First project secrets

I'm doing my first Secrets project. A booklet with all sorts of (secret) boxes. It has the theme  Egypt. Internals is now ready only the folder should I still make.

Red brick road

Another line quilt is finished!! If you follow my personal blog you have seen these pictures before :-). For this quilt I started with 126 black strips and 9 red strips. The black is a commercial fabric, the red a hand dyed one. They will be stitched on white raw silk.

Fabric for the back is this red one. No idea why I ever bought this, because the shiny top makes it very difficult to use in any project. That is the reason that I used the reverse side (at the right) as it looks much more decent.

The top turned out rather big, so instead of using my domestic Janome I used my HQ16 for the stitching. The strips were fused to the silk. I did not keep track of the time, but I spend a lot of hours working on it.

Recently I discovered a way of finishing the edges while not using a binding. This technique requires a bit more planning in advance, but it works out nicely. Important is that the quilting does not go over the planned dimensions! When all the quilting is finished, I placed the quilt like this on my working tables and used a black marker to draw the size on the fabric. The size is roughly 28"x48". Next step is to carefully cut away the back fabric and the batting.

 

The white fabric which is sticking out is then folding as a seam to the back of the quilt and stitched. And this is how the end result looks like:

Inspiration for the title came from Dorothy's Yellow brick road. This 2nd lines quilt is completely different from the first one and the idea for a 3rd - again different - one is brewing :-)).

New Year's Eve

As I am spending time in my studio this New Year's Eve, I thought I would take a short break and stop by to wish you all HAPPY  NEW  YEAR!!!

Don't know about you but I'm so excited to begin all the projects I have planned for this year.  Oh and guess what!!  The people who bought my parent's place in TX sent me real pecans from my dad's HUGE pecan tree! I do know one project that I will be using them for and will probably eat a good portion of them!

Looking forward to tomorrow morning with just my husband and myself.  Our tradition is to watch the Rose Parade on HGTV, eat Cinnabons, drink mimosas and just chill for the morning.  It will be quiet.  My favorite way to start a new year.

No resolutions as yet. Not planning on any really......

I pray all of us have a wonderful, creative, productive and profitable 2013!!!!!

Themes 2013

By now most of us have decided upon the theme they will work with during the coming year. Joss and Renée, please let me know which theme you choose.

Pecans - the series

For the challenge this year, I decided to do a series on Pecans.  This fall my dad died. He was a wonderful man and a great loving dad. And one of his passions was pecans.  They had a HUGE very old pecan tree in front of their house and he even planted a pecan orchard.  He subscribed to magazines for pecan growers.  Oh and he enjoyed eating them as well!!  (something we had in common!!) So, I decided to do this series in honor of my dad.

So far the series will depict the  different stages of the pecan.  1) sapling, 2) a grown tree, 3) mature pecans on the tree limb, 4) pecans on the ground at the base of the tree - ready to harvest 5) a barren tree after all the pecans and leaves are gone 6) pecans harvested and halved, etc and 7) the piece honoring my dad - it will have his photo in B/W transferred to silk organza, pecans, perhaps other photos, and my mom's pecan pie recipe.

Well....I have done a bit on this series already.  Ordered screen prints, cut out templates, etc.  But dyeing the fabrics felt like the project is actually underway.  After a couple of days of dyeing....here are the basic fabrics I will be using in all of the pieces in this series (6 or 7 planned)

They are all dyed in a 6 step gradation.  Here is one of the brown all set up to batch.

And here are the completed dyed fabrics --

Browns (yes I know some of them don't look brown but they are named "brown" something) -  From left to right...Tobacco, Cocoa, Golden Brown and Dark Chocolate Brown

Greens - Left to Right...Emerald, Dark Green and Forest Green

And Blues - Left to Right... Well actually they are so close it is difficult to tell the difference even in person! But I used Cerulean and Intense Blue.  I took these down a couple of gradations because I wanted some light blue sky with "clouds".  I'm very happy with the results.

Ordinarily this would be the end of dyeing...however after just completing the snow dyeing for another challenge...I HAVE to do some pieces for this series!! Hopefully I'll get to that tomorrow if not starting some today.  

Best Laid Plans....

Yep...a few things changed the end of this past week.  Found out that a size requirement in another group changed to smaller than I had anticipated.  Was going to do the Pecans series for that one.  However, since Pecans is all about my dad and his pecan passion, I was not ready to relegate it to a smaller size.  It deserves   to be larger.  So.....I'm moving that series to here...where I'm FREE to make them the size I prefer!

With that plan in mind...I got out my dyes and cut up several yards of fabric which is now soaking in soda ash solution in preparation for dyeing.

I have to say, I'm really much happier having Pecans in this group.  It is very special to me and I want to do it MY way.  Now I can!

I'll be moving the Manhole Covers project over to my SAQA visioning project goals for 2013.

No photos today guys.  But next week I will have my fabric dyed for Pecans and will post that!

Hope you are all having a safe and wonderful December!!

Lines

 

When I was thinking about my theme for the coming year, I had several ideas. I am not mentioning these in sequence of preference! As I am a member of Voyage as well for which I picked trees as theme, I did not want to duplicate this theme. Well at least not for the whole year <grin>. Another idea I had was Earth Goddess, but my drawing skills are limited so I am afraid that the focus would shift to the backgrounds if I pick this one. The theme I decided upon is Lines. This might sound boring, but here are some pictures I googled with the word lines:



As you see there are so many ways in which you can use lines. And these pictures show only a few examples :-) I wonder how many pieces I could make with this theme before I get bored??

2013 Themes

 We all will work with a specific theme for the year 2013. Please let me know when you have decided on your theme and I will add it to the side bar.