Bernina Challenge

Eyes on You

Fabric collage quilt 

Golden Eggs

Paper fabric collage quilt

Black and White

All paper quilted to felt

These are my entries to the Bernina Challenge. Last day to vote is June 25th. 

These have been keeping me quite busy the past 3 weeks.  Before that it was spring cleaning and gardening. Before that it was my new 'arsenal' of toys. 

After 4.5 years with my little 3.1 pixel digital Olympus I upgraded to Fuji Finepix S1800 which sports 12 mega pixels and 18x optical zoom. Oh Joy.

While my HP Photosmart is alive and well, I needed a printer than uses pigment inks so I got an Epson Workforce 1100 that will print me out a piece of fabric 13"x19" - almost fat quarter size!

Oh Double Joy.

February Respite

Been away for awhile and wish I could show you great things I have accomplished. While I know I am not alone, it has been a struggle to find a direction the past week or so. We have had a small family crisis to work through and my beloved sun just can't find a hold with all the storms coming in from the Pacific. My 80 year old mother is coming for a two month visit this weekend and I am so excited but this has also kept me out of my studio. I keep my fabric stash in our guest bedroom and somehow organizing that closet led to a major cleaning and purging of every closet in the house! There is one truth I am starting to realize about myself and that is I am a hoarder. There is not one thing that if I can't wear it, use it or eat it that I don't think, well, I can make something out of it. I do feel a bit justified that I am doing my bit to save the planet by recycling stuff, however, some of my 'stuff' is over 30 years old!

 

Since I have no new work, I thought I would share the quilt I made for mom last June for her birthday. I learned so much with this as it was only the second 'real' quilt I have ever made. All the photos were transferred to fabric using Bubble Jet Set after my daughter Julie and I spent months finding, scanning and restoring every picture we could get our hands on of  her. I used some left-over upholstery fabric, pillow ticking, cotton batting, lace, ribbons and buttons. The six pieced friendship stars were to represent her six children and the 'moon men' appliques to show that Cancerians are ruled by the moon. The Friendship Star pattern can be found here.

It has just started raining big fat droplets and is to go on all day and night. I see on the news a big snowstorm is spreading all over the NE and people are bracing for it, so I guess the groundhog just might be right this year. I think I will go make a cup of hot tea and finish the ATC's I had started before getting into closet cleaning. All four of the first ones I made (that you can see below) have been traded! The cards I received in return are beautiful so I can see how this just might be addicting. But really, it fits right in with my hoarding tendencies don't you think? 

To Art or Not to Art, Part II Raffle

Spent the last several days deciding what is to be done with my now painted flour resist batiks.  After printing the images on organza and deciding that was not going to work, thought I would start with what I called the 'Ugly' before.  Actually, that piece was really not part of the resist process - merely a piece of muslin I threw on the remaining acrylic on my palette!  So I guess you would call it a mono print. Therefore I felt confident to experiment and toss it if I wanted to. Well, the more time I spent on it the less inclined I was to call it a complete disaster! 
You can see 'Ugly' in a previous post where I first laid in some color. At that point I could see trees in the background and maybe a lake and I printed some trees to play with that idea. Nothing worked until I found in my napkin stash some orange colored grapes and I used matte gel medium and glued it onto the muslin.  Hey, that was fun and now I was on a mission to make something out of it. I drew and painted the bird on a piece of the napkin and threw that in the background. Seemed to need something to bring you into the scene, so drew and painted a big butterfly on deli paper and put him in front.  Here is a close-up of the first lay down.

From the beginning, I knew I wanted to try some free-motion stitching on this and decided it would become a mini-quilt.  Had some fusible fleece, grabbed that and fired up my new Viking Emerald 183. There were some big frustrations; I broke 3 needles and did a lot of cussing, but after a while I was having great fun.

I used a purple rayon thread in the background to make that area recede and all the rest a yellow cotton thread. The Ugly Duckling has not exactly became a Swan, but had fun trying!  But now I am stuck on the finishing and am hoping I can get your comments on where to go from here.

These are two ideas for finishing and I apologize for the bad photography.  Another thought I had was to blanket stitch the edges adding either beads and yarn or both.  What do you think?  I will set this aside until next Friday to finish.  Anyone who posts a suggestion or comment will be in a drawing to receive the completed piece! It is 9 3/4 X 11 before I add the binding and it will be ready to hang. To do so, click on the word comments (it will underline when you point to it) just below this post and the form will come up.

New Year, Blank Canvas

Here is a mini-quilt - my first free-motion project that I actually broke my sewing machine on. No worries, it was very old and it provided me with the excuse to buy a new one. The image is printed on cotton treated with Bubble-Jet Set and is of my mother circa 1946 (on the left, the only gal with slacks).

I am always excited to begin a fresh new year yet nervous as well. It is just like starting a new painting and I spend hours making lists, planning and dreaming. The Resolution List by this time has become totally unmanageable and outrageous, so I have torn it up and decided to just go with the flow and live by this motto:

If it is not fun, don' t do it,
If it is not broke, don't try to fix it,
Love well, myself first, and finally,
Live by the Golden Rule.

My dining-room-turned-studio was definitely broken and disorganized so I have spent the past 3 days re-arranging, sorting tools and gaining a tiny bit more space and a clearer head to work with. I am fresh now to work on some journals, ATC's and quilt projects I had started earlier. The most impressive task I completed was getting my 25 year old image files back in the proper order (like, I can find them now) which really set off my Muse. Some of the images were from old calendars that I had written notes and appointments on. What a hoot to see how far I have come yet how some things never change!
I am experimenting with Never-Dull, dryer sheets and lint, painted fuse-able, dying and painting fabrics, the new Golden Digital Grounds (signed up for a class for this one) and machine free-motion and felting. Whew. Maybe I need to make another list and shorten it!