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.

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.