Early Morning

For me, today was an early morning.  Since I work nights, I tend to lounge around in the morning, but today I jumped out of bed and got to work.  I had this piece laid out already.  I changed the mountains in the foreground several times before I settled on this fabric.  I need more dark and toned fabrics!  Going through fabrics looking for mountains, I realized that the majority of my fabric is medium shades.  Although I do like the gradation in the border, it is not very uniform-by that I mean that there are unexpected gaps-one of the things of working with handdyed fabric.  There is so much variation in the fabric, often I have a piece sewn in before I realize that it is not quite right.  I really like the narrow red border, and the way it lies behind the hills in the foreground.

It is time to start quilting.  I have 5 pieces ready to quilt.  I have been procrastinating.  Figuring out how to stitch a piece is always a bit intimidating for me.  But, my stitching improves when I quilt several quilts in succession so I choose the one that I care about the least to start with, and by the time I get to the piece that I am the most invested in, my stitches are uniform and sortof beautiful.

Productivity

I tried to upload these pictures with the previous post but it wasn't happening.  I got some precut stencils in the mail last week.  Someday I will cut my own but for now, this will do.  I added the branch on the chickadee piece above.

 This is a less successful attempt of using Shiva paintsticks with a purchased rubbing plate.  Try as I might I couldn't get everything to stay still.  Will have to do some research. It does have a nice texture,so perhaps not a complete lost cause.

More stamps.  I am excited to use the crab but I need to dye some fabric, which is why I am wrapping poles and folding and stitching fabric.  No point in mixing dye until I have everything ready.  I want to attempt more than simple dying, but the resists take a rediculous amount of time.

What I Have Been Doing

I haven't posted for a few days, but I have not been idle.  I read somewhere that you should rub your poles with steel wool then apply floor wax to them to make it easier to push down the fabric.  I couldn't find floor wax, so I used car wax instead and it made a huge difference.  Hopefully wax is wax and it won't react with the dye.  I have four poles ready to go.  About 10 more to wrap.  These are Hoffman PFD fabric, and I am going to do some with Kaufman Pimatex also.

Every Day

I am trying to accomplish something every single day-before I go to work at 1.  This morning I fused Angelina fiber onto misty fuse, cut strips with my shaped rotary cutter(the word escapes me right now), cut out petals and fused them to this 6" x 4" piece that I previously printed a baby sparrow.   I don't know where I go from here, but eventually all of these little things become a quilt.

Soaring

This is another of my Arctic Tern quilts.  I carved away the background on the block on this since the last tern quilt that I posted.  The clouds are angelina fiber fused to the quilt.  This piece is 12" x 9.5".

Calllista's finger knitting

My 9 year old grand-daughter, Callista, came to visit recently.  When she asked for yarn  for finger knitting, I gave her a ball, and was totally astounded when she used it all up and wanted more.  That is alot of yarn!  I knew it was essential to make a reason for all that fingerknitting.  I had her do long ropes in three different colors.  After she had gone home, I braided the ropes and felted it.  This could be a nice strap for a felted bag, or if braided more loosely and not felted as much, I think it will be flat enough to make a belt.  A crafter in the makings!



Arctic Terns

Another completed small quilt.  The clouds are angelina and I put a layer of purple organza over the top of this.  I have tried a couple of other pieces with angeling clouds.  On those I fused the clouds down, over seams, which didn't work out so well.  I am happy with this.  Todays progress has not gone so well.  My machine does not  like something in the combination of a piece I was trying to quilt today.  The machine was skipping stitches.  I rethreaded the top and the bottom and changed the needle, trying a larger size.  Can't figure it out.  I tried stitching on another piece, no skipped stitches on that but I am just not in the groove today or something.  Better quit before I destroy something.  I really don't like to take out quilting stitches.