Picking it out!

You know when you do something to a piece and then let it sit for a while? I did that with one of my pieces because something just wasn't sitting "right" with it for me. I goofed around with it again this morning and then just decided to rip it all out.
Now I'm glad I did. So far it is much more appealing to me and I can continue to work on it..........as soon as I am done picking it out.   :0)

January Free Motion Challenge and things I already knew

So what are the things I already knew? I knew I didn't like repetitive designs, I knew I do a better job is whatever I am sewing is small - tiny leaves vs. large ones.

So here's my January Challenge piece. Because I get bored easily, I did mine in more than one color. I started with brown, then blue, purple and then green. This gives me an idea as to whether or not I have made any improvement.  What do I think? Looks just ok and no, I'm not doing another one this month. :) Enough said.

12 Month Free Motion Quilt Challenge

While reading Ann Fahl's Blog, she is one of the instructors in this free motion challenge, so I looked into it and said - what the heck! Why not, so I did.

Now on to improving my quilting skill - there is always room for improvement and following along with others can be fun. I'll post my doodles here on the blog.

I have been beating myself over the head with Quickbooks these past days and I think (I hope) I am done for this year.  It is time for taxes and my Tax Lady would like to have my stuff really soon. We like to do taxes early, it is stressful enough without a deadline.

So I think I am back to the land of having fun again. Maybe I will make the practice blocks into a quilt? Nah.

Bent Needles

I have two bent needles. One is the needle I baste with and the other I discovered this morning. I decided to recreate a needle holder I had made when I got a thread book I had bought. I would tell you the name, but it seems that my room ate the book - figures. Now that I decided to clean it up yesterday, the book went into hiding and is nowhere to be found.

The second needle I discovered this morning as I was making the needle holder. Such a nasty sound came out of my little sewing machine! I immediately stopped sewing and took out the bobin. No, nothing there. Took out the race - it looked fine, so I cleaned it and put it back. Started to make the machine go very slowly by hand to see what was up. EEEWWWW! The needle was hitting the race. I took the race out again,  put it in, took it out and repeated the whole dry run several times.
I finally pronounced that the machine needed fixing. I took out the race again - lifted the machine and looked into the hole where the race goes and saw NOTHING and decided that the calibration? was off and needed to go to the shop.
Feeling defeated, I went away and pouted a bit. Came back and thought that maybe I should try another needle. Was this a light bulb moment? No, more like a conk on the head. Put the new needle in and guess what? It worked perfectly :) I was up and running again.

So it took me a hour to actually make this silly little thing and it is not perfect, but the old one was SO UGLY I couldn't stand it anymore. And here it is - voila!

Oh, I just found that little sneaky book! It is called Thread Work Unraveled by Sarah Ann Smith

New Venue!

I have four pieces accepted to show/sale at Handworks Gallery in Acton, MA! It is pretty exciting and I am looking forward to a long relationship with them. You can see the pieces on my stitched stories page. One piece, Dwarf Iris, will be in the "Expressions of Love" Exhibit running Feb. 3rd through the 25th. You just need to see the show! So stop on by and check out the "Expressions" people have on display.

Seeing as I will not be doing the show (Merrimack Valley Artisans) this year due to my son getting married the same weekend (do I need a hat?) I needed somewhere to show my work and this is a great fit.

BUT, that doesn't stop me from making things, so I have three peices in the works and I have shown them here in the not too distant past. I will be working on them and others as we travel on in time.

My studio is a mess again...........who did that to it anyway? Today is a bit of straightening out and then more creative work (cut, cut, pin, sew, etc.) One of my tables is underutilized, so I thought I would see what I could do about that too. Why is it that when you get everything "just right" you run out of space for anything else? Funny that, eh?

Directing energy

Yesterday was such and odd day for me - I seemed to go in a zillion directions and got nowhere very fast. Ever have those types of days?

Started out experimenting with my Gelli Plate. I still haven't figured out how I should use it.  I've seen the videos and read everything, but it still doesn't do much for me. Fiddling around with it may help, but not yet. I think I am stuck on doing silk screening as I like the neatness of the "figure" that results. Don't have any of the tools and don't want to buy MORE stuff.

Stared at my Gyotaku supplies and shoved those aside. Took out my vessels and goofed around with them.
Got out some magazines and thumbed through them - pretty pictures - no ideas resulted.

Then took down off of my design wall a piece I had been working on and thinking about. Looked at that again and decided it was done. Took out the basting and did a bit of beading on it. By this time it was supper and I found I did not get one thing done, except laundry. Fairly frustrating day, but today is new and another horizon awaits! :)

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.

Planning or going with your gut feeling?

smaller version

I am struggling with myself about whether or not to make the marigold as I originally planned or go with my gut feeling of "make it bigger." The smaller version would just be about a 5 X 7, but the larger would be 6 X 6.
I KNOW which one to do, but my little cheap voice is saying to use what you have and don't buy any more canvasses. So this is just a matter of beating up that little voice and plowing ahead.
I need to mention that the "picture" does go over the edges of the canvas and are continued on the sides of the piece, so nothing is really cut off, but.............

New Years Day

Didn't do much creative-wise, but we went for a walk in the woods and found this about 20 ft. up in a tree! Thought I would share :) It's not every day you see a shark in a tree!