exhibition can be seen at the Leepa Rattner museum of Art , Tarpon Springs, Florida
and at Martin Arts Courthouse Cultural Center, Stuart , Florida from  01/11/2022 to 02/26/2022

Most of the fabrics were bought in Florida. I found some excellent ones at  the seamshoppe during this trip.

We spent some time in Key West long ago and in December 2019 we decided to stay there again for a couple of days. We went for long walks and I took some pictures of the chickens and the lush vegetation. This trip gave me tons of inspiration for my quilt.

From The lush tropical foliage

The chickens in the streets!

The amazing sunsets

                                                     The buzz of Duval street,

                                                     The laid-back atmosphere

                                                     You gotta love Key West

You can see the entire exhibit online :here  and walk through the virtual exhibition here

 This is my coat Synapses. I won 1st place wearables in the Quilt Africa Challenge.

I made this for the Quilt Africa Challenge. 

To participate in this challenge we had to buy a Mystery fabric bundle from Quilt Africa Fabrics

As we could only add 25% of other African fabrics I bought some more yardage and a Mystery pack of 4 inch squares. We could also add a solid colour of our choice.

When the fabric arrived it was quite a hotchpotch of designs and colours.

I started with the 4 inch squares and cut many more from the Challenge fabrics. And also from African fabric remnants I had in my stash. ( a present from Tilly Zegers )

I made many 4 patches. I had seen the video Miriam posted about fussy cutting and joining shapes. I didn't fussy cut the squares, I simply cut them. But once cut I looked for pieces I thought would connect nicely to each other.

Then I started stitching into those blocks to connect them even more.

I ended up with many 18x 18 cm blocks and decided to  cut larger pieces of the Challenge bundle and yardage and use dark blue for my solid.

I stitched the blocks together into rows, inserting larger and solid blue blocks according to a plan.

And stitched and stitched to connect them.

I wanted to make a half circle skirt so I needed to add more blocks, so there went my plan of carefully placed blue blocks! 

For the top I drew the darts to align with the lines in the skirt and carefully cut and stitched the different pieces together.

I wanted to do something special with the sleeves. Again I used the 4 inch squares, completely finished the sleeves and then added the 3D parts.

Here you can see the quilts and wearables in the Quilt Africa Challenge and hear the comments of the judges.