Almost Christmas

Quite a long time since my last post! Moving and settling in has been a lot of work.  Had some Christmas stockings to make for two new great nieces-

And I've joined a quilt guild, Warwick Valley Quilt Guild, and attended a workshop in November with Cheryl Lynch called Curvalicious.  It was fun, and I made this table runner with my hand dyed Radiance fabric, silk on one side and cotton on the other.

Close up of the quilting, my favorite part-

Lots of changes since I last posted here

On October 3rd I moved from North Carolina back to New York-- a journey of over 600 miles.

Hard to see, but this is me following my brother who is driving a rental truck towing my CRV somewhere on Route 81 in Pennsylvania.

I am now living in Monroe, New York, about 3 miles away from my daughter and two wonderful grandchildren.

I'm trying to create this post on an iPad which is giving me some problems, no quilty stuff today to post.  More to come as soon as I figure this out!

Hot July -- getting lots done inside

July has been a hot, hot month here in North Carolina.  So, staying inside on weekends and quilting/sewing is a good thing to do!  I've been going through some quilt tops that have been around way too long, finishing up some things...

A small lap size quilt top that I made probably 3 years ago now is finally almost quilted.  This was sewn on paper, using random sized strips, a great way to use up fabric stash! 

And I'm also sewing lots of my homemade fabrics into strips, and am going to make some table runners to sell on Etsy.

 Just have to get motivated in the evenings after work, sometimes it's just hard to focus...

And can you see the praying mantis in this picture?

 How about here?

Here's a close-up, I swear it was watching me while I took the pictures.  It climbed all the way up a hibiscus stalk, which is about 6 feet tall, then hung out there under the flowers.

And here are some more things I worked on this weekend, beachy scenes using more of my homemade fabrics.  These pieces are potentially for a challenge with a local group of art quilters that we might be setting up, and need to be cut down to 12" x 12".

The piece below was done with wax resist, then painted over with setacolor paints. Both are just pinned up right now, and need to be quilted, then they're done, too.  

I'm trying really hard not to dye or paint any more fabric until I use up most of what I have!  Hope you're having a productive summer, too.

Edited on Friday, August 1st to include link to Nina Marie's Off the Wall.

Blog post from another site today

From my post on And Then We Set It On Fire blog today:

When I thought about what I was going to do for this Round Robin, I realized that almost every piece of fabric that I've created over the past few years was a series of different techniques that I performed on it, which is technically what a round robin is.  Usually it gets passed on from one person to the next, but we're doing our own kind of round robin here--a Solo, which is a little bit harder, in my opinion.

We all probably have some fabric we've dyed or done something to that we aren't in love with--what do you do with it?  I tend to put mine away for a while, and think about what else I want to do with it to try to get something I want to use.  So, for this, I pulled out a piece of fabric that I dyed a while back that was just kind of "blah". It's about 2 yards long x 44 inches.  It was originally dyed with turquoise and sun yellow.  I had dyed it flat, pouring the colors onto it and leaving it in the sun, covered, for a few hours.

I really had hoped that the two colors would blend more and create more green, which didn't happen.   So, I ripped it up into several smaller pieces.

I decided to batik one of the pieces, so I got out some circle shapes.  I choose the smaller one, part of a pool noodle (not recommended, as you will see)...

Heated up my beeswax in the electric frypan, and stamped one row. 

My pool noodle piece started to melt after I stamped one row, so I had to find a replacement tool quickly.  I found a potato that was a similar size, cut it in half and carved out a hole.

Then I got one of those corn-on-the-cob holder thingies and used that to hold the potato while dipping into the hot wax. 

Here it is all stamped, you really can't tell the difference between the pool noodle shape and the potato shape, can you?

 Then, it gets dyed in some turquoise dye (a strong solution).

Here it is all done:

On another piece of the turquoise & yellow, I used a foam paintbrush with cutouts to make some stripes, and dipped into the beeswax and spread it on.

 When that was done, I folded it up--

 And poured some dark navy blue dye on it.

Let it all soak in for about an hour--

Here it is with the wax removed, washed, and ready to go:

I may leave these pieces as is, and not do anything else to them.  Any suggestions from readers out there?

Felting class

I had someone come over Saturday morning and I taught her how to felt a vessel.  It was fun, I've never taught anything like that before.  Debbie--please send me a picture of your vessel and I'll post it here if you read this!

This is a vessel I made while she was here.  It took forever for this wool to felt, but finally it did.  These colors are the first rovings I've dyed myself, I like being able to buy the white and dye it whatever color I want.

And on Sunday, I decided to felt again.  This time I cut some white circles out of a piece of prefelt I had made previously, then felted on some grey Norwegian wool and used some shetland black for the centers.  This felted really easily.

Then I thought I'd make a pillow using a resist, so I made a beachy scene on both sides.  This was my first time trying to make a square using a resist, and it turned out rectangular instead.  It actually turned out to be more like a bag than a pillow, so I might try to make some handles for it and use it as a bag instead.

 This side looks pretty funky...oh well, it's a good practice piece!

The days are long, but they still fly by

I've been busy for about the last month -- never enough time in a day, since so much of my day is wasted at work, when I'd rather be quilting, gardening, felting, hooking...

Finished up quilting a top that I started a while ago.  I quilted pretty densely, so I used lots and lots of Aurifil! Just have to square it up and put some facings on it (instead of regular binding), then it will be done.

And more felted vessels- 

A few weeks ago, the bee balm started blooming.

And of course, the day lilies.

Yikes, found this snakeskin in my yard, too.  It's only about 3' long, I've seen snakes that are twice that size.

 And I also dyed some more wool pieces, for rug hooking projects.  These look like irises, don't they?

 And maybe some poppies?

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!