An intrusion!

Sunday evening, after a very busy day, DH came down to the studio, saying that he was falling asleep in front of the tv, and thought a bit of puttering might help him stay awake.  He fooled around with some picture hangers, in the other end of the basement, and then came right into the studio, and started pulling down the flannel wall.  I had casually mentioned that the flannel was getting dirty and we would have to take it down and wash it. Say What!! When did I agree to that?? I was in the middle of sewing pieces for a project, so had to quickly clear that up and get involved.  

We found the flannel torn and a little rotten.  Not surprising considering that it's probably been up there for ten years.  So we've been busy since then buying new flannel, finding and buying wooden slats, as I had asked that the sides of the flannel be held in place as well as the top and bottom.

Today, the final part was mounted and the wooden slats screwed down over it.  I've been spending time arranging things to my satisfaction, and have put up the three pieces I'm currently working on.  The Moon quilt I've already talked about.  The cats are for a very different purpose, and will hopefully be sold at the yearly craft sale next December.  I've been working on it, more off than on, for the last two years, carefully beading every pearl-like part of the design.  It has been far more a piece to take along to stitching days, than any piece of "fine craft", and I'll be glad to see the end of it.  I think I've also talked about the orange and black discharged flowers, which will be put together as a long hanging or table  runner.

The Moon Quilt and table runner will benefit from the black batting I recently bought, as it was purchased for just that use.  Now maybe I can get back to that piecing that was so abruptly interrupted.

Moon Quilts

"Moon" quilts have been around for years.  I think that just about every art quilter has, or will, make one at some point. This week it was my turn.  

In my purging, I found 22 pieces of good quality black cotton, each roughly ( very roughly) 9" square.  I put a circle in the center of each, using a variety of techniques.  Then they were trimmed to size and sewn together.  I will sandwich them, machine quilt them, and then bead some of the circles, before adding a false back, and binding the piece.

The techniques used include rusting, painting fusible web and then ironing it on, machine embroidery, using programmed stitches, and finally discharging.  The one discharged square is second from the left , in the top row.

I used a stitch and wrap Shibori technique to get the piece ready for discharging, but the dense wrapping made discharging with a discharge paste unworkable, and I had to use bleach.  I don't like using bleach as it is so much more difficult to control.  The piece above turned out well, but, unfortunately the other two pieces I tried--didn't.  The bleach "wicked" into the surrounding fabric to the extent that the pieces were not usable.  But, oh my, how very pretty they are.

So pretty, that I have now done four more the same way and am waiting for them to dry, so I can see if there might be 5 usable  squares that would work into another piece entirely. Maybe a table runner??  I'll let you know how that works out in another post.

I plan to link this with Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Fridays, and The Needle and Thread Network.

Something new

Over the past little while, there have been ideas in my brain.  Not necessarily new ideas, but maybe a re-visit of older ideas.  Pleased to have ideas of my own, I've given myself permission to play a bit and explore those thoughts.

This is one of them.  I started quilting it with the idea that it might possibly be useful in the gallery show I'm exhibiting in come May.  But I soon realized that the necessary skill may not be in this, and I decided to just make it an exercise in FMQ'g.  But this gave me permission to play with it and explore options.  So that is what I'm doing.

I think it was a poor effort from the beginning. The discharging was too complex, and the first thread choice, in the quilting, that echoed the swirls of the discharging, was poor.  It would have been much better if I had done a lot more discharging, giving me extra fabric  for stitching samples, before I started on the piece. But I will persevere.  I may be able to salvage something out of it.