Soy Silk Landscape

I'm still working on the flower piece that I showed on the last post. I'm doing a lot of machine work which makes my eyes tired. I also don't dare work on it after work when I'm exhausted. Sooo... the other night I decided to try and make a landscape with some of my soy silk fibers (like silk fibers but different.... Clear as mud!) I get them from Joggles. They also tell you what soy silk fibers are.
I added some silk throwsters waste for texture. Now I need to add some embellishment. I got a new order today from Joggles. It's like Christmas. I got a couple new soy silk colors, some throwsters waste and I ordered some new threads that I wanted to see. I could spend a fortune on these threads! They are Steph Francis hand dyed threads. Gorgeous colors!

New Project

I've had the last 3 days off work. Talk about nice! I managed to get quite a bit done on my quilt projects. Not alot of housework though!! I think I mentioned in my last blog that I painted some paper towels, cheesecloth and some dryer sheets. I found I like doing these as a group so that the colors go together. I did a group of blues and greens and a groups of reds and pinks.
I started this quilt that night. The background is made of torn paper towels that I fused to peltex. I then covered it with cheesecloth that I sewed down. I love the look. The cheesecloth smoothed the background out and gave it a pinterly look. One of my friends in our art quilt group said it had a Monet look.
The flowers aren't attatched yet. The red ones and the leaves are made from some of my silk paper. The pink ones are paper towels.

Here's a close-up. I love the texture in the background.

I'm still thinking of how I'm going to sew down the flowers and leaves. I'm not sure what I will do for the center of the flowers. I think I'm going to use a combination of machine and hand stitching. I also want to couch down some yarn or various fibers. I'm also thinking of adding some embroidery to add to the texture of the background. Who knows!!

This is some fabric I painted today. I'm not sure that I will keep the paper towel flowers on this piece so I painted this. It should be dry by now and I can iron it and see which I want to use.

Snowy Days

Here's what our driveway looked like this morning. Gary had already made a couple of passes with the snowblower. I had today off and had all sorts of plans for myself but school was cancelled again today and Gary didn't have to go to work so I didn't get as much done as I had wanted to. I did get some cheesecloth, paper towels and fabric softener sheets painted and started a project with some these things. Don't have any pictures yet (not much to see right now)

This is the path that Kara shoveled to the back of the house for Ginger. Now Ginger doesn't have to make flying leaps to get out to the pee area! Although, Ginger does love the snow and it is so funny to watch her out in it.

And last but not least a girl and her dog! I was going to try and get a picture of Alex too but he was inside warming up and didn't get back out in time. This picture makes Ginger look tiny. She is about 30 pounds. I can't believe she (Ginger) is 10 months old now.
I haven't gone anywhere today. Except for going out to take the pictures, I stayed inside where it is nice and warm and not windy!

Need to pull dinner from the oven and then get back to work on my projects.

Take a Stitch Tuesday - Algerian Eye Stitch

I had high hopes of getting this posted for the round up this week but didn't make it. Then I went to post it this morning and found my husband had started the defragging program which take our computer a LONG time to run so I'm finally getting it done now.
At first, I was stuck as to what to do. In bed one night I came up with doing a checker board and each square would be different. I also tried it on my hand painted fabric instead of an even weave fabric.
With 2 of these, I used a bead and in another 2 I wove a yarn in the stitches. The rest are just experimenting with different lenghts and with different size threads.
Some of these make me think of snowflakes or stars.

Winter has arrived!!! and some postcards

Well, winter has really arrived in NH!! It is COLD!!!
Here are the next 5 postcards I did for the Art 2 Mail swap.
The background fabric is some of my handpainted fabric. The hearts that are pink are silk paper that I made with some angelina on top. The heart that is orange, redand purple is a paper towel that I dyed. This was the first time that I tried couching down the yarn with my sewing machine. Made it go alot faster and was alot easier on my wrist and hand.
Now to get these addressed and sent off. This was the first time that I put cardstock o teh back instead of fabric. Makes it alot easier to write on.

I thought that I would have more time to work on my projects since this is a slow time at work but so far it hasn't slowed much for me. I know I should be greatful that my hours are staying up there since I really need the work but I really get frustrated at not being able to work on my fiber art as much as I would like. By the time I get home from work, I'm so exhausted that all I want to do is sleep but I have to get the kids from school and then deal with dinner and homework. Then it's time to go to bed and start it all over again. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother trying but I can't stop thinking about projects or coming up with new ideas. Guess I just have to to on doing what I can do and try to be satisfied.

Take a Stitch Tuesday - Chevron Stitch

I did manage to finish my piece with the chevron stitch. The colors on the piece are brighter in person. Once again I used pearl cotton and cotton embroidery floss on hand painted and stamped fabric.

Take a Stitch Tuesday - Cretan Stitch

I finally had a chance to work on the cretan stitch. I had trouble finding inspiration like I did for the chain stitch but I'm happy with what I did. Since I hadn't used this stitch before, I had a little trouble getting things to work like I wanted them to. You can see on the botttom green row, where I had trouble getting the stitch started (on the left).
The background is another of my handpainted pieces. I used both cotton embroidery floss and perl cotton. I tried varying height and width of the stiches. I also couched down a torn strip of fabric. The purple is a yarn that I wove through the stitching.
Maybe I'll have a chance to work on the next stitch this afternoon, if I don't fall asleep. Had to get up at 4am to go to work.