The Reef - Hoffman 2021

Quite a fun shape for this one. It was longer but I had to fold over the top to keep within the 1 metre limit. The challenge fabric is the fungus print which I have reinterpreted as growth on the tocks of the reef.

The bakground was hand painted before beginning and is actually brighter than this photo suggests. The large fish were created using gyotaku, a Japanese printing method where the fabric is printed off actual fish. This is a traditional method that Japanese fishermen used to measure the size of the fish they caught. The fish are gutted and dried and the openings stiuffed with kitchen towel before beginning. Amazingly there is no fishy smell to the prints - probably the acrylic paint takes care of that. The eyes and gills were further embellish with stitch. These images were cut out and appliqued on. The small reef fish were made using shiny fabric embedded in organza so the fins and tails are semi transparent. They are lightly stuffed to sit out from the quilt.

If you look carefully on the rocks you will see some beaded sea anemones dangling down. And the background weeds are textured yarn.

The whole quilt is free machine quilted in a wavy horizontal manner to repicate the movement of water. This quilt travelled with the collection for the year

Z is for Zebra

Hoffman 2020 was a white on white floral. The fabric was pretty in itself but getting some sort of impact into a design was more problematic. I chose to create this zebra using the challenge fabric for the white stripes and a variety of small scraps for the black stripes. I had learnt from Tuatara Tropicana to simplify the outer edges for binding. This one also travelled with the collection for 12 months

Tuatara Tropicana

The Hoffman 2019 fabric was multicoloured oranges and lemons on a white background. This was my submission for that year.

Turning some of those edges was not easy but it was awarded best modern quilt at the Quilt Symposium in Auckland. I don’t do these challenges for the awards but for the stimulus of the challenge and working within the parameters of the competition. I do have to say that this quilt came together very easily and I was very pleased with the result. I start with the outline drawn onto a cotton substrate and then begin the collage process. Once all the fabric is in place, I free machine the edges and then go over the whole with free machine quilting. In this case I have used a small figure of eight pattern to replicate the scales on the tuatara - a survivor from an earlier age.

Hoffman 2018-An Octopus’s Garden

This Hoffman Challenge took a very pictorial fabric (see below) and I wanted to completely disguise those patterns. The individual circles in the design were overprinted with gold leaf and the bead and glass stamen embellishments added. Unfortunately one of the stamen was broken in transit but this still travelled with the collection for a year.

The circles were created individually and then applied to a velvet substrate. This was quilted in a Karen McTavish style - she calls it Cs but I tend to think of it as leaves. It is a free machine pattern I use quite a bit. The whole is bound with black satin so it is a very rich looking quilt