Ghosts, mosaics, encaustic and stitching

This week has seen a variety of creative spurts, I made some fabric Halloween postcards for some special youngsters.

Took a bowling ball that had a crack in it to Marbella, a local business where you can paint pottery and/or do mosaics. This is the ball before, you can see the crack on the upper left.

This is how it currently looks.

The orange circle is the top, I still need to add more glass to the bottom half(the part you can't see in the picture) and then make the decision to do either black or white grout. At first I was thinking white but more that I have more done I'm leaning more towards black. What do you think? It will be yard art when I'm done.

When Kathy Loomis was visiting I showed her some of the encaustic pieces I had done, she took pictures and then had me answer questions about encaustic. She is doing a series of blog posts about textile artists that also do encaustic. You can read the one about mine here. Today I cleared the area around my encaustic supplies so that I can do some more, it's been awhile.

The Weekly Leaf
This week I used a few leaves picked up on my walk and the gelli plate.

Week #44

Daily Stitching updates

Gelli prints #299-305

Shades of Orange #226-232

I'll be linking up to "Off the Wall Friday" and "Slow Sunday Stitching".

Weekly Leaf, daily stitching and donation quilts

The Weekly Leaf

This weeks inspiration came from the latest issue of Through Our hands Magazine. If you've never read this magazine you are in for a treat, you can either read it for free or buy a copy. One of the photos in this issue was just the inspiration I needed, my colors are different and so is some of the stitching, but the idea is the same. Read the magazine and see if you can find it. My color inspiration came from some of the glorious trees dotted here and there in our landscape this time of the year.

Week#42

Daily Stitching updates

Gelli prints #292-298

Shades of Orange #219-225

I've also done some quilting this past week, on donation quilts. There is a group of us that get together and sew, eat, drink, talk and we do put together several quilts throughout the year to donate. The first two are our latest, made from 5" squares that we get from Benartex.

The last is one I made from assorted scraps.

I'll be linking to "Off the Wall Friday" and "Slow Sunday Stitching"

My Leaf Stash

Last week I mentioned that the leaves I used for my weekly leaf were from my leaf stash, well this weeks leaf is also, so I thought I'd give you a glimpse of my stash. I pick up leaves all the time, especially when I'm away from home. Most of them get pressed, sometimes I use them right away for a gelli print or a solar fast print.

The plastic container below is about 4" deep and is overflowing. This is my in house stash.

 The next group are my stash out in StudioB (the building in my backyard). First up, layers of leaves, many between paper towels in a cardboard box. This weeks leaf is on top.

  Below the box,  more layers of leaves, most of these are quite large.

  Then on the table, under the plastic panel that I do soy wax on, and between some fabrics are a couple of very large ferns that I brought home from a trip to western Washington. They grow there, but not here in our high desert climate.

I find that always having different leaves available I'm never short of inspiration for my weekly stitching.

This week I used a leaf that I picked from a hedge in Tacoma, WA last June on our way back to our car from my Grandsons graduation. It had been in the pile of leaves being pressed and when I pulled it out the pattern on it amazed me, it didn't look like that when I brought it home.

I printed on to fabric treated for my ink jet printer, put misty fuse on the back, cut it out and fused it to a yellow hand dyed fabric.

Week #42

There are now 7 rows of leaves.

Daily Stitching updates

Geeli prints #285-291

Only 4 more rows to go!

Shades of orange #212-218

I did add more stitching to the hands this week and I'm calling it done. I made each hand all three colors instead of just one.

The Makers Hands

57"x57"

I'll be linking to "Off the Wall Friday" and "Slow Sunday Stitching"