A nice quilty weekend

I finished up two baby blankets on Saturday--they were sitting there for a week just waiting for the binding to be sewn on.  I love how they turned out!

 This is the back of one:

 And this is the back of the other:

And I made two Pottery Barn style pillows using some linen fabric that I bought at a quilt show recently.  The fabric was $2/yard, and is white, so I dyed it this light turquoise color one day last week.  I sewed a big button on each last night, and now they're finished.

Feels good to finally get some things done!!!

More felting projects

I'm in the final week of my on-line felting class, and worked on some projects over the weekend.  These are felted vessels (or actually vases) that are made mostly out of merino roving, with some other fibers added in  (icelandic wool, prefelt pieces, silk scraps, and even cheesecloth and scrim).

They were all made using the same piece of foam resist, but some of the wools felted differently, therefore the final sizes are slightly different.

 Front and size of this one, showing the lovely textures!

For the vessel below, I used a piece of prefelt in purple that I cut holes in--the piece was quite a bit bigger, it really shrank down in size when it was done.  I felted onto a white merino.

 These are strips of prefelt, silk and some rovings -- all give it such great texture.

And this one I used an icelandic wool to make, it was coarser and very stiff when completed.  The flowers are merino roving, and I added some cheesecloth and silk to make the leaves, and yarn to make the stems.

 I think this piece may have been influenced by these peonies blooming in my garden!

Seems like we're heading straight into summer

Went to NY to visit my daughter & family over Easter, plus she had her new baby (Ethan) April 13th, so things were a little busier than usual.

While there, I took my granddaughter Madelyn to a goat dairy farm near their house where they have tours.  She loved it.  The goats were so friendly, but weren't like goats at a petting zoo that try to attack your hands for food.

And now that I'm home again and back to work, I've been making some simple baby quilts for my niece who had a baby girl on April 16th--

Also, have been doing samples for the Surface Design in Felting on-line class I'm enrolled in.  Felting is such a fun and unusual experience--more different than anything I think I've done before.

 This sample is a piece of silk over some merino roving, with circle resists.

Hot this past weekend here in NC--will probably have to turn the AC on by the end of the week.  Spring is over, summer is here.

Felting surface design class

I enrolled in an on-line felting class that started this past weekend.  These are just a few of the small samples I've made since Sunday:

It's fantastic so far--I highly recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about the different roving types out there (merino, gotland, alpaca, icelandic and more) and learning how to create all these great textures.  The instructor is Fiona Duthie, and since there are no felting classes anywhere near me, this is a great way to learn.

Still waiting for my grandson to be born, hopefully it will be this week!  I know my daughter is ready.

Spring may be here--finally.

One reason I like to blog is that it gives me a chance to look at what I've actually gotten accomplished.  Even though some days it seems that all I do is go to work and come home late, I still am able to complete some projects.

One is a baby blanket for a soon-to-be born grandson:

And a baby blanket I made for my sister who needed it for a baby shower.  I haven't bought fabric for a specific project in quite a while--she wanted something with monkeys on it.

Lots of free motion stitching went into this.  I wonder if the recipient will even think about all that work?  I'm sure not.

And even some dyeing, now that it's warming up a bit.  These two pieces were pretty awful looking at this stage--

 But they evolved into these pieces afterwards.

 I just love the look of shibori!

 And more, always more...

I've opened an Etsy shop and am selling some of my fabrics (or trying to--no sales yet!).  Gotta get rid of some of it so I can keep making more.  Hope to get these posted up there today.

Linking up with Nina Marie today--Off The Wall Fridays!

First Day of Spring

I was on a roll for a while in February, posting quite a few times.  Lost some of my momentum over the past few weeks, though!  Part of that was due to an ice storm earlier this month when I lost power for a few days, it was a slight setback, but things are better now!

Last weekend I dyed some yarns that I bought at a fiber show in January from a wonderful lady from Heelside Farms.  This was white when I bought it, now look at the wonderful colors:

Do you like my professional drying rack?

So, I dyed all this yarn and needed to use it for something--I got out some burlap and started hooking some small pieces (about 7" x 10").

 This one is a little bigger (about 8" x 11").  

And, I have been doing a little bit of sewing, too.  This is what's on my design wall now.

Bye Bye February

This month I've been a guest blogger over on And Then We Set it on Fire a few times, and have been doing a lot of dyeing related to the Ann Johnston DVD.

Here are three fat quarter pieces that I dyed Turquoise (for a Fire blog post), then I batiked with an egg carton dipped in beeswax, and overdyed.

I like how they turned out, and I think they'll make some cute pillows.

And I also finished up a crib bumper set for my daughter who is having a baby in April, this time a boy.  Got this whole set in the mail to her today.

What a mess! I had to get these out of the way because I just don't have enough room...

 And for two Saturdays in a row, I went to a quilt-as-you-go class at my LQS, Quilting Quest in Lexington.  I had some blocks made already, so I used them to learn the technique of joining the already-quilted squares.  Very easy, and I'll definitely use this again, probably to make a baby blanket soon!

Real Snow for Snow Dyeing!

Last Wednesday & Thursday we had about 8" of snow (and some ice/sleet) where I live in North Carolina, which is extremely rare.  Ok, there aren't any snowplows to speak of, and the schools all close in anticipation of storms, and so I was lucky enough to have Wednesday through Friday off of work.

So, on Friday, after the snow stopped falling, I did some snow dyeing.  I used blue, turquoise, and some yellow orange.

 For these pieces, I poured liquid dye concentrates onto the snow.  Purple, orange, and yellow.

Then I tried a couple using the dye powders instead--I think this was Sapphire and Blue Violet.  

I used Avacado & chartreuse dye powders for this.  The yellows in this piece below didn't melt down very well, they turned a little "gooey" instead.  I didn't take a picture of the finished version, but I ended up overdyeing it on Sunday since I wasn't 100% happy with the results.

Here are some of my results from Friday.  (The piece on the right is from the bottom of the tray that soaked up the leftover drops).

 I think this is my favorite:

So, on Sunday morning I realized there was still some snow out there, so I took a few more pieces and put them in soda solution, then poured on the dye concentrates.  This time I went with summery pastels.

This piece below was the green/chartreuse one that I didn't take a previous picture of, but once I overdyed it, I love it.

What a nice way to spend an unexpected "mini-vacation"!

First Friday in February

More low water immersion (LWI) dyeing experimentation- 

These pieces were dyed in small bins, all scrunched up, using the same two colors (Chinese Red and Warm Yellow).  The darker one was dyed using a stronger solution, the lighter one was watered down (sorry, no exact measurements).

Same with these two pieces, they were both dyed with Boysenberry and Intense Blue, at different strengths.

And I used the boysenberry/intense blue pieces with some ice-dyed fabric I already had.  Using a similar color pallet when dyeing is great--all your fabric is from the same (or similar) color families.

This quilt top only took about a day to sew together.  Adding it to the pile of UFOs ready to be quilted....

More dyeing, this time using the Parfait Method.  Read more about how I did it on And Then We Start it on Fire.

Linking up with Off The Wall Fridays today!