I was fascinated by many of the plants I saw in SoutheasternAustralia, from interestingly shaped seed pods and husks, to vibrantly colored and textured tree barks.

This is Golden Wattle, Australia’s floral emblem.

I think these little purple flowers were so interesting, they looked like half flowers, missing the other side.

I love how these look like corn cobs on a bush.
Seems like there are a lot of spiky, bristle shaped flowers on bushes and trees.
This is a bottle brush after the flowers have fallen off.
and an Australian pine.

Such a cute little cone, about an inch and a half long.

Ferns are so beautiful when the spiral of the fiddle head is unfurling and they are exquisite when they dry to a silvery gray.

Quite a few trees and bushes looked familiar to me since Eucalyptus grow very well in California,

but there were some types that I had never seen before.

Like these giant spiky balls, that reminded me of an ancient mace weapon.

Look at this amazing tree bark!

This one had a pearlescent golden color.

One fascinating fact about many trees in Australia, like Eucalyptus, is that they need fire to thrive.
This trees exterior bark is blackened from fire

on many you can see so much sap bubbled up on the surface its clear they must ignite like torches.


It looks like beautiful golden amber.
So many beautiful shapes and colors.

The ornately painted interior is stunning with elaborate detail.


The lower floor had vendors and exhibits and the second floor had the classrooms and was the location for several other activities such as evening lectures, the cocktail party and awards dinner.

What an amazing show, well organized and very fun!

Before I go much further telling you about the convention, I have to introduce you to the wonderful woman that made this trip possible for me.  Cecile Whatman of Unique Stitching, is the mixed media tour de force of Australia, she brought me over as her guest artist for the show and then let the convention organizers book me to teach two classes while I was there. Thank you Cecile from the bottom of my heart for my fantastic trip down under.

The architecture in Melbourne is magnificent.
A significant amount of the city was built in the late 1800′s, so there is an overwhelming victorian gothic and classical influence to the structures.


By the way, I love that there are banners hanging on the Flinders Street train station for this adorable and humorous educational video made by the Australian Train Company called Dumb Ways to Die, if you haven’t seen it you should check it out.


Because Melbourne had a very large early immigration of Italians there are a lot of buildings that would be designated as Italianate.
And of course you will find many minimalist designed modern buildings in stark contrast to elaboratly decorative ones right next to each other.

I love this dog sculpture that stands on a downtown street corner, it reminds me of Frieda’s dog George
Next to the dog is another sculpture that is a wall with a constant stream of water cascading down it, that leaves stick to. People write messages and make designs from the leaves on the sidewalk, that slowly drop away to be replaced by the next persons creation.

Decorative iron work referred to as filigree, is a prominent feature on a lof of architecure in Melbourne. 
I am fascinated by residential architecture in different parts of the world. These are a few examples of house styles you see in Melbourne.

The two story homes with iron filigree are called terrace houses.

The small joined ones are workers cottages. They tend to be very dark inside since the only windows are on the front and back exterior walls.

Corrugated aluminum is a common building material, evidently in the early days of Australia’s European development it was one the only building materials available.

The single dwellings that have ironwork are called Federation-filigree.

I love the way the iron work on these houses remind me of crochet edgings on vintage linens. There are also many Federation style homes with decorative woodwork trim on front porches that are the typical Federation style house.

There were so many different iron work designs, each house seemed to have a unique pattern.

The photos below are from the sides of the hotel we stayed at on Lygon street, near the Royal exhibition building where the convention was held. On the side of the hotel facing the parking lot there was a metal spider and vine with the spider web made from cable. I loved the large metal ants marching down the wall from the roof.

The nearby neighborhood of Fitzroy is an artsy hipster part of town with lots of cool shops and galleries.

Gertrude street had some really great vintage signs.

as well as lots of good street art, there are several photos from my last post that were taken there.

Brunswick street crosses Gertrude and has lots more cool urban decay architecture that houses many fun shops and cafes.

Love that giant kewpie doll!

These last two photos were taken in the laneways of downtown Melbourne, where there are many narrow alleys filled with tiny cafes and shops that are a popular meeting place year round.

I’m guessing by now it would come of no surprise to learn I worked for architects for many years in my early days as a designer.

The images below are from Gertrude and Brunswick Streets in Fitzroy near the Royal Exhibition Building.

I like to think of this as large scale collage by multiple artists, or like quilters doing a round robin.

You never know who you’ll see dining on Lygon St., this was at a middle eastern restaurant.

This is the delicious lunch Cecile and I had on the day we went to the McClelland museum and sculpture park (pics of that to come too). YUM! and yes, I came back a few pounds heavier!

While  walking around downtown Melbourne I saw this great installation in Federation Square that reflected the architecture of the building.

I was very impressed by this up and coming artist student exhibit, also at Federation Square.

These are a few of the fun things I saw in shop windows.

The first place we went after leaving the airport, and 23 hours since leaving my house in Sacramento, was the Queen Victoria Market, what a fun place! This is a huge indoor outdoor market with stalls selling cheeses, wines, cured meats, olives, pastries, coffees, fish and meats. A veritable gourmet paradise!

I was fascinated when I saw these Balmain Bay Bugs, I have never seen them before.

Look at all those flavors of macaroons! Merengues and macaroons seem to be very popular in Australia.

In the open air portion of the market they sell fruits and vegetables, and there are many stalls catering to tourist minded items like; sheep skin boots and slippers, stalls with Aborigine art, and pelts (the kangaroo have the long tail portion hanging down on the right).

After a lunch of Lebanese lamb rolls and coffee at the market, we went to St. Kilda,

where I got to dip my toes in ocean water, walk along the beach, and have a glass of wine on a perfect warm sunny afternoon. It was beautiful, my new love affair with Melbourne was well on its way.

A spectacular site at St. Kilda is Luna Park, a very old, small classic beach side amusement park.

I love the wood tracks on this old roller coaster.

Melbourne has a real side walk street cafe culture, and on Acland Street in St. Kilda there are pastry and gelato shops one after the other. It’s amazing they all stay in business being right next to each other like that, but I’m sure during peak season times they are packed with people, I mean how can you resist? By the way, those merengues were at least 6 inches across!

After having a delicious gelato, we walked past what looked like a community garden with this wonderful iron and glass pear gate.

And this was just my first day!

I truly loved every minute, from the wonderful people I met, to the fun places I went and the incredible food I ate. On my return, my suitcase was 10 pounds lighter from class supplies but my body is now 10 pounds heavier!

I feel so inspired by all the things I saw. I think I’m especially enamored with the plants and trees with unusual bark, gobs of bubbling sap, interestingly shaped flowers and seed pods.

I have well over 500 photos to go through. There are so many I want to show, I’ve been sorting them into categories so I can write blog posts about my time in the city of Melbourne, the convention, the architecture, street art, wine country, flora and fauna, etc. that it’s going to take a while for me to go through it all.

The photos below are flying in and out of Sydney, where I changed planes. The coast line was gorgeous. I’m hoping to get back to Australia and see a lot more of the country in the future.

In the mean time I’d like to mention a couple upcoming class opportunities:

October 4-19

I’ll be teaching a series of surface design and metal workshops on World of Quilts Travel Cruise for a Cause to Hawaii.

Space is limited so sign up soon! Click here for all the trip details.

June 30- July 2

Acrylic Ink Quilting Adventure, a 3 day workshop at Idyllwild Arts in the beautiful mountains of Southern California.

August 14-17

I’ll be teaching for the first time for the American Quilters Society show in Grand Rapids, MI
10 Techniques with Acrylic Inks
Alternatively Bound and Stitched
Painting Imagery on Fabric

August 24, 25

I’ll be teaching Painting imagery on Fabric and Fiesta Ornaments at Shake Rag Alley School of Arts and Crafts, Mineral Point, WI

I find my best work comes when I have uninterrupted time to delve deep into the process and explore ideas and techniques. Opportunities to focus on our art making can be so rare, but it’s incredibly important to make time for it in our over scheduled hectic lives.

I’d like to invite you to take the opportunity to immerse yourself in an environment that nurtures creativity and inspiration with a small group of like minded creative explorers

amongst towering pines and mountain vistas, pushing boundaries and opening new frontiers of creative expression at Idyllwild Arts in the tranquil mountains of Southern California.

While filling your creativity tool kit with loads of new skills and surface design techniques,

we’ll dig deep and explore imagery and symbolism with layers of paint, and multiple processes,

to create a final complex painted surface with acrylic inks and textile paint.

Our exploration will continue with decorative free motion stitching to enhance the painted imagery.

Over the course of 3 days, I’ll teach you at least 10 different techniques using acrylic inks;

creating colorful textured backgrounds, exploring mark making with different kinds of stamps, drawing with quill and ruling pens, painting imagery opaquely and with a transparent watercolor look, working with simple resists and masks while layering washes of color.

This class is packed with tips and techniques for working with acrylic inks on fabric and will leave you bursting with new ideas to explore. Space is limited so sign up now!

Fabric Surface Design: Painting, Stamping, Rubbing, Stenciling, Silk Screening, Resists, Image Transfer, Marbling, Crayons & Colored Pencils, Batik, Nature Prints and Monotype Printing

A year or so ago Cheryl Rezendes wrote to me and asked if I could send her images of my quilts that were painted with acrylic inks for the book she was writing. When I received my copy last week I was very impressed.

It’s a fantastic textile surface design resource covering a plethora of techniques with beautiful photography and great instructions. It’s huge!  320 pages, definitely one for the bookshelf.

My bags are about packed and I head for Melbourne, Australia on Wednesday, where I’ll spend a couple days visiting friends while adjusting to the time change. Then I’ll be at the Australasian Quilt Convention April 18-21. I’ll post about my adventure when I get back at the end of the month.

to find winter in Cleveland,

not exactly what I was looking forward too, lol.

Just to let you in on some of the trials of this jet setting artist life; I arrived at the hotel at 9:30 pm, after 12 hours of travel (3 flights and a 30 mile drive in snow), I opened my suitcase to find purple alcohol ink had leaked all over the inside of the plastic container it was in, as well as the interiors of the plastic containers that I had brought for my demo’s, and one of the textile paint bottles had leaked, but luckily it was double bagged and also sealed inside the biggest plastic container. The leaks were probably caused by pressure changes from all those take offs and landings.

The good news was the largest container, I sealed all the paint and inks in, had protected my clothes and quilts from being permanently stained by purple ink. The bad news was the ink had also leaked on my apron for the shoot (not in a good way) and I needed to find a store early in the morning to replace all the ruined containers.

So, bright and early me and my friend Sue Bleiweiss, who was also taping QATV and a new DVD, headed first to the closest grocery store and then to the studios. Sue brushed all the snow off my rental car like a pro, I guess she does that a lot in Massachusetts

My first segment was demonstrating a poured dye technique and luckily fellow guest artist Linda McLaughlin kindly lent me her apron to use on set. (And for the taping we shortened the neck on the apron with a clothespin in the back, hidden under my hair. Which was much better than the big photographers clamp that kept my shirt from a having wardrobe malfunction while taping one my  DVD’s several years ago, lol)

My next segment was creating a colored and stitched metal postcard, using aluminum and alcohol inks, this project is really fun! My Aussie friends will be getting a sneak peak of this when I bring it to Melbourne for a demo at AQC.

The third segment was demonstrating painting smooth gradations of color with textile paint,

and my last segment on dyeing wool felt will run in the following season of QATV.

It’s hard for me to believe, but I think this now brings my total to 14 appearances on QATV.

It was great to see my good friend Helen Gregory, editorial director at Interweave, in the green room.

After a long trip back I was so happy to be home in sunny California again, sleeping in my own bed, and having coffee on my patio the next morning.

Now I’m in a frenzy preparing for my trip to Australia. I’ll be teaching two classes at the Australasian Quilt Convention, and giving a series of demos throughout the day on thursday and saturday in the Unique Stitching booth, as well as giving the friday night lecture.

Check out the preview magazine and see all of AQC’s planned show events.