Autumn leaves, red and some stitching

I really like the changing of the seasons, especially autumn leaves. I pick up leaves on my daily walks and put them in a large book to press them. After they're flat I photo copy them, on paper usually but sometimes also on to fabric. I never use them, just keep them. Here are some from this mornings walk.



This one I picked up because of the wonderful patterning.



Generally it's color that attracts me, especially red. We don't have quite the color of a New England autumn, but we have our fair share of trees that put on a show for me.

Speaking of red, Kathy Loomis and I are doing another photo collaboration for the next 2 weeks. This week the theme was my choice and I chose red. You can check out our pictures all week here and here.

I've also been stitching up more white pieces and dyeing them - here's a couple of the latest ones.

Fiber and dye experiment

I've been playing with some ideas that involve stitching different fibers and fabrics and then dyeing them with a dye color that I know will split and dye each type of fiber a different color. I also wanted some texture so most of the fabrics were not pre-washed before stitching. I stitched various pieces of silk, cotton and rayon fabrics to cotton batting with both cotton and silk threads, everything was white or off white to start with.



I dyed the piece with golden brown dye (Dharma's #113 procion mx) that I knew would look much redder on the silk. Here's the results. I'm not sure where this experimenting will lead, but I'm quite pleased with the results.


I also finished up the t-shirt quilt for my grand daughter and will be delivering it soon. Don has baked a batch of cookies so he'll have something to deliver also.

Where have I been???

It has come to my attention that it's been almost a month since I've posted. While I have been busy, I haven't been that busy. Shortly after my last post in August we took a trip to Tacoma with some friends and we stayed at my sons house. The purpose of the trip was to go to the Pacific West Quilt Show (at least it was for the female members of the group). We spent most of an afternoon there and enjoyed wondering around looking at the quilts and vendors. The guys spent the day on a charter boat fishing in the sound. While there we also went to the Tacoma Art museum and the Glass Museum. Here's a couple of pictures that were taken on the Chihuly bridge, a pedestrian bridge that goes over the freeway to the Glass museum.



A few days after returning home from Tacoma we left on another trip, this time to visit friends in Montana. We had a great time relaxing on the ranch and the drives to and from were spectacular. The only down side was the forest fires in the area. In the photo below there is another mountain range lurking behind that veil of smoke.


Since returning from that trip, I put together a slide presentation and talk for the Boise Basin Quilters. I was their guest speaker last Thursday evening. My new presentation is called "From White to Wow", and I show step by step how I dye and print some of my fabric.

My other project has been assembling a t-shirt quilt for a grand daughter who has gone off to college and left a bag of t-shirts from her high school sports activities in a garbage bag marked Grandma Linda. It's ready to be quilted and when finished I'll have to take another trip to deliver it!

The pieces that I last showed on my design wall have been taken down and tucked away. Now I have this pile of silk on my table and have been playing with several different ideas to use them in an abstract fall themed quilt.