Once again I will say, I can't believe it's been so long since I've posted. I've been busy here. Just not quilting and it will be getting even busier. Kara came home over Easter and went back to school. She's now home again with all her stuff but will be leaving again for a month traveling in the Balkans with her honors program class. They get to see what they have been studying. In between her coming and going and coming again, Gary, Alex and I went out to Ohio to Gary's parents house. Their tree was in bloom outside their house. I just had to take some pictures of it.
We spent a day touring through Amish country.
And the big news, just before we left for Ohio, we found out that we had been picked for the Habitat for Humanity house that is being built this summer in our area. Since we live the country, they only build one a year. We are so excited!!! It's going to be a busy summer between work, family stuff and the build. I've started a blog to journal about it and to keep friends and family updated (and anyone else who would like to follow along). If you would like to see it go here.
Well, I'd better go get some sleep. Work comes early and it's getting late. I hope to have some new things to show soon, since I want to make some new things for the house.
I finally finished up a piece I started in a class last year on Joggles with Jane LaFazio. I knew I had this frame and it would be perfect for this piece, I just couldn't find it. I bought this frame 3-4 years ago at a yard sale for $1. I new it would be perfect for something sometime! It has glass in it so I couldn't take the picture so that it looked square. But I was able to take it at an angle so you could see the work and not the flash from the camera.
And, no Kara, you can't take this one back to college with you. I'm finding a place to hang it here at home!
Here are the results of my last batch of snow dyeing. Really nice colors! I'm always so amazed at how different they come out than what I think they will. This first one was a combination of black and fuschia. I thought it would have more black in it. There are a few spots with black. The rest turned out more blue gray. Next time I will add more black and a little less fuschia.
This one was a combination of orange, fuschia and brilliant blue - I think. Of course, I didn't write the colors down. I thought I'd remember them but did I? I should have known better! The colors are a little off in these photos. The actual piece makes me think of a flower garden.
These were some cloth napkins that I picked up at the second hand store with the intent of dyeing or painting them some day. I used fuschia, sun yellow and indigo. This closeup shows the pattern in the weave of the napkins.
I probably won't have a chance to do any more snow dyeing for a while. We are getting a little short on snow outside! Pretty sad for New Hampshire. I think we are one of the few areas in the states that hasn't gotten a lot of snow recently. We can see bare ground outside. The upside to not much snow will be that mud season shouldn't be too bad this year!
The Fiber Divas met last Wednesday. It was fun. Anita showed off some larger pieces that she had snow dyed. It made me want to try my hand at dyeing some larger pieces. I always stick to fat quarters when I dye and there are times I wish I had more. Here are a couple of 1 yard pieces.
I froze the fabric before covering it in snow and then dyeing it. The snow was very wet, so I packed it down on tip of the fabric. I don't know if that had anything to do with how "crackled" these came out.
I'm having so much fun doing this that I did a couple more pieces yesterday. They are down in the basement sink soaking. By the time I finished work yesterday and got everything ready to dye, I was out in the dark collecting snow. I was hoping I didn't scoop up any doggy surprises! I will post pictures of the fabric when I get them.
I love the colors and the patterning of these but I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them. Dyeing them is addicting. I enjoy painting and dyeing fabric just as much as quilting with them. Has anyone made anything with their snow dyed fabric?
I had a fun time visiting all the blogs in the One World, One Heart Giveaway this year. I wish I had more time to spend on each one.
I used a random generator to pick a winner and the lucky winner was comment number 73, Lavender Dreams. I've already e-mailed her for her snail mail addy and will get the fabric sent off to her. Her blog is: www.lavenderdreamstoo.blogspot.com
Here are a couple more pictures of Riley. It is so hard to get pictures of him since he is just go, go, go when he is awake! Here he had slowed down long enough to chew on his toy! Still he was flopping around enough with it that it was hard to get pictures that weren't blurry.
I snow dyed a couple more pieces of fabric the other day. With these ones, I froze the fabric before I dyed them. This one was the fuchsia and ice blue. It's interesting how different this one is from the one I dyed with fuchsia and ice blue the day before.
This next one was seafoam and ice blue.
I had extra dye so I decided to dye some fat quarters. The colors came out really yummy. Will I be able to duplicate them again? No but I can get some that will be similar using the sam e parent colors. I did try to get some colors that were lighter than I usually make. I think I did that. Now to think of a project to use these in. I think they need to be used together. I also need to actually make something with my fabric. Not just make more fabric!!! But making the fabric is so much fun!
There's been a lot of talk on the Quilt Art list about snow dyeing so I decided to try my hand at it. I know there was an article in Quilting Arts about snow dyeing but I couldn't find that issue so I followed this tutorial.
Since I was only dyeing fat quarters I used little Rubbermaid disposable containers to dye in. They seemed to have worked out fine although I might try something a little deeper another time.
This fabric is my favorite one. I think this is the one that I froze the fabric in the freezer before dyeing. You freeze it after soaking it in the soda ash solution. With the other 3 pieces, I was too impatient and packed them in the snow after pulling them out of the soda ash solution. This piece was a combination of fushia and ice blue.
This one was fushia and seafoam.
This next one was a combination of fushia and citrus yellow. My first reaction with this green piece was that it was too light and I would have to over dye it but then I remembered that I had just been going through my fabrics and realizing that I don't have many light colors, so it will stay like this. This was a combination of citrus yellow and seafoam.
I decided to throw some cheesecloth in with the fabric being dyed. Here are those results.
I love the one above the green. It was dyed with the first piece of fabric above. Here you can see a little more of the purple color.
I dyed a couple more pieces of fabric today and am impatiently waiting for the snow to melt.
I've been busy playing and taking care of Riley. I can't believe it will be a week tomorrow that he came home. He sure is a lot of work but also lots of fun and what a character!!
These are pictures that we took a couple of days ago. He is really starting to fit in and get comfortable here.
Ginger still hasn't gotten used to him although she tolerates him more now than when he arrived home. At least she can be in the same room as him now. She has the attitude of "If I can't see him, he isn't there" She spends a lot of time studiously looking the other way.
So, needless to say, I haven't spent much time working on any projects. I have been watching Quilting Arts TV DVD's (series 400) which my mom got for me for my birthday. I also been watching Quilting Arts Workshop, "Print, Collage, Quilt" with Melanie Testa and Cloth, Paper, Scissors Workshop, "Layer by Layer" with Beryl Taylor. It is great to see some of the things actually being done in "Print, Collage, Quilt" that I read about in Melanie's book " Inspired to Quilt".
For my Birthday, Kara, gave me "Art + Quilt, Design Principles and Creative Exercises" by Lyric Kinard. It has some great exercises in it. I just have to take the time to actually do them. Before Christmas, I bought myself "Intuitive Color & Design" by Jean Wells. This also has some really go exercises in it. I love the abstract look of her quilts.
Time to get to bed so I can get up at 4:30 to go to work.
Where did the year go? I didn't realize that the One World One Heart giveaway had started until I saw it on a blog yesterday. Since I don't have time to make anything, I decided to giveaway a fat quarter of my hand-dyed fabric. If you click on the One World - One Heart logo above, you will be taken to a list of all of this years participants. So go have some fun and spend some time looking at other creative blogs.
How do you enter my drawing you ask. Well first this is open to bloggers everywhere. Just leave a comment to this post by midnight February 14 and I will use a random number generator to pick a winner on February 15th. Please make sure there is a link back to your blog so I have a way to contact you or leave your e-mail addy with your comment.
Kara was getting after me the other day about not having anything new on my blog. I told her I didn't have anything new quilt related but I guess I could post a picture of Riley. Riley is the Shih Tsu puppy we are going to be getting. If everything works out we will be getting him this coming weekend. I really hope everything works out! Riley is supposed to be my birthday present but I think that was just the excuse so Gary could get him and Alex keeps saying that Riley is going to be his puppy! We'll see how long the puppy newness lasts when he has to keep getting up in the middle of the night to let Riley pee!!! We'll see how long it is until I'm the one getting up in the middle of the night and how long it is until I'm the one cleaning up the accidents!! We'll see whose puppy it ends up being in the long run!! Gary will just sleep through all the crying puppy nights like he did when the kids were little!
I haven't been really inspired to do much of anything lately. I have gotten my sewing room organized now that Kara is back at Houghton. I did put together a sewing package for her. She asked for some fabric squares, thread, embroidery floss and other things so she could try her hand at hand sewing when she was sitting around with her friends.
After seeing all the posts on Quilt Art about snow dyeing and seeing different posts on blogs, I've wanted to give it a try. Now that I have time, it's too warm and the snow is melting with all the rain. Just have to wait a couple days and it should get colder. Can't go too long in NH without cold winter weather!!
Just a quick shot of what it looks like outside. Thought the birdhouse looked cute out in the snow. Finally, here you go Kara, my challenge quilt all put together. Mine is on the top that all the others hang from. Starting from the left is: Anita's, Marilyn's, top: Susan's, botttom: Lynn's and the final one on the left, Carmen's. I found copper colored circles with holes in them to hang everything from. I really like the way it came out.
Here are the quilts that we had displayed at the exhibit at the Gilford Library. I remembered to take pictures when we took it down. This first one is Anita's her theme was Ecclesiastes 3. Starting at the top and going clockwise, the quilts were made by: Susan Wei, Marilyn Mason, Lynn Elkinton, Carmen Burns and mine is in the middle. Anita wasn't able to make one for her theme. This one is Marilyn's. Her theme was sashiko. Unfortunately, you can't see the stitches in this picture. The stitching really adds a lot to these pieces. Starting at the top left and once again going clockwise: Anita Furbush, Marilyn, Susan, Lynn, Carmen and mine. I have some other pictures that show the stitching, I'll try to get them posted in the next couple of days.
This one was Lynn's. Her theme was a song that had to do with rolling down the river or something. I can't remember exactly made which one but I'll try. Once again starting in the upper left: Susan?, Anita?, me, Carmen, Marilyn?, and Lynn. These two photos are Carmen's. Her theme was also Ecclesiastes 3:1. Upper left: Anita, Upper right: Lynn, Lower left: Marilyn and Lower right Susan. I didn't take a picture of mine. If you want to see it again you can go here.
This next one is Susan's. Her theme was The Moon. Starting at the slice with the 2 people and going clockwise: Susan, me, Lynn, Marilyn and Carmen. Susan's actual piece hangs sort of like a mobile but to display it at the library, she had to display it like this. I don't have a picture of mine yet. It was too big to get a picture at the library and I need to get it hung up on the wall to get a good picture. I will get it taken tomorrow after work. Sorry Kara! I know you wanted to see it!
Here's a new piece I've been working on. It started as part of a 5 day Follow Me Blind Challenge on Fiber Art Traders. Each day we had directions to follow without knowing what we would be doing the next. Day one we picked a piece of fabric and had to do some sort of surface design. I just used a piece of my hand-painted fabric. The second day we layered it with batting and quilted a piece of synthetic sheer fabric to the top. Then we used a heat gun to melt the sheer. I have been wanting to try that for a long time but never got around to it until now.
Day 3 we cut it up, rearranged it and sewed it to a backing fabric. Day 4 we embellished. I beaded it and made little green x out of some silk embroidery thread. Today is day 5 and we are now supossed to put a new backing on to cover up the stitching and then fold and manipulate it into some type of vessel. I'm not going to do this since I'm not really into make vessels. Maybe if I had a place to display stuff but I don't so it would just get put away and forgotten. I think I will cut the piece out of the felt and then mount it somehow to an artists canvas. I don't know if I will get a canvas that is already stretched and paint it then attatch this or get stretcher bars and sew this to a piece of black fabric and then attatche the fabric to the stretcher bars. I'm also thinking of extending the beading and x's off of the quilt and onto the background.
I really like the way this has come out and want to try doing some more pieces like this. It looks much better in person.
I spent some more time playing. This piece turned out sort of balh, but at least I'm playing and trying some new things. I used 2 layers of white fabric on this quilt. The bottom layer was a heavier fabric. After stitching the design and practicing more free motion quilting, I cut out the top layer of fabric from the circles. Then I dyed the quilt by applying the colors directly to the quilt surface. Once I rinsed it out, I found I had tried to use too many colors and they didn't blend well. Decided to dye the whole piece in red dye. It helped but I still didn't really like it. I decided to cut the fabric out of the "stems" don't really know what to call them. I found it interesting that the fabric that was on the bottom, didn't take the red dye a lot. I'm thinking of experimenting with oil paint sticks to color the circles or maybe I'll try rollering color on like Linda and Laura Kemshall show in their book "The Painted Quilt".
I'm really trying to let go and experiment with different techniques and not worry about if they will turn out or not. I need to learn to let go and try new things or practice things I don't do well, like free motion stitching.
I've just been playing the last couple of days. No finished projects. In the top piece, I practiced free motion quilting. Need lots of practice with that!!! I decided to use a drawing from my sketchbook that I'd like to turn into a hanging. I used white fabric and with inspiration from "Stitching to Dye in Quilt Art" by C June Barnes, I dyed the piece after doing all the free motion stitching. Even though this isn't a great work of art, I decided to add the beads to start getting an idea of where I want to go with it. On the right hand side, I used some spacer beads from a bead shop that was in town that is now out of business and now I used the last of these. I tried to find some on-line but haven't had any luck. These ones were gun metal gray. I also picked up some in bronze and one other metal color. I love using these in small projects and wish I had some more. I did find some that are similar in gold and silver but nothing like what I have here.
This piece, I was just playing with my hand felter. I really would like an embellisher but I will make due with felting by hand at this point. I used wool roving, sheer fabrics and yarns. I wanted to just practice blending them together to see what I could do other than just making rows like I did in these hangings. One of the things I like about felting with different materials is all the different textures you can get into a piece.
I don't have any new work to show but I ran across this book, "Stitching to Dye", by C June Barnes. I don't know if it has been reviewed anywhere and I just missed it but this book is great!!! She creates quilts with different white fabrics, stitches it, manipulates it and creates texture in the fabric then dyes it. The pieces she shows in the book are wonderful. So much color and texture. So many possibilities to play with!! I love her use of zippers in her work. If you haven't seen her work go here to her website.
I felted these 2 pieces back in May but never decided how to finish them. Here's where I posted about them. I made them after watching a couple segments on Quilting Arts TV about needle felting. On the show, they used an embellisher machine but I did these with a hand felter. I was playing with felting different fabrics and yarns to painted cotton batting. These were really fun to make. Just playing no thinking. They've been sitting around since then because I just couldn't decide how to finish them. I finally decided to sew them onto a piece of black felt. I started out with a rectangular piece of felt but it just didn't look right. So, I cut the black felt about 1/2" beyond the felted piece. Looks much better. This gives it a much more finished look.
Between work and rain, I didn't have a chance to go out and take some pictures of the fall colors until yesterday. There won't be too many more days to take any. The colors around here are just about past their peak. I thought Kara might like to see what it looks like back home now.
These were all taken on one of my favorite roads near our house, Old Hebron Road. Kara, this picture on top is from Old Hebron Road looking towards Texas Hill Road, somewhere near the christmas tree farm.
Here are some pictures of the Fiber Divas Exhibit at the Gilford Public Library. Thanks you Lynn for letting me use them!!! The library has a great area for displays and exhibits. These are the first two cases you see as you walk into the exhibit area (not really sure what else you would call this space. Having the glass cases made it really great for displaying small items. Besides the quilts, we also have sewing items like colorful spools of thread, pincushions, chatelains (not sure of the spelling), felted wool balls and fabric beads. These small things are spread out among the 3 cases. The case in the corner has Susan's challenge quilt which had moon as the theme. She also has 2 three dimensional pieces in there. Lynn has 2 pieces on top of the case. This case is the biggest and has my circle themed challenge piece at the top. You can see the 5 pieces the other Fiber Divas made that are hanging off of my piece. At the bottom is Lynn's challenge piece. I can't remember the words from the song she used for her theme but it had to do with a river. Sorry Lynn!! She also gave each of us a piece of blue fabric that we all thought was really pretty and then found out it was one of the hardest shades of blue to work with!!! We all managed to get a piece of that blue fabric in there somehow. On top of the case is a purse I made and a mixed media piece I made also. Lynn has a couple of her quilts in the bottom of the case.
Closeup of Susan's quilt above the fireplace at the library. I will have to get the name of the quilt from her since I can't remember it and add it later. Ok, somehow I've lost the picture showing the quilt and all of the fireplace.
Here is the 3rd case in the display area. This has Anita's challenge quilt in the top. Her theme was Ecclesiastes 3:1. Marilyn's challenge piece is in the bottom half of the case. Her theme was Sashiko. I wish I had remembered to take pictures of everyones quilts before we put them in the cases. I'll have to remember to take some when we take the exhibit down. I have a couple of quilts laying on the bottom of the case and Lynn has the 2 pieces on top of the case.
Here is Carmen's challenge piece. Her theme was Ecclesiastes 3:1 also. There are only 5 pieces here. Carmen didn't get a chance to make one for her challenge.
Here's a closeup of 4 of the pieces. Left to right are: Marilyn Mason, Susan Wei, Anita Furbush and mine. Lynn Elkinton's is the one missing from this picture.
If anyone is near Gilford, NH, stop by the Gilford Public Library and see the exhibit. It will be up for the month of October and it looks like the exhibit for November fell through and we will be up for November too.
Gilford Public Library 31 Potter Hill Road Gilford, NH 03249
I'm a wife and mother of 2. I love to make art quilts and am trying to figure out how to work in more quilting time between family and my job in a bakery.
