Nearly a whole month has gone by

Here is the piece I think might be going into the round robin organized by Judith of Quilt Or Dye. I cut some freezer paper into strips and ironed onto a fat quarter, then painted with pebeo setacolor paint in chartreuse. I'm not sure if it's too graphic for a round robin, but I'll get the piece back eventually and want to make sure it's something I can use.

And of course, baby things are occupying my mind and time these days, trying to get everything done and in the mail before a shower coming up in early June--

A baby quilt in progress.
And bumper pads for the crib, these were harder than I thought they'd be to figure out!


And don't forget to enter the giveaway on And Then We Set It On Fire -- in honor of our 100+ followers, each of us is giving away a fat quarter.

I won a prize!

Just for posting some pictures on the 3 Creative Studios flickr group last month, I was selected to win a random prize. It was two patterns all the way from Australia from Brenda Gael Smith of Serendipity Patchwork & Quilting. Brenda hosted a shibori workshop and presented four great tutorials. Check them out here.

We had some rain last weekend, which has been a rare occurrence here in central North Carolina, and the flowers all looked great afterwards. Peonies are ready to bloom--

And the silver dollar plant will have lots of seeds this year--

Coral bells are looking better than they have since I planted them about 3 years ago--

I got this book at the library a couple of weeks ago, and have been attempting the cathedral windows pattern. I had tried the cathedral window pattern way back in the 1970s, but did it all by hand then, this book has directions for hand and machine work. Will post something as soon as I get far enough long so that it actually looks like something.

Nice weekend

Well, except for the tornadoes flying through central NC on Saturday, it was a good weekend. On Saturday I tried a new shibori technique that was presented in the Shibori Girl on-line workshop I'm taking. I used the rubbermaid sink protector I had previously used for batiking, and pushed the fabric through the holes with a skewer. This is a good way to get a consistent pattern on a piece of fabric.

Here's what it looked like from the back:

I tied off the tips, then dipped it into some dyes.

I forgot to take a picture of the finished piece, as I was trying to hurry and take pictures this morning at 7 am before leaving for work--it did turn out nicely.

I also tried the parfait dyeing again. I had two yellow-ish pieces that I had stamped some things onto (carved the stamps with speedball cutter) but wasn't thrilled with. So I parfaited them with fuchsia and some khaki.


And baby blankets are all done! Here is front and back sides of one.

And just the fronts of two others ready to go:

Baby quilts

The latest projects I've been working on, baby quilts.

Spring is here

Some flowers are blooming in my backyard -- but I haven't been able to mow my 2 foot tall lawn yet. Got my mower back from it's annual service the other day, but yesterday it rained almost all day. In my neighborhood, people don't mow on Sundays, it's a southern thing I guess, but I might have to break out my Yankee hat today and mow if the sun comes out.

Did some parfait dyeing last week on some stitched and wrapped shibori pieces. Here they are out of the jar I used to dye them in.





And a baby quilt I've been working on, still have a little quilting, then hope to do the binding and finish it today.

March moon

The super moon of this past month has been some inspiration to me -- also the Kemshall's book "The Painted Quilt"--one of their techniques is to paint on the paper side of wonder-under or other iron on paper-backed fusing material, then cut it out and iron onto your fabric. I tried painting some silvery and white paint on some wonder under, then cut out a circle and ironed on to some dark hand-dyed fabric.

I like how it turned out, I've already started quilting the background since taking this picture Tuesday.
Here's my progress on the Judy Niemeyer quilt pattern Total Eclipse.

You're supposed to sew all the separate circles, then lay them out and sew together. Seems like it's taking forever, but it's been less than 2 weeks since I started it. Boring and tedious to sew, but seems to be ok for those nights after work when you don't feel like doing anything too exciting or creative.

Baby Shibori

Dyed some little newborn and 3-6 month onesies yesterday.

This will be good practice for my first grandbaby (expected in September)!

Workshop w/Shibori Girl

I've been enrolled in an on-line workshop with Shiborigirl, today was the first time I've had to do anything with the first lesson. This is dyeing on silk with Colorhues dyes, which are totally different than procion mx dyes. The colors bond almost instantly, and you only have to dip them in the color for a few seconds.

The green & yellow one wasn't folded tightly enough, the design didn't show up too well in the middle portion. The other blue/orange one looks like fried eggs!

I finally figured out how tightly to clamp the fabric for this orange one and the pink/yellow one.

The green & blue one looks like a mess, the piece I used was a full scarf and obviously I didn't clamp or fold it tightly enough. But I'm sure I can find some way to use this piece, even if I overdye it with turquoise.

Last call (not for alcohol!):

One Last Call for Entry:
The Professional Art Quilters Alliance-South (PAQA-South)announces its eighth Annual Juried Exhibition of Innovative Quilts: ARTQUILTSmovement - See http://www.artquiltersouth.org/

Exhibit Opens: May 20, 2011
Postmark Deadline for entry: March 19, 2011
Entry Fee: $15 for PAQA-South members, $25 for non-members for up to three works submitted.
Size Limitations: No larger than 40 inches wide and 60 inches high.
Contact: AQtransitions@gmail.com with questions.

New York Beauty & Judy Niemeyer pattern

It's been a while since I've posted anything! I've been busy, though, working on a baby quilt for my co-worker (her shower is a week from tomorrow). Still have to wash it and dry it to fluff it up a bit.

Also working on the endless NY Beauty blocks, this is what I go back to when I don't know what else to work on. The contrast in some of the blocks isn't showing up too well in this picture--for some reason all my pics today are dark.

And I've had a Judy Niemeyer pattern for at least 2 years now, and yesterday I attended a class on sewing one of these. It was taught by a certified Judy Niemeyer instructor, and I'm so glad I went to it. We had to cut everything out before the class, which took about 3-4 hours. That was the worst part, sewing is easy now that I have all thousands of pieces ready.

It just looks like I'm making a huge mess, I'm really making some progress.