Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Gifts


I'm in a Yahoo group that trades fiber art and received this wonderful ATC from Jill. The theme this month was Art Nouveau, and her flower is hand stitched beautifully. I love Fuchsias. The collage card it was in is special too.

Monday, January 28, 2008

Sumptuous Surfaces




I'm taking Sharonb's class http://sharonb.wordpress.com/ from www. Joggles.com and have been working on Lesson l. We are to design and do some exercises to get ready to stitch next week. I decided to work with a Dover Stencil of a shell and use parts of it, repeating it, rotating it. flipping it. It was fun and looks like the start of a series. These are just a few of the many I ended up with.
The first two are one's Sharon said would be best for stitching. The last is my mind map-playing around with what the shells meant to me.

Friday, January 25, 2008

Embellisher Class



Last night I attended an embellisher-felting machine-trunk show and class given by a friend that I hadn't seen for a long, long time. The best part of the class was seeing her-neither of us has aged of course. We are both still deep into creating, and her trunk show was wonderful. The purses were yummy; the wall hanging nice. She was wearing a jacket with Machine embroidered butterflies with Angelina behind the lacy parts-very nice.
The photos are of my class samples to see what different fibers do when needle punched. In the first one the white is silk organza; the Angelina adds the sparkle. In the second I particularly like the red shapes that remind me of flowers. I want to develop this idea. It reminds me of Art Nouveau. In the last one, I liked the way the yarn looked. A nice way to spend the evening.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Altered Book


My altered book had sat around finished except for the cover for way too long. http://intotheblystic.blogspot.com/ has so many wonderful journals with great covers, so she inspired me to finish mine.

First I painted the covers with acrylic, then applied torn pieces of painted tissue. When that was dry, the spine didn't look right, so I covered it with a strip of leather. Using a stencil and molding paste, I made the flowers. When the paste dried, I put green paint on the flowers and rubbed a little bit of gold Treasure Gold on the raised areas.

Monday, January 21, 2008

TIF Challenge


My challenge for the Take it Further group is done. This is a group started by Sharonb http://sharonb.wordpress.com/ I had designed the block with Electric Quilt 6 based on the number 4. To use a 5th color, I added a line. Each section is composed of 4 blocks, and there are 4 sections. It was a fun challenge, and I look forward to February's.

Friday, January 18, 2008

Bead Journal Project



I took a doodling class from Susan Sorrell through http://www.joggles.com/ which was very good. One of the exercises was to make a collage from magazine pictures, then find a section to stitch. The negative areas were to be filled in. I used a gardening catalog.

I like the design, so I isolated one of the flowers for the January postcard I made for the Bead Journal Project http://beadjournalproject.blogspot.com/ Here is the result. The beads don't conform to the curves as well as a back stitch does.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Swaps


Unlimited Textiles, a Yahoo group, exchanges small 5" quilts each month, and this month also 1 or 2 ATC's. The theme was Art Nouveau. Mine was done with fusible and foil that Purple Missus http://purplemissus.blogspot.com/ sent me. The design was from a Dover book. It was traced onto the fusible, cut out, and ironed on the hand dyed fabric. Then the foil was ironed on.

Monday, January 14, 2008

Lace


The other day I decided to use up some old rayon thread, so I started with a layer of heavy water soluble stabilizer then puddled the thread on it. The thread was variegated. After there was a nice layer, I put a thin water soluble stabilizer on top and machined it thoroughly. The heavy stablizer meant not having to use a hoop. The final stitching was done lightly with a metallic, so when the light hits it, there is a slight sparkle. Being rayon, it drapes nicely. I think I will use it for appliques.

Friday, January 11, 2008

Gifts



I'm a member of the Calendar Girls http://calendargirls2008.blogspot.com/ and received my first postcard from Sharon Y. Isn't it great?
On the Fibre and Stitch Yahoo group there was a challenge to create a screen from one of the articles. Everyone's name was put in for a drawing. I was picked and received this book which looks like a lot of inspiration for experimenting. The magazine is great and can be found at www.fibreandstitch.com

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Take It Further


Here's my piece ready to be layered and quilted. It is a lot paler than I am used to working, so a challenge. It is for http://sharonb.wordpress.com/

Monday, January 7, 2008

Quilt Blocks



CarolClasperhttp://carolclasper.blogspot.com/ did a series of wonderful New York Beauty blocks, so I thought I would try some and did 4. Here are 2 of them. I think I'll stick to non-traditional piecing. It took so long to be able to work freely-being very left-brained, but I really enjoy it now. I have enough for a small hanging probably for my DIL who likes traditional quilts.

Friday, January 4, 2008

Quilts



I decided to use up some of the stash of batiks and made blocks of 2 strips, 3 strips, and half square triangles. No matter how I arranged them on the design wall, the triangles refused to play with the strips. Oh well, now I have 2 stops using the same fabrics. I tend to make tops which are easier to store than quilts and quilt them when a show comes up.

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Take It Further


I've joined the Take it Further Challenge posted by Sharon B http://sharonb.wordpress.com/

She posts 2 options on the challenge. The one for a person we admire would be hard for me-too many to choose-so I am doing the color scheme. This will make me try new ones. I also found that scanning the fabrics and checking the scan against the printed scheme helped me pick the best option.

Now on to designing something.