Thursday, April 17, 2008

Green Apple Martini

Here she is, I really like how she turned out!! The base fabric is hand dyed bamboo poplin. I built up the surface with thread painting & then layered Misty Fuse, Angelina Fibers (first time I've ever used those) & dyed cheesecloth. Wished you could see the Angelina Fibers under the cheesecloth a little better. I tried everything when photographing it, but those shiny metallic fibers just didn't want to show up in the photo. The post before this one, you can see it better in the closeup. The triangles are dyed toilet tissue cast & I added painted metal clips.


Was a little nervous when it came to quilting the piece. My old 100 stitch Kenmore never really seemed to quilt very well so I never really enjoyed quilting much. A couple of months ago, I bought a new machine, a Janome 6600 & she's just wonderful!! I love my new machine!! Quilting with it is wonderful. Starting & stopping you didn't have that little knotted mess on the back side of the fabric that you wondered how you were going to clean up & the thread cutter button is a must!! Was a little nervous when I began stitching over the toilet tissue cast pieces, but the Janome didn't have a single issue with it. It stitched along like I was quilting on muslin.

Almost forgot, finished, it's 12.5" by 18".

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Green Quilt Finished!!!


Finally!! Tried to photograph this last nite & was unsuccessful, however, the closeup turned out really well. Will try again tonite. Keep your fingers crossed for me that I'm successful. Pictures of submitted pieces are supposed to be sent out on cd by tomorrow. (nothing like cutting it close)
Apparently, we have to title our pieces (hate doing that, it's something I'm not very good at doing). Michelle suggeseted Green Apple Martini. I can see that & I think it fits nicely!! Thanks Michelle!

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Tax day & other things..................

I can actually say, mine have been done for over a month & a half now & that we happily received a refund. We are in the slow process of changing out all of the hollow core doors in our home with solid white maple doors. Since there are 11 to be replaced, we will probably be placing orders of about 3-4 at a time. Our first 4 doors are to arrive in Seattle today & hopefully they'll be delivered to us sometime this week. Then the fun starts, assembling the doors with the jams, staining the new doors & breaking down the old doors so that garbage person isn't upset with us when they come to pick up our garbage. So needless to say, I may not have much to post for a little while.

I am happy to say that I did get out of jury duty, yeah!

Sorry that I haven't posted much lately, but remember the quilt that I wanted to enter into a show & I messed up the measurements? Received an email stating that they were going to extend the deadline by one more week, so I've been working like mad on trying to finish up another idea. All I have to do is bind the quilt, which I hope to finish tonite & if I have time, will take pics tonite & hopefully post tomorrow, otherwise, I'll post on Wednesday.

To give you a little hint of what I've been doing on this piece, I dyed bamboo poplin, my favorite neon green, cheesecloth, that same green along with hints of turquoise(it turned out really nice) did some thread painting along with adding touches of dyed toilet tissue cast, angelina fibers (first time I've ever used those) & Misty Fuse. And should it not get chosen for the show, that's ok, it's a piece I can add to my Etsy store, which I hope to be opening soon!!

Monday, April 7, 2008

Ugh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry not much to post. Spent most of the weekend working on a quilt for a show that is due this Thursday. Had the fabric already dyed, stamped & embellishments finished. Had the pieces cut out & matched up. Started to sew & something just didn't look right. What was supposed to be 3" by 3" squares, turned out to be 3" by 3 3/4" rectangles. Talk about completely frustrating, I had thought I had done my math correctly (something I normally leave up to my husband who is an engineer). Apparently not! I thought about cutting them down, but the embellishments that I had paper cast & dyed would have been too over powering for the piece. So what do you do? Start over. Dye more fabric & skip entering into this show. There just wasn't enough time & I didn't want to force something that might not look very nice in the end. So, time to focus on another show that I'm planning on entering that's due in June. Figured I could start now, go slowly & not be under a clock to finish it. The one nice thing, my paper casts are already done!


I was summoned for jury duty today & tomorrow. They didn't pick me today & hopefully, I won't be picked tomorrow!! Talk about exhausting. You sit in a room with about 200 other people & that's all you do......................sit. Brought my latest Quilting Arts & American Quilter's Society magazine, along with a book & my sketchbook. A person can only read for so long, then you get sleepy......................well, at least I do. One day down & hopefully, I pray, only one more left!!



On a happy note, I received this over the weekend from Nikki.



I visit her blog quite often & love what she's doing!! One day I suggested about "goin' green". She obliged & look at the beautiful work she created in that color. Thanks Nikki, I LOVE it!!

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

ACEO's from Marion

Marion Barnett & I did a private trade & this is what she sent me. Aren't they just GORGEOUS?!!!!! The colors are very beautiful & vibrant. There's so much going on it each of these ACEO's (Art Card, Editions & Originals) They each have a soft velvety touch to them when you gently run your fingers over them. The two on the outside have layered Lutradur & what I think are Angelina Fibers that run over the sides. They've all been painted & some of them have foiling & quilting added.

I love how she finished the edges by leaving them raw. I would have never thought of doing this. When I make pc's or atc's, my thought is of always stitching up those edges. Seeing these has now opened my mind to new possibilites.

You really should check out Marion's blog, she's doing some wonderful things & if you find yourself really wanting one of her beautiful pieces, she also has an Etsy store!!

Thank you Marion for such wonderful little works of art!!!

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Goin' to the birds





I had a busy weekend. I had to make 8 of these for a swap in Surface Design. I'm not sure how I feel about them yet. I'm one of those people that after spending a lot of time on something like this, when they're done, I wonder, "do they look ok?" "did they turn out ok?" I'm always so critical of myself. I did like how the fabric turned out, below, before I made them into birds.

The sky blue (a somewhat lighter color than I would normally use) was actually a mistake from a previous project. (Glad I held onto it!) I then layered a metallic eyelash yarn, black Misty Fuse then another eyelash yarn on top.

I also dyed my cat, Matisse, this weekend. No, it was not intentional. I do all of my dyeing in my garage & when I'm working, I leave the door open from the living room into the garage so my 2 boys, Matisse & Sydney can play & do what cats like to do when checking out new places. I was dyeing some of my neon green for a quilt that I'm working on & decided to make up some extra dye to paint some Tyvek. I don't like how lightly the dye goes onto the Tyvek, so I actually pool it onto the Tyvek & let it dry over night. When I finished, I would have sworn that Matisse was in the house, so I closed the door. A couple minutes later I went back out into the garage & there was Matisse on the other side of the door. I didn't think anything of it. Half an hour later, my husband noticed this green stain on the living room floor. I had NO idea where this had come from since I never brought any dye into the house. As I was cleaning up that spot, we started to notice, little green kittie paw prints all over the living room carpet, up the stairs onto the wooden floor in the kitchen, all the way through onto our cork floor in the dining room. We snatched up Matisse & sure enough, that little boy had 4 neon green paws. We were able to rinse most of it off, however, it did dye his feet a little bit.

My next worry, how bad did the garage look? It was a massacre in there. Remember that pool of dye on the Tyvek? Matisse had walked through it, realized his feet were wet & shook them all over the counter & walls. He then proceeded to walk the entire length of the counter, slid down my white cabinets & continued onto the concrete floor. Luckily, every thing cleaned up quite well, even the carpet. I think my saving grace with the carpet was that, the dye I mixed up for the Tyvek, I didn't add the soda ash so the dye was never able to bond with anything. Unfortunately, I have no pictures to show you of Matisse's paws, since he has dark pads & the green just wouldn't photograph well enough to show.

It is kind of funny looking back on it now, however, when it happened, I found NO humor in it whatsoever.

(oh & by the way, my Mariner's won their game yesterday, 5-2)