Exuberant! - "It's My Party ..."

The next time it's my turn to pick the challenge -

**Reminder to self:  When I open the dictionary and put my finger on a word, make it a noun! **

"It's My Party ... " began with an experimental watercolour that I love, using Color Burst.

I had a piece of purple silk from a kit that I didn't make and a piece of gorgeous silk in sunset-y colours (The Thread Studio - aka "Other Dale") that I was "saving" for something.  After I applied MistyFuse to the sunset-y silk, I cut it into curvy shapes with a rotary cutter and fused it on to the purple background, using some of the pieces to hold the watercolour in place.

I then put stabilizer under the purple silk and stitched the curvy pieces with copper metallic thread, followed by copper-coloured foil, tiny pink beads, pink metallic fusible Kreinik braid (I am so glad to get rid of some of that!), and hot-fix crystals.

Exhuberance

I started with a piece of white fabric and appliqued swirls of purple batik, sun dyed pink and green, a small pop of teal. Painted any exposed white fabric with purple and light blue lumiere. Then I cut a big hole in the middle and inserted a web of dazzle threads in hello, black and red. Exhuberant describes the feeling when I cut the hole out of the completed quilt top.

Enjoy!
Carol

Mardi Gras

“Exuberance” turned out to be a wonderful opportunity to sort beads and sequins while playing with them!  I started with a piece of fabric and Kool-Aid dyed silk roving and handkerchiefs. Did some layering of these, added some Angelina fibres (I would use these more sparingly next time, as they reflected light and made the end product hard to photograph).  Then used Misty Fuse and fine black tulle to sandwich things together.

Next for the embellishments!  Some thick rayon threads for running stitches, and then lots of sequins and beads, and some iron-on stars.

Final piece makes me think of both Mardi Gras and fireworks.  

Gotta Dance!

When I hear a great song on the radio I just have to dance! I dance while cooking dinner, cleaning the house, ironing, you name it. I " chair" dance in the car to a great tune! When I first saw the challenge was " Exuberance" I had to admit that I was stumped at first. But nephew commented on how much I loved to dance so I decided this was a great place to start.

I had hubby snap a few pictures of me dancing around my sewing room, then I chose a photo I liked and got to work. First I printed the photo, traced my silhouette then dug thru my hand dyed fabrics I choose the background from my iced dyed fabrics and the figure is from fabrics I dyed for a class I took a few years ago. Once I had the piece fused and quilted it still looked a bit plain then I remembered some beads I was given earlier this month, they where the perfect colours so I got busy hand sewing all the beads and sequins on. 

This piece makes me smile and I hope you feel like dancing with me.

The quarterly challenge that was due at the end of June for my 12x12 group was 'Leaves'.  I was initially excited about it because I wanted to try a technique one of you members, Karrie, showed me.  You take an Oliver Twist "One Off" and make a tree out of it .  Here is a picture of a "One Off".  You lay it out in tree form and stitch.  (Side note- I also love, love, love the Oliver Twist thread shown in the photo.  It quilts wonderfully.)  Another note- I did not have a "One Off" in the color I needed, so I created my own from fibers in my stash. Last note, when I look back at Karrie's tree, I begin to see where I began to go off track; hers is free-flowing and artsy.

I got to this point and my work just did not speak to me (in fact it was yelling some bad stuff at me). At this point, I was already late on the challenge, so I decided to experiment.

Next I used Tombow markers and drew around the trunk and branches and spray it with water.

I made leaves out of used teabags and used a combo of Tombow markers and Dye-Na-Flow to color them.  Still not loving it yet....

Finally, I painted polka-dots on the leaves.  

This is now a piece I can live with- still not one of my favorites!

What do you do when your art is not going in the direction you would like?

Remnants: Quilt Stand
Mt husband and I were recently visiting the Northern Michigan and its fabulous wineries.  We stopped at a quilt shop (of course!) and hubby found this quilt stand for me to rotate my 12x12 quilts. Here is the website for it http://www.ackfeldwire.com/, it is called a table stand.

Enjoy! Kathy

When I chose the theme "Leaves", I had an interior motive -- to corner myself into actually carrying through on a project I had considered for some time.  In my back garden is a weeping birch tree.  It is a pleasure at all times of the year, but is especially beautiful in early fall, when strands of golden leaves appear amidst the green.

To make the leaves, I coloured Tyvek paper with alcohol inks.  Then each leaf was cut out.  To make the leaf stems, I positioned a small strip of water soluble stabilizer at the top of each leaf, and sewed 4 lines of straight stitching, then "bound" the lines together with a narrow zigzag before sewing the veins on the leaf.  The leaves then had to be soaked to remove most of the stabilizer.

The leaves were stitched by hand onto fine cords to create the strands of leaves.

The background is a blue/white batik, fused to a thin batting, then overlaid with sparkling white net and then turquoise net.  I stitched lines across it, then slashed the turquoise net and folded it back or removed it, added more white net and sewed it down to create the cloud-streaked sky.

Finally the strands of leaves were attached at the top of the hanging.  I tacked them down in places, but basically they hang free and can move just like the real leaves.

I was very happy working on this.  Obviously my well of patience runs deep with this sort of detail, even if it may be somewhat less in evidence at other times!

The Next Challenge

Happy July, everyone!

Your next challenge, due September 30, 2015, is 

"EXUBERANCE".

Go wild!
Knock yourselves out!
Experiment!
Play!

Have fun!

See you in September!