Iris wall hanging

This week I made a small wall hanging of an iris quilt. I fused the iris and the leaves and then made a sandwich and proceeded to be puzzled by what type of quilting to do on it. Eventually i got a brainstorm and quilted it from the back following the pattern of the motifs there. I’m pretty happy with how it looks.

You can see more creative work at Off the Wall Fridays

Thread painting a tree

This week I started a new thread painting of a tree and it’s roots. I’m working on the forest floor right now and only have my second layer finished. I will move onto several other colors to complete it and will probably be finished in a couple of days. Working on things like this keeps me happy and fulfills my creative muse.

You can see more great work at Off The Wall Fridays
There’s the tree with the forest floor finished, well, not quite finished. I did work on it a bit more and added a couple of more colors to the floor, added some leaves to the tree that’s behind and the small one to the right.

Finished!

So I finished the quilting and put a green binding on it. Now I’m at a loss as to what to do. Should I make another of the same type, start a thread painting garden scene, work on some rock wall and garden stuff. Ive got other ideas but none are what I want to do. Just whining. So here’s the finished little quilted wall hanging.

Starting the quilting

So now I’ve been quilting it! I’ve used a variegated thread on the flower petals and color coordinated on the parts I’ve quilted so far. I started using a foot for quilting but ended up taking the foot off and following the brown design that way. It’s a little different but I got used to it.

You can see many creative quilts/work at http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/ off the wall Friday’s

Home bound

During this time it leaves plenty of day to work on various projects. I started this piece with a completely different thought process. It evolved to doing hand work on the flowers and I didn’t want it to look like Dresden plate, but it does. So now I’m at the quilting stage and some of the areas allude me as to what to do there. I will continue working on it until it is done, then probably post it again.

The UNVEILING!

OK, it is finally time to show what I have been working on so long behind the scenes.

My middle son will be married this weekend and I made a commemorative piece for them.

This is a compilation of two photographs that were taken by the future bride's Dad. I had asked him to find out (secretly) and send me pictures of their favorite places and anywhere else they are fond of.

So I received several photos of lovely vistas in San Diego, but this background kept calling me. It is sunset at La Jolla Shores where they went on the first date. The figures are from one of their engagement photos on the same shore line.

For fabrics I used silk, cotton, some kind of see through fabric (the name escapes me so early in the am,) paints, inks, beads, machine stitching and hand embroidery. The figures were silk screened by my dear friend and I am in debt to her for this - it came out so well, that my jury thought it was one of the best pieces!
I hand colored the people and used various paint and inks for the background sections to get the right feel for the scene.

The figures were slightly raised by using a very thin batt material under the cotton batt - cut out to the size of the figures.

In conclusion- I like it and think they will too!

Background by monoprint

Started a new piece today. It will be a background of tropical type forest and a camelion. Playing around with printing leaves and coloring the background too. This is a far as I've come today. Had other stuff to do too - what's with that?Adding more to this tomorrow :)

Off with his head, off with his head!

Ok, so that may sound a bit overboard, but yesterday I went a little too far when working on my Grackle's beak and he ended up looking like Cyrano de Bergerac.
So I did the next best thing a girl could do and cut out his head! Like completely out - then I had a hole in my piece and thought it was a complete loss. While pondering my situation, (I walked around with crabby face for 30 minutes or so,) I came to another conclusion and a solution to my dilemma.
Lucky for me, I had more of the background fabric, so I pieced in a large triangle and then covered the seams with more reeds. Now I am working away at the repair and will baste a new head and beak today :) Voila! Happiness again.

Experiment and Voila!

I got a set of Gyotaku (which means fish printing) leaves - go figure and one fish for Christmas. Decided to try it this morning. Yesterday I washed some plain fabric in order to do this.
The idea is not new, but I have never done this and I do like mono-printing and waiting until something grows again so I can have great leaves is like waiting for paint to dry.
This is my result from a few tries this morning.I love this! The recommendation is to place your fabric or paper onto the painted object, but I seem to do better the other way round.
I intend to overdye this little tableau once it is dry and thoroughly pressed. We will see later how it comes out.

Starting another new one

This one is going to be a landscape type of a post I saw near home. I just found it interesting, so took a photo and now I like it enough to make it permanent and into art.

Before washing

Here's process photos of the background that I painted. This first photo has been done in stages. First I painted the sky and another bright green. I put salt on the green to see what happened. Then I washed it out by hand, pressed it and went on to put the darker green over the light green. I tipped the platter the piece was on so the paint would (hopefully) run down and make tree tops. Well it needed a little help (and I can't leave stuff alone) so I used a toothpick and made pointy tree tops.

After washing

Once that was dry, I then pressed it and thought about it. Then washed it in hot water in the washer.
I like the way that came out and it is what I wanted. Pretty successful all around. Now to cut out and applique the post and tree for the center. (all this stuff is done in the dead of the morning as we are renovating my son's bedroom too.)

Gentian mock up

So I took the newly painted fabric and cut it up. What a surprise! I did a little bit of stamping on it, then cut, chopped and discarded lots of little pieces to create this pic of gentian.

The second pic is the approximate size it will be once appliqued. I think some french knots on the stamped branches would imitate the gentian in a small way - but not too many of them.
I will probably baste this today and this afternoon work on my marsh marigolds to get that down on the background. I am still working my thumb, but not too much as I don't want to strain it. Daily (sort of) exercise for the hand works well...............now I just have to do it daily - LOL!

Fabric Painting

I wanted to start another wildflower picture? thing? There is a word for that, but I am not getting it right now.
Anyway, I decided to use a painted background. So I took out my stuff and painted this. It is covered with salt right now and drying. I suppose after I wash out the salt I will have to dry it again.

That's ok as I have to work on the trim in my bedroom. I just got sick and tired of the color and will be going to a nice Ivory instead of dark blue (that is very 80's) Do I watch too many home improvement shows? You bet! So once I get DH to agree on something there is no dust on me, as he could change his mind, but once I am going he just gets out of the way :)

Yesterday I went to the store and bought all kinds of supplies that either dried out or needed replacement. WOW! Prices went up in the last 20 years! LOL! It will look fine when it is done :)
Maybe I'll put the piece outside to dry with some leafy things on it. HHMMM, I like that idea.
Do you think the chipmunks will walk on it too? Could be interesting.