It's been a while

My word!  It's been almost 6 months since the last time I posted here.  Truth be told, I was stuck in a creative rut; didn't know where to begin; so many UFOs, too many learned techniques, and far too many excuses not to go into the studio.  Well it's time to get a hold of myself and get going.  I'm kinda reminded of the story of the mouse that fell into a bucket of milk.  The mouse thought it would drown until it started to lap at the milk; little by little the milk disappeared, and the mouse crawled out of the bucket.  These last 6 months I've been "lapping at the milk" and it's finally time to climb out of the bucket.

I had posted about the beginnings of my work on Gypsy Wife by Jen Kingwell, which you can read here.  It's finally pieced and ready for sandwiching and quilting.  Here is what it looks like now.  Any ideas?

I chose to do the background striping as an exercise in transitioning from one hue to another.  I think it worked out well.

Gypsy Wife coming along

I have been working along on a pattern call the Gypsy Wife by Jen Kingwell.   You can read an interview with Jen here.  I thought the pattern was relatively new but this pattern has been around for a while (since at least 2014) and there have been several quilt-alongs.  No matter...I've been enjoying the construction of the quilt and rather than use random scraps as depicted on the cover of the pattern book, I've been working with a blue and orange colour palette.

Quite a number of the fabrics are from my stash, but then there are some new ones added in for a bit of spice.  This is what I've managed thus far.

The quilt is sewn in sections and there are two more sections to go.  The last two sections (which are missing right now) will show more orange striping in the background and merge together in the middle of the top.  I'm hoping the transition from blue to orange in the background will be more noticeable when the top is complete.

Till the next time.

Answering a call

Last month the local gallery (Gallery Vertigo) had a fibre art exhibit.  I attended with a group from my Guild called QuArtz (QUilting ARTistZ).  It was exciting to see that two of our members had their little quilts on display, along with other fibre pieces including felted vessels, knitted scarves and various fibre sculptures.  It's a small gallery run solely by support from membership.

A week later I read in the local newspaper that the Gallery put out a call for artists to submit pieces for a juried show with the theme "The Colour of Music".  The piece could be created in any media; paper, paint, fibre, whatever.  After some hesitation and some encouragement from my friends at QuArtz, I submitted my piece A Tribute to Frank Mills.

Remember? This was the piece that I created for the Tangled Textiles group for their MUSIC theme, and posted about here and here.

Well, .... I GOT ACCEPTED!!!  I was so excited.  It's hanging in the Gallery as I write and will be on display until May 3, 2014.  If you are in the area, stop by and visit the Gallery.

I hear music, music, music

Among the many challenges that I have on my plate, I really need to continue the work on my piece for Tangled Textiles.  The theme, MUSIC, was to have a reveal on November 30, but as you can see from the blog over there, it's been postponed till January 12th.

This gives me a bit more time to add some finishing touches to my piece.  In the meantime, you will have to be happy seeing a sneak peak.

I'm off to sing some more and see if I can stay in tune.

A Blue reveal

It's reveal day over at the Tangled Textiles blog.  You can see what others are revealing today relating to the "blue" theme.    Here is mine. 

TA DA!!! A Blue Delft Tragedy! I learned some valuable lessons with this one.

I found this fabric and thought it was perfect. With a bit of fussy cutting it could work for the images on the mask.

It was tricky cutting all those tiny shapes, but here is a close up of some of the pieces that I fussy cut.

 

I had to figure out how to get the shadow on the mask and at the same time have the blue flowers on the mask show up.   I tried several different fabrics but thought I would be able to get the best result by using organza for the shadow.  I could fuse the organza, but what to use.  I experimented with Wonder Under and Misty Fuse. 

 If you look closely, you can see that the Misty Fuse piece shows hairline webbing and I didn't want to have that showing on the organza.  But how do you cut up the organza so that it doesn't fray....

with a wood burning tool. It works beautifully. But I learned that it was easier to burn it if the fusible web paper was left attached to the piece.  So now I had all the pieces for the mask, but what about the background. A sense of tiles for the background would be good. The grid created with blue satin ribbon, looked a little flat.  Some FMQ helped.  Here's a close up.

It was time to apply the mask to the background.  I fused the mask to the background and discovered that I not only had "shadow" on the mask, but some shadowing from behind too.  Look closely....

See it there on the forehead?  Oh well...I'll know better next time.