A Beautiful Ride

This morning I had to make my way from Lincoln over to Hanover. While there are several possible routes, they all involve going over mountain roads. In my opinion, this is not a bad thing, and typically makes for a very pleasant ride. This morning was extra-special, however. It was snowing!!! Yes, white stuff. The pine boughs were all covered and bending down to kiss the ground; the mountain tops were pure white. There was even one spot where the birches and maples hadn't yet lost their color; the crisp orange, red, and gold leaves peeking out from glistening white branches.

As usual, I didn't have my camera with me.

Finished Fused Fantasy

I can't begin to say what an enjoyable experience making this piece has been. The hand-stitching and beading wasn't all that bad, the machine quilting was a dream, and I'm in love with the look. I definitely need to do more of these. I know I have at least a couple of other sketches hanging around that would work.


One of the positive comments I received when showing off this piece was that I managed to achieve texture and depth with the hand-stitching, beading and cheesecloth. Fused work can look very flat, and that's definitely not me. We also played around with top / bottom / left / right. We were amazed to discover that we all liked the piece no matter which end was up! My husband stated from the very beginning that it looked like an alien on a futuristic Harley and now I can't get that image out of my mind. For a real up close and personal look, click here.

Conversations

The new Gallery show is up! It's a mother-daughter show and the work is absolutely wonderful. Corni Forster and her mom, Jutta Forster, have a total of 33 pieces on display - all mounted and framed. Corni's husband, Mark, made the wooden frames for her pieces and hung the entire show. He also took all of the photographs - I'm waiting for the gallery shots to arrive. All of the work is for sale, of course. More details on the Gallery website.

Now I have to get busy and send back the art from the Colors show ...

A Little Interlude ...

I'd like to mention two tools that I've found to be extremely helpful. Maybe they'll help you too! The first is the Block Butler. I bought mine from Rooby at Web of Thread. I actually bought 2 - both 4' x 6' - and stuck them up on my interior office walls. They really work great - I like them much better than my old felt-covered pink styrofoam boards.

The other tool is the SewSlip - it sticks to my extension table (yet is removable) and has a silicone surface that reduces all drag when free-motion quilting. I know that this has helped my free-motion quilting tremendously.

Now, back to beading!

Fused Fantasy II

Here's round two of Fused Fantasy! I finally did some machine quilting. Be sure to click on the image for a close-up.

For a larger close-up click here. Caution - may take a while to download on a slow connection.

I've added a few bits of cheesecloth to give it some more texture; I'll be doing some more beading next and then call it done!

Fused Fantasy

Been looking for me? Here I am. Trying to do a million things at once, as usual. Last month I mentioned that I had gotten a bunch of fabrics from Melody and was going to try her fusing method. Well, I did!

I started with a sketch I had made a while back. Each time I'd flip through the pages of the sketchbook (thanks, Laura!) this design would pop out at me and beg not to be forgotten.



I marked each of the sections with a letter from A through F indicating placement sequence to make sure I added *seam* allowances where necessary. I also used the number key to indicate value - F being dark and A being light.

The next step was to prepare the fabric - fusing WonderUnder to the underside. One of Melody's tricks is to cut out the shapes after removing the release paper - this provides for a cleaner edge since you're not pulling against it.

The next part was the trickiest - figuring out which fabric to use where! Melody's fabrics are a riot of color. I traced one of the diagrams onto parchment paper so I could place each piece and then fuse as a single design element. I tried not to layer whenever possible, knowing that I was going to want to do a fair amount of embellishment by hand.

I didn't get everything right and ended up with an extra layer because of the background *frame* but was still able to seed stitch the background using Laura's 12 perle cotton in a matching colorway! I then used some 5 perle cotton around the border to enhance the frame.


For a larger close-up click here. Caution - may take a while to download on a slow connection.

Lots more embellishing to do (on the main design) and I'm really loving this piece! Overall it's about 14" x 16" I think. I may end up doing some machine work after all - we'll see.