This years Weekly Leaf finished

I've finished all the stitching on this years weekly leaf, but of course I'm not finished, they all have to be stitched to the background. This is the finished group on the design wall. You can see each individual one here.http://notesfromstudiob.blogspot.com/p/the-weekly-leaf-year-2.html

Week #52 was done with a leaf that I had saved because it looked like an alien. Unfortunately it was very brittle so the print was faint and the alien 'eyes' didn't show up.

All of the leaves have now been pinned to the quilted background. I worked on my large print table to get them all even.

Then hung it on the wall and of course each one shifted a bit but I can straighten them as I hand sew them down. I'm not looking forward to the sewing them down part.

This year I used the following surface design techniques;paintstiks, blueprints on gold fabric, leaves photocopied onto fabric, close up photos printed on fabric, stencils, gelli prints, deconstructed screen print, soy wax with dye, soy wax with discharge, flour paste, SolarFast prints, stitched resist, color magnet, hand carved stamps, painted fusible and the leaf as the printmaking tool.

I've gathered materials for next year, I'll still be doing leaves but with a few changes. First will be color. I had a reader suggest a book that she thought I would like, Fall photos by Christopher Griffith.

Thanks Robbie. You can get the book from other booksellers on Amazon, very inexpensively. The photos in this book are of northeastern trees. The colors are magnificent. I grew up with those colors and it's the only thing I miss about the area. So here are my colors.

The reds are really not pinkish and my camera insists they are.

Second change will be using some materials that I haven't used before (at least not in my leaves).

Tea bag papers, book pages, krafttex, lutrador and some other things I have around. Some weeks will be my usual print, others will be with some of the above stuff included.

Third change will be using felt as my background and stitching the pieces together as I go. I haven't gotten the felt yet, but I do have a trip planned to Boise tomorrow to get some. I'm sure hoping that it works so I can avoid the end of the year stitching them all in place.

Daily Stitching updates

Silk Fragments #356-#362, three more to go!

Sari Ribbon #284-#290

Linked to"Off the Wall Friday".

Bits and Pieces

It's that time of year when I tend to obsess over next years weekly and daily projects. This year I know what I want to do for my daily, but I'm missing a major part of it until Christmas. That means I'm having trouble with some of the decisions that need to be made, like what colors, what fabrics, etc. The missing link is the new mini gelli plates , as soon as I saw them I knew that I wanted to use them for this coming years dailies and when I was asked what I wanted for Christmas I quickly forwarded a link so they could be ordered. I know they are in the house, but they've been wrapped and hidden until Christmas.

I plan on doing leaves again for my weekly project, but I know that I need to make some changes. I've gotten very comfortable with what I've been doing, so I need to step out of my comfort zone and try something new - I'm just not sure what it will be yet. One thing I know is that I want to be able to put them together as I go like my dailies because I dread doing them all at the end. In fact that's one of the things I've been working on this week. I've quilted a large rectangle of green linen and I'm
checking out spacing of the weeklies so I can trim the rectangle down and bind it before attaching each one.

I also finished five little pieces that I did mainly to use the five 4" x 5" canvases that I've had for a very long time. I used a strip of natural colored silk noil that had been printed with a large rubber band and black paint.  It was cut into five pieces, each one backed with flannel and stitched. Then I used watered down mat medium and attached them to the canvas. After drying the fabric and stitching is very stiff, but I rather like it.

The Weekly Leaf
This weeks leaf is more of the leaves that my friend Jeanette had given me and I had printed onto fabric.

This time I used the colorful ones, cut them out and fused them to green fabric.

Then stitched .

Week #51

Daily Stitching updates

Silk Fragments #349-#355, only ten days to go!

Sari Ribbon #277-#283

Linked to "Off the Wall Friday"

Christmas Postcards

It's time for Christmas Postcards again. I've made them for at least six years and every year starts about the same, trying to decide what to do. This is what I did last year and this is what I did the prior year, which also was in the 2014 Quilting Arts Holiday magazine. I tend to get a fuzzy idea of what I want to do, then end up doing something entirely different. The idea this year was snowflakes, but this is what happens. I get out all the stencils, rubbing plates, etc. that has anything with a holiday theme.

I go through them all and wait till something jumps out at me. This year it was the stencil of holiday ornaments. Then comes the decision on fabric, there happened to be some silk broadcloth and white cotton scraps on my worktable so the decision was easy. Then out come the box of paintstiks and the color decision is next. Red was my first choice but after doing one in just red I decided to add a bit of green to the center.

The bottom one is the all red, the top is what I evolved to.

The mess during the process.

After all the stenciling is done, I misty fuse them to timtex.

Then to the machine to stitch around the ornament.

Then a backing fabric is fused on and then satin stitched

around the edge.

Then I sign the back and they are ready for addresses.

The finished front.

The Weekly Leaf

This week I used a blueprint on gold fabric that had been done earlier in the fall. I used some leaves from one of my very persistent weeds.

Week #50

Daily Stitching updates

Silk Fragments #342-#348

Sari Ribbon #270-#276

Linked to "Off the Wall Friday"