Class

As part of Susan Sorrell's class at www.joggles.com, I made a stencil from cardboard.

I think it is a cool idea, but the image is not very clear. Since I like the design, I'll probably cut it from some Speedball.

For those of us who "can't draw", this design was made using part of a Dover stencil and trying different arrangements of the shapes in the shell.

Stitch Explorer

This month's stitch technique to explore is Assissi Embroidery. Sharonb is running the challenge www.pintangle.com Here is my updated version. It uses silk twisted thread on a hand dyed cotton. The inspiration is from a gardening catalog. I like this method of doing a design.

Class, Postcard

In the class I'm taking from Susan Sorrell at http://www.joggles.com/, one of the inspiration sources was fungi. Several years ago I took a photo of some mushrooms on the road. In Microsoft Picture It, I used the negative function to get my colors-blues and violets. I printed it on treated fabric which is the above photo. This is the stitched version. The piece had sat in the studio for several years, because I didn't know what to do with it. Now I'm happy.

My postcard for the exchange with Calendar Girls 2008 came yesterday from Doreen http://doreeng.blogspot.com It is so rich. I'm so happy with it. She did a great job interpreting the calendar photo.

quiltie

The theme this month for Unlimited Textiles is Gothic. I took a book out of the library to see what the Gothic style was but still had trouble getting inspiration. This is a photo I took in Germany of a gate, and it seemed to fit the description. It's printed on fabric with a line of chain stitch around the image.

Calendar Girls

I'm a member of http://calendargirls2008.blogspot.com/ and this year we are each picking a calendar photo for everyone to interpret.

Carol T chose this photo. Cool!Here is my interpretation. The background is wool with barkcloth machined to it. The cheesecloth is hand stitched in place.

Class

I've been really having fun getting back to creative hand stitching by taking Susan Sorrell's class at www.joggles.com This is the Lesson 4 results with leaves as inspiration. Mine is a closeup of a Rex Begonia. The background is actually a gray hand dyed with the fuchsia hand dye and Ultrasuede. I bordered it with a couched rattail cord.

Gift

My grandson will be 2 in May, so I made him a doggy quilt to drag around and wrap up in.

Bead Journal Project

This is the Journal quilt for March for the Bead Journal Project. I decided to fuse a butterfly motif to the background and bead it. Then it needed a ribbon flower to fly to.

Experiment

I had done some strip piecing in green and yellow that I didn't like, so I threw it in a black dye bath-still bad. Then I painted it with blue Quink ink-available at office supply stores. The flower is molding paste applied through a stencil and then gilded with a rubbing paste. Finally, I had the French Knots by hand in Perle Cotton. Much better. I hope you like it too.

Class

When I was taking the Ratty Tatty Papers class from Dale of www.thethreadstudio.com we did tranfers using fusible web. They are very aged looking and easy to do.

There are so many ways to transfer images, each with its own look.

Class

The http://www.joggles.com/ class with Susan Sorrell is really getting me excited about my stitching. Flowers were the next inspirations source, so I used a photo I took when we visited a mission in Carmel, California.

I started with a hand dyed fabric then layered some thread lace left from another project. Next came painted cheesecloth petals and some netting. The petals have straight stitches down the center and whipped edges with French Knots for centers. The background has Feather Stitch in two colors.

Class, Postcard

Here are a couple of collage I did in the color class. It's a good way to try out color and design ideas.

This is the lovely postcard Susan sent me for this month's Calendar Girls exchange. I love the pearls and jewels.

I answer all the comments that I can. Right now my server is "upgrading", so if you don't heard, that's why.

Class

I'm taking Susan Sorrell's Fertile Earth class at www.joggles.com and learning new ways to design. The first lesson was using a fruit or vegetable as a design source, so I found this strawberry that I had painted in a class many years ago. Considering that I can't paint realisticly, it's pretty good. I scanned it into Microsoft Picture It and made a negative. When I first realized that a negative in the program was not what we are used to in print film, I was so excited and tried it on lots of things. These are my colors.Then I used the outline function to find the main design lines.

I made negative again to get rid of the black then moved it into Photoshop Elements 2.0 and used a filter-I think zigzag-to get a line design. This I printed onto treated fabric and stitched with running stitch and Perle Cotton.

To get back to the strawberry motif, I used the shape in sheer fabrics and stitched using back stitch. Then I beaded the center.

I'm really enjoying getting back to hand stitching. Finally, I'm using the programs to do something other than play. It's a super way to design even though I don't know much about the programs.