Play Time

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.

Felting Experiments

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.

Where's Beth?

I'm right here at home. I can't believe how long it's been since I've written. Just been so busy - no quilting really but busy. I'm back up to a normal schedule at work and get home too tired to do much. I have to get working on the Fiber Divas project. I've only finished Marilyn's quilt.

Two weeks ago, Kara and I went on a girls weekend to Houghton College in Houghton NY. Where's that you ask? It's south of Buffalo. Ten hours west of Plymouth. I was really happy that Kara and I made good time getting to Houghton. I drove the first 5 hours and Kara drove the second 5. She picked out her classes for the fall semester and lined up a work study job. I sat in on talks about financial aid and other talks about Houghton. Kara stayed in the dorm while I stayed with Gary's younger brother and his family.

Geri Ann leant the Fiber Divas the 3rd season of Quilting Arts TV. I ended up with it first and really enjoyed watching it. A couple of my favorite episodes were the ones with Beryl Taylor and Melanie Testa. There was a third person who I really liked but can't remember her name right now. Watching Beryl's episode on machine felting with unusual fabrics is where I got the idea for these pieces. I have a collection of scarves and other fabrics that I've been wanting to use in something. I experimented to see which ones would felt and which ones wouldn't. I used my hand felters since I don't have a machine and it worked!! I added some beading and big stitching.
I painted warm and natural batting to use as the backing for the felting. I had been wanting to try painting the batting for a long time. Just hadn't taken the time. I also wanted to see if these different fabrics would felt to the batting.

These were fun projects that I could make without really thinking about. Which is great when I'm really tired.

This blue one isn't quite finished. I still need to add some more beading. I took these pictures before I started the hand stitching and beading on the blue piece.

Now I just need to figure out how I want to finish these. I think it would be neat to leave the edges of the different fabrics sticking out. Before I thought of that, I cut a couple off on one side.