My sister is here to visit

Many of you know that I found my birth family last year, two members of which are a half brother and sister. My sister, an accomplished quilter (who knew!!!!) is here for three weeks and MAY be moving here permanently in the Spring. Meanwhile we are playing. The first thing we did was make cloth beads. After this, not pictured, we tied metallic threads and hand dyed cotton embroidery thread around the centers and added beads to the end of the ties.

Finally finishing tying threads around my beads

Give away

I have about a hundred of these English paper piecing templates. You can use a glue stick to glue your fabric around these shapes. After sewing the pieces together the templates just can be popped out. Any one interested??

This is the quilt my friend made for me. Isn't it beautiful?

This picture is before I did the binding. Judith's daughter did this all by hand.

If you are interested in making something this beautiful, the templates are yours - just leave a comment. Happy holidays!!

Beth

An old fish quilt

The quilt is old, not the fish. (attempt at humor). It is a Japanese fish print (gyotaku) where you paint the fish then use it as a stamp. This was a rubber fish. I made this about 10 years ago all done in free motion sketching with metallic threads. I like the fish but then what do you do with it??

I have made a quilted vessel and I will probably use it to house my long paint brushed. I'm going to use a large tomato can for rigidity.

next landscape

Here is another one from the TV. It is a frozen corn field I think in Nebraska.

Lots of hand stitching ahead and you know how bad I am at embroidery!!

Remember those papers?

I made these to use in a collage

Then I decided to collage a rock. I'd pick it up this past summer planning on collaging it then. However  the thought struck me to use these papers.

Stage one using matte medium letting it dry before the next layer.

I was planning on selling it at my art show and sale but decided to keep it. I really love it.

Thanks for reading,

Beth

New products (for me)

I saw these on a YouTube video and had never heard of them before: Gell Sticks. They are made by Kingart At first I wasn't very impressed maybe because I tried them on newspaper but later I went into my sketch book and they were actually pretty nice. Good coverage, highly pigmented and best of all they shed watercolors like oil pastels (my faves).

Second new landscape

Reference Photo 

from my TV

Transperse dye painted on copier paper 

Image ironed on 100% polyester (pellon) then painted the background

Parts of the landscape cut out.

Parts assembled 

Then stitched

Matted

Two landscapes hanging with lots of reflected sun.

Both of these sold. Now living in a doctors reception room.

Thanks for reading,

Beth

new landscape series

Remember the landscape mini from the last post?

I liked it so much I did some (very) rough sketches for new work. Then last night I was watching "The Heart Guy" from Australia and they flashed to this screen.

I whipped out my camera and took a photo of the TV. I love this landscape. It set me off in search of techniques to use to get what I wanted. I just received my copy of Textile Landscape by Cas Holmes and she mentioned disperse dyes and colographs. Then I started a full blown search and obtain mission looking for my disperse dyes which I think I used no less recently than 5 years ago and that is generous. After hours of searching I found them.  

The small containers are the dye powder and the larger bottles are dye I mixed up at least five years ago. Well, the only way to tell if they worked was to try them.

I wanted green so I mixed up some yellow and blue and painted a sheet with all black and a sheet with trees and the rest solid green.

They still worked. The painted paper can be used over and over again. I also want to make a colograph of a stand of tree similar to the ones in disperse dye. More about that later as well as how well I am able to use these in my work. 

Thanks for reading,

Beth

Play date with Marcella

I had made a bag from some indigo shibori from an extremely heavy canvas laundry sack. I had a bit of the dyed canvas left over and Marcella wanted to make a bag for herself. We left the raveled edge on the bottom and added a leather handle. Very robust.  

As I was cleaning up I found a bit of scrap canvas and wondered what I could make out of it. This was it!!

After I added a slim strip of leather folded over and glued to the pull.

As promised, here is an entire quilt made from mini-quilt squares.