Four & Twenty

The quilt store just got this line of fabric called "Blackbird" by Timeless Treasures and I couldn't resist making a quick quilt and a pattern. I have the patterns at http://www.easy2sew.com/ under lap quilts. Can you see the Blackbirds in the corners...and all those pies in the center? There are cherries in the fabric too.

The other quilt is called Flower Power. I made it about a month ago and I don't think that I posted it. I also finished my next challenge quilt which will premiere on July 15 at Quiltz. I will post that one when I post all of the Rogue Art Quilters pieces.

In the meantime, I am working on a quilt that is totally black, white and grey. Quite the challenge since I love working with color.

It was 100 yesterday so I have a good excuse to stay inside and sew!

Fiber Optics

Fiber Optics was created with needlepoint canvas. This time I painted fusible interfacing with blue fabric paint. When it dried, I fused the interfacing to the canvas and I remembered to do my needlework before sewing it to fabric! The orange pieces are a thick material that my friend Maxine prints. They are left over from a tallis that we collaberated on. I wrapped some metal washers with purple yarn to get the circles. The brown woven looking stuff is yarn that I knit a few rows with and then cast off.

I wove ribbon through

the brown yarn at the

bottom to get some

sparkle. I love working

with all the wonderful

fibers that are available

now and Quiltz has a great

variety to choose from.

Tapestry in Green

I am on a new kick! I have discovered needlepoint canvas as a form of embellishment. I painted Steam-a-Seam with lumiere paints and then I ironed it to the canvas. I quilted the purple fabric and sewed the canvas on top. Then I did my stitching by hand. This may have been a mistake as it would have been much easier to stitch through the canvas and then attach it to the quilt!
I added beads and the thing in the upper left hand corner is Tyvek which I painted and melted with a heat gun. I also added glitter glue for some sparkle. The scroll in the lower right corner is soy silk fiber that I rolled and attached with yarn and beads.

I did some machine stitching on the canvas before attaching it - the top row of green. I braided some fibers and couched them to create the second row and I beaded the third row. Lots of fun and the possibilities are endless. I have two more in the works.

Art group challenge #1

In my art group we decided to give ourselves a challenge. Each of us brought things to share and we had to use them all in our individual projects. This is Denise's raft. You can see a piece of burl wood, tweety bird, dice, a troll and a piece of jewelery pretty easily.

Carol chose to turn hers into a quilt. You can see part of Wendy's father's neck tie in the foreground.

Patty used the Noah's ark theme. We had goats hair rope which is visible to the far left and we had cat fur and a piece of polished beach glass too. She dressed her troll to look like Noah.

Maya recycled a garage sale find...a purse with Elvis on both sides. I wish I had a good picture of the back side too.

Maya gave us each a religious piece from South America and you can see mine to the left of the troll. I opted for a collage.



Jayne got extremely creative and used other found objects to create a birds nest that has everythng inside including a stone egg for each of us.

We have one more piece to unveil from Wendy and we hope to post that soon.

It was great fun to create these pieces.

What have I been up to?

From the pictures, you can tell immediately what I have been up to! Seeing the last child graduate from High School was a momentous occasion especially because we watched in the rain.

We were happy to have grandma watching too.

As far as quilting goes...I have been designing the next monthly quilt for the store. I decided to post it in progress so you could see that I have been creating....really I have.

I used fabric from my stash for the first time in ages

and since I wanted to finish it off in the purple and it is a 15 year old fabric, I put out a desperate call to my oldest quilting friends and Denise still had some in her stash too. I love how we can count on each other.

Blessings for Jayne

I have been working on lots of quilts this week but I don't have anything ready to share so I thought that I would share a gift that I have created. My friend Jayne is going to have a second surgery tomorrow and I thought that it would be nice to give her blessings for healing. I spread the word to her family and friends via the internet and they sent back blessings which I transfered onto fabric.

I fused two different batiks together with Steam-a-Seam and then fused the blessing on top. I put a gromet in the middle of one side of each piece and strung ribbon through the hole.

The ribbon was wrapped around the rolled fabric to create blessing scrolls.

You can see the blessings before being rolled and how they look as scrolls afterwards. I put them all in a pretty ceramic bowl and my art group will present them to Jayne this evening.

It was a fun project to create and I love the way they came out. The perfect gift for anyone in need of cheering up or to celebrate an occasion.