I finished my journal quilt and sent it off last week. I was beginning to wonder if I would get it done. Just have to wait till it debuts in Houston to put it up here.

I subscribed to the on-line magazine, Fiber and Stitch. The first issue came out at the beginning of the month. It has some really great articles. When you subscribe, you can also join an on-line group. This group had a challenge called Lutrador and Lace. This is the piece that I made up for that challenge.
It's lutrador with cheesecloth and lace sewed on top and layers of paint on top. I started out by picking out the colors I was going to use but didn't like how it was turning out so I just started pulling colors out of my paint box. I think I will make a notebook or journal cover out of it.

Here's the new quilt I'm working on. I started it in Myrna Giesbrecht's "Self Expressions" class at Quilt University. The trees are just pinned up right now. Need to get them sewn on and add leaves. I think I will make some of them 3-D. The colors in these pictures aren't quilt as bright as the real quilt.

For the background, I fuse strips of fabric from my scrap bag to a backing fabric. I painted cheesecloth and put that on top. It blends the colors of the background. I decided to free-motion quilt leaves to hold the cheeselcloth down. Don't know when I will have a chance to work on it again. Work is still busy and Gary will be having his 2nd surgery on the 5th.

I've finally put my round robin book together. Don't have a picture of it yet. Will get a picture taken and get it posted soon.

Tomorrow my art quilt group is meeting. I'm really looking forward to it. These meetings really get my creativity going and it's just fun getting out of the house with other ladies.

New Work

Here is a quilt I made in Myrna Giesbrecht's "Self Expressions" class on Quilt University. For this exersize, we took a piece of fabric we didn't like and used that in a quilt. The blue background fabric was my ugly fabric. It didn't look like this when I started. It was a piece that I had folded into squares and dyed with a dark blue. The folds ended up dark blue and the rest was a very light grayish blue. Not very inspiring. It had been in my closet for ages. I painted it with bright blue and turquoise fabric paint. Now why I didn't think of doing this ages ago? I don't know.I still think it needs something but I'm not quite sure what at this point. Maybe some quilting with blue threads or maybe some beading.

I finally finished my journal quilt. Just need to make the hanging sleeve and get the artists statement laminated. We do have a laminating machine here at home but I don't know how to use it. Who knows where the instructions are!

My art quilt group got together yesterday. It was a nice time catching up and seeing what we had all been up to. Marilynn showed us some pieces she had done in a class with Velda Newman at Quilting by the Lake. The were really nice.

Lynne Rand made it to the meeting and showed us some of the things she has been printing. Really nice mixed media. I love the texture she gets. We had a new lady, Anita. She showed some applique pieces that were really nice.

I took the top that I made in Carol Taylor's class. Still need to finish it. I also showed this piece that is above. I'm taking a class on Quilt University with Myrna Giesbrecht called Self Expression. I still need to attatch the small quilt to the background fabric. I want to mount the fabric to a canvas first before I put the small quilt on.

The background was one of the pieces I sun printed before we went to Cape Cod. I just happened to set the small quilt on top of it when I was done working one night and the light bulb went on in my head - the 2 pieces were made for each other.

Now that Labor day is over I hope I can do a little more quilting. Work should be slowing down - I hope!!!! Most of the tourists have gone home.