... is a many-splendored thing

My quilt is on turquoise silk dupioni given to me by my sister a long, long time ago. Enough said about my sister. I love her.  Very much.

I also love rummaging through my collections of "stuff" and finding things that I started to make (?) or was thinking "what if",  or wondered "what on earth will I do with that?". This piece is loaded with those things. Pearls. Beads. Paint. Tyvek. Lutradur. Angelina fibres. Mistyfuse. Melty areas. Alcohol paints - I love how they interact with each other. Pearl-Ex ... and on and on.

Several months ago, I hand-quilted some random circles on the silk and forgot about it until I was looking for background fabric for the Tyvek. About that same time, I made the rectangular piece out of other "what ifs" (Lutradur, heat gun, paint Mistyfuse, Angelina fibres) and I like the way it looks on the top, with pearls, sequins, crystals and beads. 

The upper right corner of the Tyvek has been left open to let more love in and out - and I have purposely left the edges raw and let the Angelina fibres spill off the edges.

Happy 2014, everyone!

First Snowfall

There is something magical about stepping out your back door and all you can hear is snow falling. One gorgeous evening here at home the sky was a deep blue black, no cars, no people, everything out in the garden was covered in a pristine blanket of snow. All our trees had a soft fluffy blanket around them.

 I have been wanting to do a piece based on this photograph for a while now and this challenge seemed to fit the bill.  Many of my friends will tell you I love trees. I have loads of pictures of trees, of bark, of moss ect.
I had to edit the piece down as we are working in a 12x12 format.

I played with adding some "snow" to the branches but didn't really like it so I took it off.

So I added some snow to the bottom of my tree, and liked that better.

Here is the finished piece. This was a very interesting challenge. (getting a good photo of the finished piece was also a challenge) I hope you all "Love" it!

Love is at the Heart of all Things....

Write it on your heart 

that every day is the best day in the year.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our quarterly challenge topic is LOVE!  When I think of love, I think of hearts, in this case LOTS of hearts (64 to be precise).  This piece definitely took much, much, much more time than anticipated. The first picture is of the entire piece and each subsequent one is a close-up of a portion of it.

Chocolate Fantasy!

Chocolate Fantasy?! you are thinking - I thought the theme was love! Well at first I found the topic to be quite challenging. I had some lovely ideas but as always the issue was how to execute the ideas. Maybe I was over thinking this. So I asked my husband what image came to mind when I said "Love" and he said "I love Chocolate Cake". Feeling very inspired I raided Glady's fabric stash for the perfect piece of velvet and proceeded to make cake. This piece came together pretty fast and I have to admit I had a lot of fun making it. The hardest part was getting a decent picture! You would never know it was a cloudy day when I took these.

This picture isn't too bad but still a touch shiny so I tried again.








I think you can see the detail better on this one. The ribbon is from our favorite place to buy cake that you can actually eat! Its from Cakebread bakery so decadent hubby and I share a slice.



 So you may be wondering about the "Chocolate Fantasy" well in my very active imagination the background is dark chocolate wallpaper, the velvet cake with satin icing and chocolate sprinkles speak for themselves (I hope) and the plate is chocolate too!!! I hope you "love" chocolate cake too!!