Hand dyed Fabric

Yesterday's mail brought my win from Vicki Welsh, a beautiful hand dyed icy blue fabric. It might be just the fabric to add to my Lancaster, Pa. covered bridge project which will be a winter scene...when I get to it.

She also sent some other goodies...The Goddess pressing sheet and a sample of misty fuse along with a post it notes of her purple hand dyed fabric. Thank You Vicki and Gene!

This is an awful photo. I think something went wrong with my camera and the photographer isn't the best either!

Monochromatic PINK...Done!

I looked forward to getting this pink block in this swap. How bright and pretty...but only after the second day of working on it I changed my mind. I put it away and kept putting off working on it. It was like pink cotton candy just staring back at me and the glow of the wild pink satin was over whelming.  But everything does end and this block is packed and ready for the mail!

It's my Birthday and I'm a winner!

When you get to be   %#$@%^#^  years of age you stop having birthday's....but this year I got a gift!

"Now, the winner of the giveaway who wins her choice of a fabric from the Shibori section of Vicki Welsh's Etsy shop AND a Goddess pressing sheet is -  Holee who said

 Holee said...

What a wonderful piece. I've been to Holland. It took me right back there. I can see the man coming out the door with his pants rolled up and his metal bucket in hand. The fabric's are really wonderful.

I'm trying to get out of my comfort zone of neutrals and pastels. I do love red though!

I think I'm drawn to Nogata because it looks icy. With the coming of winter I usually go for the strikingly cool colors and this is one. Thanks for the give away...I'll be visiting often since I found you on Ravelly's blog.

Holee, I will be getting you in touch with Vicki so you can get your prize..or you can email me your choice and mailing address and I will send it to Vicki.

I hope you all have a glorious Sunday."

Now how good is that!  Thanks to Gene: http://blog.geneblack.com/  Now you need to visit his blog and while you are there...vote for his quilt!  Then go to Vicki's blog and look at all her wonderful hand dyed fabric's and today..glass cabochons. http://vickiwelsh.typepad.com/field_trips_in_fiber/  Thanks Vicki!

Improved daylight photo's

These are a little better but still doesn't show the crystals.

Monochromatic round robin swap block...Pink

I hate letting things go until the end of the month but this month just got so busy with company and a heat wave that took away my ambition to do anything.

For some reason this block has way too much empty space left with only 2 of us to finish it. I decided to do the large bright pink satin part that others seem to have avoided. I might have to do some other parts too so the owner is not disappointed when she gets it back.

She asked for butterflies so I had one drawn up and ready to go until I saw the large space. I had to increase the size of the butterfly to take up some on the space. I hope to get a better photo of this block in the day light. The work on the butterfly just doesn't show up in this photo and it has lots of crystal beads in it.

Today I dyed the appliques and lace and added them but tomorrow I'll have to wake up the garden with lots of silk ribbon and beads.

This is the block before anything was done to it.

You can see all the empty space left to do. I think I need to do the light colored strip at the top and the seam at the top of the swirly block to help out the last person.

This butterfly turned out great but the photo doesn't show it. I think it's the Ott light I used. The beads are not even the right color in this photo. I'll try outside lighting tomorrow after I do some of the garden.

Little Butterfly Quilt almost finished

I did add some shiny bling and only need to tack down the back of the binding. !!!  Reminder: never do a satin binding again !!!  This binding was a nightmare. It slide over and over, but I do like how it looks.

 

Color

I haven't really thought about color for a long time. Lately I've noticed that over the years people have changed from the basic gentle colors to brights...all but me that is. I think when I first looked at brights they reminded me of picking crayons from a box of 64 colors and having the feeling of panic.

Recently I found a new blog and new friend: http://blog.geneblack.com/  Gene likes color so I decided to hang around his blog and see if I could learn a thing or 2 about how he uses color. He told me to look at nature and sent me a photo of an iris to start with.

When I am finished the doll project I want to do something in bright colors so I decided to start looking at colors using the iris.

I would be starting with 4 colors; Purple, white, green and yellow.

 

 

 

Then came the problem of adding the 5th color. I started with Red since that is my favorite color. Then I selected blue, pink, brown, black, and orange. Orange is my least favorite color.

 

 

 

I knocked out black and brown immediately. The iris is a blue/purple so I knocked out blue. Red, Pink and Orange is left and they are bright. This will take a lot more looking at before I could choose a color. I'm actually leaning towards Orange and that is a color I use only for Halloween, so I am shocked at my feelings about it. I knew this would be hard for me. More on this later!

Here are 2 colors I am considering after looking at this for a few days.

 

Some Progress

Rain, Rain...it's effecting my mojo. I just can't get my mind settled down to do a full day of sewing. I have made a little progress on the Doll Butterfly Quilt.

Remember this little girl like's shiny so I did the antenna's in metallic gold thread. Just when I was about to change the thread to pink cotton for the quilting I decided to let the metallic thread do a little more shiny.

Before I add the binding I want to audition a few more idea's I have to shine this quilty up.

Now just for fun, a friend posted this photo to my facebook. I have no idea where the photo came from but it's a hoot! I wonder how many hours it took to sew this to fit!

Little Butterflies

All little girls put their dolls to bed at night so the doll clothes I am working on also needs to include a quilt. This is my own design. I've made these in different ways and sold them to help off set the cost of the many drugs I have to take. I wouldn't want to see these quilts turning up on lots of blogs, of course if you want to make one for yourself or a daughter's doll then that would be okay.

On some of the quilts I use half the amount of butterflies, sometimes in a circle or random. I've used them with a flower applique and on one piece of fabric instead of blocks. The butterflies are made from the 4 corner's of ladies hankies. I will embroider the heads on and on this quilt I will sew metallic gold antenna's because this little girl likes shiny. I'm thinking I'll bind it with pink satin.

I'm also thinking it will need some bling, like beads. The butterflies are less then 2 inches in length. The quilt will finish at about 16 X 20, perfect for an 18 inch doll.