Sewing Expo

I just returned from Puyallap and the Sewing Expo. The shopping was fun.The Merino roving is in my colors. The paint brush is for the Sarah Blom paints I have been using with a regular brush, but this one will work better.

How about these colors in Alpaca? It is so soft.Perle Cotton was on sale, and I love to use it.When I opened the scrap bag of hand painted fabric, I found there were so many more than I expected. I love bits and pieces. A good day.

Stitch Explorer, gifts

This month for Stitch Explorer sponsored by Sharonb http://www.pintangle.com we are exploring Spiral Trellis Stitch. It is a cool stitch-a needlelace one done with just the first row going through the background fabric. I found I could make a leaf shape by starting at the point and laying down stitches to form it. The lightest mound was done with stitches of different lengths which made a lacy edge but ended up with the stitches all the same, small size. The square I left open to see how that looked. The green curvy piece was just built up by skipping the last stitch of each row for a tapered edge and working back and forth rather than around as in the other examples. I like it best.

Pam sent me this wonderful quiltie for the Unlimited Textiles exchange this month of an Abstract Quiltie. It was wrapped in the lavendar paper.

Quilt

Here is the other quilt that needed to be finished that I found when I cleaned. The grey background I dyed; the brown I found in a scrap bag of hand dyes that I bought in San Mateo at a show I was teaching at for Aardvark Adventures. It was in that unusual shape already and just worked without altering. I love using scraps.The leaves are from a trim a good friend sent me. It is hand beaded.

Quilt

It pays to clean up the studio. I found a couple of pieces that I had made and never finished. This is Journal sized and made up of torn strips of scraps. The green with the embossed pattern my sister-in-law gave me when we visited her in Germany.

Class Projects

I'm taking the Ratty Tatty Papers class from Dale of www.thethreadstudio.com and experimenting with lots of different types of paper. This is tissue paper that I cut up and sewed back together with a multiple zigzag. Tissue isn't as fragile as you would think.

Here the paper is on a felt background held down by decorative stitches and then torn out between the rows of stitches.

The leaf shapes are cut from napkins and sewn to another napkin. Now I'm looking at napkins in a whole different way.

Assorted

Two of us went to the Portland Art Museum last week, and I found these cool coins in the store. We saw the Madame Pompadour exhibit and one on prints and paper casting. Next was a good lunch and a visit to Powell's books. A nice relaxing day.

These are the napkins I received from Ann in British Columbia. My favorite is the one with the forest type things.

Thanks to everyone who commented on my Bead Journal Project piece. It's always fun to get comments.

Bead Journal Project

Continuing to use commercial batiks and marbled fabrics has provided a number of challenges. This is the latest one. It demanded that I just do an allover beaded piece following the colors of the print. It is for the http://andmorebjp08.blogspot.com started by Robin Atkins http://beadlust.blogspot.com

This month's theme for Unlimited Textiles is Abstract. I was laying on the studio floor petting the dog, looked up, and saw this fabric that I had painted and rubber stamped-perfect. I quilted it in rust metallic.

Here is one of the exercises for the color class. I do like intense colors so did the split complementary that way. The teacher says it's correct, but the intense colors bother her.

Calendar Girls

This was my month to pick the Calendar Photo to inspire us. I had saved this calendar from 1982 because of the wonderful Unicorn photos. This photo is called Last Days by Vaclav Vaca. When I saw it, of course, I saw beads.

The background is corduroy with chain stitched lines and beaded motifs.

Class, Gifts

Embellisher Club was yesterday and was great fun. We made buttons-here are mine. Now I need to make more and use braids and beads on them. They are quick and a good way to try color combinations. Now I need to make something to use them on.

Isn't this roving luscious? My friend Catherine gave it to me. It will be a purse which is the next Club project. Now I need to find trims to go with it. I'm sure there are plenty in my stash as these colors are ones I love.

My friend Lois gave me these napkins to use in the Ratty Tatty Papers class from www.thethreadstudio.com I'm getting a nice stash.This cottage scene begs to be turned into a piece, and the rooster is great-a reminder of the one we lost to the hawk several weeks ago.I am so lucky to have such good friends.

Quilts

Before Christmas I took a class from http://www.joggles.com/ on using Tyvek and did the above pieces. I didn't realize that I'd scanned the small quilt before I sewed the binding.I've been experimenting some more.

This time I tried flowers but feel that leaves seem more natural for the destructured look. Here is a detail.

Then I printed a photo of a flower in our garden on Tyvek and machined it to felt. I barely hit the iron to it(with parchment paper over it to protect the iron), and this is what happened. I am pleased with this one and have another flower photo ready to stitch.

Gifts, Swaps

Isn't this lovely? It is even richer in person. It's this month's exchange for Calendar Girls and is from Carolt http://postcards-and-stuff.blogspot.com/

I'm taking Ratty Tatty Papers from Dale at The Thread Studion, and two of us in Washington exchanged napkins to expand our stash. These are from Patty. The fish are my favorites, but then maybe the oriental one, or the grapes. What fun.