More Paper Cloth with Melanie

Melanie was home for Easter and she wanted to make some paper cloth. She liked the Easter cards I had sent out this year from it.

 So we emptied my big bag of stuff and got to it. Oh, it looks like it may have been happy hour.

 This is my 1st one before I added the tissue paper. I was looking for a fall theme, thinking ahead to Thanksgiving cards.

 My 2nd one is a Christmas theme.

 Melanie made this one. It is made with fun spring colors.

 So, she started cutting the paper and added a little rick rack from my bag of bits and pieces.

She made 16 cards from that sheet of paper cloth. They really look nice.

White Meadow

Last fall the Fiber Junkies worked with fiber paste and stencils. It was a really fun method and produced some lovely pieces. Judy used a bamboo stencil and created this lovely cloth.

I love it and so did she.  She made a fabulous piece from this cloth and it is pictured on her blog "Windy Hill Happenings"

This is a cloth I had made from a deconstructed screen printing session.

I had stenciled in the row of flowers in white and green fiber paste.

I wanted to do a little thread sketching. I started by stitching in the flowers from the fiber paste. Then I added some leaves and flowers in different green threads.

The upper part of the piece needed a little adjustment to the color, which was achieved with colored pencils. Next was to quilt in more floral motifs for texture in the background.  After experimenting with several shades of green and lavender thread, I chose a white thread so that it would not overpower the subtle coloration of the piece.

 I decided a border was needed and chose a hand dye that was the right color. After quilting it and looking at it again, I was not happy with the border. While the proportions were good, I thought the color of the border was dominating the piece.

So I decided to narrow the border, cut off half of it. That was easier said than done since it was already quilted. This is it pinned back.

This is the finished piece. I have named it "White Meadow". It measures 15" x 11". 

Workshop with Georgia Bonesteel

One of my local guilds invited Georgia Bonesteel to give a program and workshop. We are fortunate to have her live just an hour north of us.  As she is a person of great inspiration, I was most pleased to attend the workshop and program that evening.  The workshop involved working with the baby block design in an easy, no Y seam method. Georgia is very organized and gives excellent handouts in her workshops.

Here she is with the lightbox she designed. It is nice, portable and folds up for easy storage.

 Georgia reviewed the fabric choices of each participant individually. One of my friends had brought a few different fabrics to choose from. This is hers above and another set pictured below.

This is my set. Georgia suggested an accent fabric with a striped or geometric design. So I started with this striped fabric and selected the other 3 fabrics to go with that.

This is the fabric set Jo Ann worked with. It is really pretty. She chose a cream accent fabric which is hard to see in this photo.

Another participant made this one.  We all loved the aqua colored batik. Doesn't this have the look of a flower?

 Don't you love the movement the striped fabric gives this star?

 Janet wanted a subtle look in her coloration. I really like the look of her accent fabric. The whole piece is so soft and pretty.  There were so many striking and pretty pieces in the class and all so different looking based upon the fabric choices.

 This is Georgia's piece made with bandanna prints. This picture doesn't do it justice.

At the end of the day, Georgia gave a demo on hand quilting.  Such a lovely day with so much to learn and the program on creativity yet to hear!

Mount Pisgah Inn and PTA

One of my favorite days each month is the meeting with PTA (Professional Textile Artists). This month we met at the Mount Pisgah Inn. It is a great place to have lunch on the Blue Ridge Parkway with a view of the mountains.  We have been exhibiting pieces there for several years. They have expanded the exhibit space so that we now have several dozen on display and for sale. Below are a sample of them pictured.

 Three of these are our pieces (not the blue denim one). The one on left is by Dort. The brown one with hearts is by Mary.

 The one on left is by Janice, on right is by Gen.

 More by us hanging from the ceiling.

 And here are still more.  The brown one is faced in the other direction.

 The 2 on the left are by Georgia. Wish I could name them all.

 After lunch we met outside. It was a beautiful day. Judy is showing the lovely top she finished. It was started on retreat.

 This is one by Barbara. It is "stacks" of gifts. I love it.

You can glimpse some of the lovely scenery in the background. Such a wonderful day with friends.

Catching the Sun

Recently I decided to complete a small improvisational piece I had started a while ago.

This is the top. The fibers are silk and hand dyed fabric. I like to use wool batting.

The background was densely quilted. The foreground was not.

For the binding, I chose this pretty chiffon for a soft edge. It looks lovely, but was quite difficult to work with. Too late, I remembered that last time I had used it for binding I had adhered it to cotton fabric. it is a little thicker that way, less soft looking, but much easier to work with.

This is the finished piece. It is about 12" x 12".

Easter Cards

Last fall I made quite a few greeting cards from the paper cloth I had made with Fiber Junkies. They were featured in a blog on Jan 13, 2014.  Easter is approaching and when I was in the card store I thought why don't I make Easter cards also?

 This is the paper cloth I used.

 I cut an egg shape from a post card. I also pulled out my bag of odds and ends of ribbon.

I cut out the paper with the scalloped rotary blade, stitched them to cardstock. A bow from ribbon was stitched to the top of the egg shapes. I love making them. It is so fun to see how they look when you crop out a section from the paper cloth.

Fuchsia Floral

Last fall I started a new piece based upon photos I had taken from the garden at Judy's house.

I loved the bright, fuchsia colored tips on the petals and wanted to capture those in fabric.

This piece of fabric I had dyed with the snow/ice dyeing technique last summer was selected for the background.

I started by making a sketch of the design and colored it in with pencils.

I selected some hand dyed fabrics to use for the flowers, leaves and stems. I needed to paint the bright fuchsia , yellow and orange parts of the flowers. The Inktense pencils and a water brush were used. These pencils deliver beautiful color that will spread and blend like watercolor paints. Above is a little testing of the color before it is applied to the flower pieces I drew. 

The pieces are laid out on the background. I realized that I needed to make some changes. The background color was showing through the light, violet fabric of the flowers. So, I needed to adhere another white fabric to the back of these pieces. I also thought the flowers should be reduced in size. Then I thought maybe this wasn't the best orientation of the background fabric.

I turned the fabric upside down. You can see that the former bottom left is now on the bottom right.

  Then I did a lot of thread sketching on the flowers, which was the most fun part of the project. Next I applied the flowers to the background along with some leaves and stems.  

 More thread work to add details to the foreground and background. I decided that the bright green/yellow parts of the background were a little too bright and painted them a little darker green.

 Lastly, I quilted in leaves for texture. 

This is the finished piece, entitled "Fuchsia Floral".