Branching Out

Next weekend, the quilt guild here in Washington, NC will present a quilt show "Branching Out".  They have created a raffle quilt of leaf blocks that is named "Free Falling".

Continuing the tree theme, the members have been challenged to create wall quilts to display as a group.  Here is progress so far on my quilt.

I started very simply with the outline of a tree, sky fabric (printed that way - what a find) and green on the ground.  I stitched around the edges of the shapes with embroidery floss, then hand quilted vertical lines across the entire piece using #12 pearl cotton.

After considering various stitching options to add twigs, I decided to paint. I added a little fabric medium to acrylic paint and used a credit card cut to various sizes to add the brown lines.

They don't show up too well in this picture, but I added small leaves to the branches by making dozens of little "fly stitches" in two shades of green. What you see on the left side of the picture is polymer clay leaves.  I'm working on that today, adding the 3-D element last.

It will be finished and turned in on Tuesday.  I'll post pictures of the final product.

  

Embroidery Galore

Last month, I taught a class on Victorian Crazy Quilting.  In order to demo piecing and embroidery, I made up four sample blocks.  I've finished my embroidery and put the blocks together into a sweet little table topper (17" square).  These fabrics were all batiks, so I guess it's a new slant on an old idea. 

How about a couple of close-ups?

June

Yes, I'm still alive.  What have I been doing???

Last weekend, at a meeting of Artrageous Quilters at Cotton Fields Quilt shop, I got to try out ice dyeing with silk scarves and Procion dye.

While still wet after soaking in soda ash, this scarf was crumpled into a lump and placed on a bakers rack suspended over a dish pan (high tech operation). Crushed ice was placed on top and then 1/2 tsp. of dry dye powder was sprinkled on top.  That was Saturday.  I waited until Tuesday to rinse, dry and iron my scarves.

I tied off little bundles on both ends of the scarf on the left.  I soaked it, then placed it in a colander suspended over a bucket (more high tech!)  The scarf on the right was pre-treated, then dropped in the bottom of the bucket.  Ice and dye were added on top like before, the scarf on the bottom was darkest, after it absorbed all of the excess dye.

What else???

More baby socks, of course.

Yes, I have been sewing

Sorry I've been MIA for so long.  I do have some show and tell for you.

Here's the first bed quilt I've made in a while.  It is the traditional "Patience Corner" pattern.  I pieced the quilt, taught a class and my good friend Lilly Lucier machine quilted it so it would make it onto my bed this decade.

Here's another traditional design that I've played around with.  I've found various names including "Roundabout" and "Big O".  I named mine "Around the Square".  It is small and I am currently big-stitch quilting it with pearl cotton.

Then, our annual shop hop came around in February.  I created a variation of one of the quilts in Cultural Fusion Quilts by Sujata Shah.

Before I made that quilt, I made some test blocks to check the size, etc. and it would have been BORING to put it together the same way.  So, here we go:

I just can't say enough for the fun I have had making quilts from Cultural Fusion Quilts.  This is the first one I made, using red and yellow fat quarters of French fabric that I had been saving for JUST THE RIGHT PROJECT.

I don't know about you, but I love left-overs!  I had another idea and bought a few more French fat quarters to carry on.  Here is the second creation.  It took a little more brain power than the first project because all the blocks were not the same.  It's next up on the machine quilting list.

And, there are still a few left-overs!