Thursday, August 31, 2017

One more donation quilt

I didn't spend much time in the studio this week, I did get one more donation quilt done. I used some leftover stripe fabric from the curtains I made for the kitchen window. The curtains are very faded now and need to be replaced, but the piece of leftover fabric looked great.

I now have 5 donation quilts ready to go to a local relief nursery's fund raiser next month. I keep thinking that my fabric stash would start getting smaller, but there's no noticeable difference.

Weekly Stitching
Signs of Life: The five universal shapes
weeks #31-35
 Finished and fused to black felt.



This years weeklies

The next five weeks are ready to go. I started with this drawing.

Auditioned lots of thread.

Decided on this group of threads and a white background.

I'm ready to get started. I think there will be lots of french knots.

2017 Daily stitching #2 days#80-86

French knots and more background

I'm almost half way.


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

Thursday, August 24, 2017

Eclipse

Not much time was spent in the studio the past week, although I did finish the quilt I was working on and gave it to my granddaughter since she was admiring it.
Kayla and Will with their new quilt and new kitten.

We had a very full house for the eclipse, everyone came a few days early and didn't leave until the day after. It was a lot of fun but exhausting, fourteen people is a lot.

This is most of the group at the very beginning of the show.

Here I am with my daughter and granddaughter, my son and his boys are in the background.

We had one member of the group with a tripod, good camera and lens filter, mostly I ran around taking pictures of some of the very cool shadows.


We had 2 minutes and 5 seconds of totality and it was awesome, I'm so glad we got to experience it.

Weekly Stitching
Signs of Life:The five universal shapes 
week #34
some orange stitches were added



2017 Daily stitching #2 days #73-79
Just a bit of background filler


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

Thursday, August 17, 2017

Quilting spirals, another kitten and eclipse guests

A very quick post today, we are getting eclipse ready! By the time Sunday is done we will have 16 family and extended family members  here ready to view the total eclipse from our yard on Monday morning. The first two arrived on Monday, the rest will be coming at various times over the weekend. We've been stocking up on food and beverages, cleaning and finding space for everyone. We expect to have a great time!

The last two kittens will be going home with my granddaughter, one for her and one for a friend of hers. She is here now and is totally in love with them both. Last Saturday we had another kitten show up and she decided that this was where she wanted to live. We've named her Missy and after eating a lot she came into the studio and made herself very comfortable on the ironing board and slept for five hours.

I'm beginning to think we were meant to have kittens in our life, they most certainly have been fun.

I've had a bit of time to do some quilting on a quilt that has been waiting its turn since early spring.


2017 Weekly Stitching
Signs of Life:The five universal shapes
wk#33

Some blue stitching was added this week.




2017 Daily Stitching #2 days #66-72



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

Thursday, August 10, 2017

Cutting and reassembling another failed print

Several years ago I purchased a sewing machine for $5 at a yard sale and put it away in Studio B. My plan had been that it could possibly work for one of my granddaughters, that is until I went looking for it earlier this week and can't find it. There are only a few places in the studio where I could have put it and it's not there. I think it must have ended up in the donation pile when I did a major studio cleanup a few years ago. Oh well, it was a good idea.

I did come across another piece of  deconstructed screen printed fabric that had some problems. I took a picture and it looks pretty good until you get close.


It is silk noil and a bit nubby and I don't think the fabric got saturated with enough dye to go thru all those little nubs, and it also looks like it had some wrinkles. I cut it into 5" squares, got rid of some of the worst spots and played around with the layout.  I really had fun taking pictures of different versions of it on my cell phone in black and white.

The final version that I just finished sewing together looks like this.

Weekly Stitching
Signs of Life:The five universal shapes
week #32  more seed stitching in the background



2017 Daily Stitching #2 days-60-65




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

Friday, August 4, 2017

Good year at the fair

The first week of every August is the Washington County fair in the very small town of Cambridge, ID. I usually take a few things up to the fair but never actually go to the fair, taking entries up on Tuesday before it is open and picking them up the following Monday after it's closed. This year I was asked to volunteer for the floral intake which was on Thursday. It was a fun experience and I've already volunteered to do it again next year. We spent the morning assisting those bringing in floral entries and then spent the afternoon following the judge around assisting her and recording the results of the judging. Being there also gave me the opportunity to check out the items that I had brought in on Tuesday because they were judge on Wednesday. I did very well.

I took in six items and got six blue ribbons and a couple of big ones on the two daily stitching projects from last year.

My garden is doing quite well this year and I have one large surprise plant, a pumpkin that came up on its own. I know that there were pumpkin seeds in the compost pile, so I think that's where it came from. It has completely taken over one of my raised beds and this morning I put a bit of a support system together to hold up the two pumpkins that were hanging over the edge.

In the studio I finished quilting the green quilt made from pole wrapped shibori fabrics.

Weekly Stitching
Signs of Life: the five universal shapes
Week #31
This group of five is in a different order and I'm working on the entire piece each week.









So far I've couched down the #3 weight red pearl cotton, machine appliquéd the black shapes down because when I tried to hand stitch them the faux suede upholstery fabric was a bit too thick and very tough to stitch. I'm now adding some random stitching to the background.


2017 Daily stitching project #2, days 52-59
This photo was taken with my camera, the photo below was taken with my iPhone. The iPhone takes much clearer pictures than my camera.


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