A Finished Quilt

Just so you don't think that the only things I do are my daily, weekly and monthly projects, I've got a finished quilt to show you!

"Leftovers"

66"x72"

This is one of those unplanned projects made from lots of leftovers and scraps. I don't remember when I started making the blocks, but it was at least three years ago. Every time I had leftover green , blues and reds I would cut them into strips, make four patches from most of them, add borders around the four patches, then put them in a bag to save. It was one of those things that I would do when I just needed some mindless sewing. This summer I took all the blocks (3 different sizes) with me when we went to the lake for girls week. This was the layout I worked out, sewed them all together while at the lake and then brought it home to languish again. I finally decided to quilt it and be done with it. The picture isn't great, the edges really aren't wavy, but thats the best I could do with it stuck to the design wall. I have no idea what I will do with it, for now it will just be added to the 'pile'.

The Weekly Leaf

This weeks leaf was plucked from my slowly dying garden, it's a cantaloupe leaf. I used the gelli plate to print it.

Weekly Leaf #43

Monthly Stitching
Void #7

Daily Stitching
Line Dance #295-#300

 The Daily Paper #223-#228

Here's how it looks at almost 2/3's done.

Linked to "Off the Wall Friday"

Leaves

It's probably pretty obvious that I like leaves, considering I stitch one every week. This time of year my obsession really starts taking over, I come home from almost every walk with a handful of leaves.   Leaves have started to fall, not a whole lot of color so far this fall, but enough to get me interested. Even my friends are supplying me with leaves to play with, this week two large artichoke leaves were left on my front porch. I pressed them as flat as I could and used one of them to do some blueprinting. The leaf was quite large so I laid out six of the 8"squares of pretreated fabric. This is how it looked out in the sunshine.

And here are the printed pieces.

I'm not sure yet how it will go together, probably some sashing between the blocks.

Here are some of the leaves I've brought home.

I tried something different for my weekly leaf this time, TAP (transfer artist paper)

I hate to admit it, but I've had a package for several years, for so long that it was the original packaging from when it was first produced, before C&T started distributing it. This is the first time I've used it.
I taped several leaves to a sheet of paper, then printed it on the TAP with my inkjet printer.

leaves on the left, print on the right

I decided to use the large leaf on the lower right. It was cut out and placed print side down onto my fabric. 

Then ironed  with a very hot iron and then the paper is peeled off.

It looks like a real leaf on the fabric. There is a bit of change in the hand of the fabric, but was still very easy to stitch.

The Weekly Leaf #42

Daily stitching updates

Line Dance #288-#294

The Daily Paper #216-#222

I had to prep some more squares for the daily paper and it looks like my collection of dyed paper towels has expanded, my goal was to use them up!

Looks like I'll have enough left over to do several more projects.  

Linked to "Off the Wall Friday"

Dye Play day

Last week we had a dye play day in Studio B and you will just have to take my word for it because my camera never came out to the studio! I have seen some of the results and have been sent pictures of some of the others and the fabric looks fabulous, especially since there were novice dyers. We will continue to play with dye next month and hopefully the camera makes an appearance.

On Sunday Barbara, Trische and I went to Boise for the artists open studios. We stopped to see Kathleen Probst, I did get a picture of Kathleen in her studio.

While there we also got a sneak peek at her quilt that got into Quilt National. It's hidden away from the camera so she doesn't violate any rules. Our second stop was to see Lisa Flowers Ross, I didn't get a picture of Lisa but she posted several pictures of her studio on her blog.

The Weekly Leaf
This week I'm back to my Gelli plate and a leaf that has a chunk missing.

Week #41

Daily Stitching updates.
Lines Dance #280-#287

The Daily Paper #208-#215

Linked to "Off the Wall Friday".

Blueprints, in color!

There is a mimosa tree that I walk past frequently when I'm walking my dog and I'm fascinated with the feathery leaves, so I brought one home and pressed it flat. Then got busy and didn't do anything with it for about a week, so now it's very flat and dry.

 First I used it for this weeks weekly leaf, then I spent some time on Sunday doing blueprints with it. Sometime back in the 90's I did quite a bit of blueprinting on fabric and even taught a class in my backyard for the quilt guild, but haven't done any since then. A few months ago I ordered the pretreated fabric and instead of blue and white I went with a pack of mixed colors.

It's very simple to do the prints. I put the fabric on a piece of cardboard, placed my leaf on top, then covered it with a piece of glass and put it into the sun for 10 minutes.

The fabric is then rinsed and the print appears. I tried all five colors.

I'm so happy with them, each one is 8 1/2 inches square. Not sure how I will use them yet, but I will.

For the weekly leaf I used the gelli plate, but wasn't real happy with the print.

There was a bit of paint still on the back of the leaf so I used that to print very carefully so that the leaf wouldn't fall apart. The print came out very pale, but was enough to give me some guide lines for stitching.

Weekly Leaf #40

Daily stitching updates

Line dance #273- #279

The Daily Paper #201-#207

Linked to "Off the wall Friday"