Orange . . .

. . .  my new best color; officially starting - today.

-sooooexciting-

melissa's quilt times 2

Last year, together with Sharon and Sue, we made this for our friend Melissa. Since then, Sue has developed patterns and tools for making Melissa's Quilt and other designs. 

Sue travels to quilt shows and guilds demonstrating her methods and techniques.  She recently finished a duplicate of Melissa's Quilt for her trunk shows and I quilted it for her.

The above picture is the original when it hung in our Thimble Pleasures 2010 quilt show and below is the duplicate.  yikes, that is blurry.

Sue will be vending at the World Quilt Show-New England this week.  If you are attending the show, I hope you plan to visit Sue in her booth.

- - - - - -

I'm sure many of you can appreciate the quilt below.

I made it about 10 years (?) ago when I started quilting.  Strangely, my husband and maybe yours could be any one of those guys. . . although, mine doesn't wear plaid pants (yet).

enjoy!

[pattern:  Male Bonding by Jukebox]

sketchbook fun. . .

A few thread sketches to add to my sketchbook for the Sketchbook Project.

I came up with a better solution to the wash out stabilizer.

I layered lightweight, tear-away stabilizer and a piece of Misty Fuse together. On the top, I layered the  fabric.

Before pressing the fabric to the stabilizer I finished the thread sketch and let the air erase marker disappear. 

When pressed together the stabilzer gave the fabric a great weight that will hold up to being stuck on the page and flipped through.

On darker fabrics I will use the BOHIN chalk pencil, which is my favorite white chalk pencil. 

(if you don't have one, you need one)

You can see the air erase marker on the pencil sharpener sketch.  I could wet it, but I'd rather not.  Eventually, it disappears.

So far, the thread sketches I'm putting in the sketchbook are taken right from my sketchbook. 

Although, it would be easier to just stitch out a sketch I like that I'm using my actual little sketches.  In some cases I will have to resize them, but that's okay.

It's fun picking which sketch to do next. . .

. . . will it be the Evening Grossbeak?

(he looks more like a hawk doesn't he?)

. . .the wren who set up home in the birdhouse I used for my first one?

. . . the laundry basket?

. . . or Terrance? who is right outside as I type.

thanks for posing, Terrance

The great thing about this project is you don't have to be an artist to play along.  And the end result, is this great little book that you've made!

Now, go get your pencils, markers, crayons, paints or whatever and get sketching.

It's fun!

the geese are flying. . .

. . .well, not quite yet.

And I'm not one to rush summer. Ever. 

But this quilt surely makes me think of fall.

(I lowered the lights a little for the picture, the dark cream colored fabric is more of a creamy white)

It's my friend LindaB's and she has been making some really great quilts, lately.

This one she will be gifting soon.

It's for a guy.

What a special gift and on the back she used this rich, chocolate brown flannel.

It's the best brown colored fabric I've seen.

Some might call it delicious.

The whole while I worked on it and advanced the quilt on the rollers -  

                                                 I couldn't help but think of this. . .

Cheers!

Happy Quilting!

the man clutch . . .

. . . so the 'ole man turned 51 yesterday. And I do say that endearlingly as I'm not far behind on the mark.

I custom made him a man clutch for his new iPad.

I fused a piece of black wool felt to a scrap of muslin and used all sorts of paints to add color to the felt.

I used foil, Angelina fibers, embossing powder and layered black Misty Fuse over the top.

The buckle is a vintage buckle upcycled from a bag of buckles I picked up at a consignment shop, dirt cheap.

(see honey? i do use that junk I bring in)

The iPad fits in nicely.

Below, is the back of the clutch and you don't see the gold blobs on the fabric. The gold blobs are covering a mistake.  I accidently grabbed a piece of tracing paper instead of parchment when I went to press over the flap... I had made this mistake before so I knew immediately what I had done. 

Misty Fuse fuses to tracing paper and releases from parchment.

Below you can see how the tracing paper looked when I pealed it off.

  I was almost finished and didn't want to have to start over by making more fabric. . .

. . . so I put some of this gold leaf stuff over the areas where I couldn't pick off the fused tracing paper and then added some more embossing powder.

I didn't have enough black Misty Fuse to do the back so that is the original fabric.

A one of a kind - man clutch.

waiting for paint to dry . . .

It's been so humid here in New England; the gesso and paint I'm using in my sketchbook does not want to dry.  I put scraps of parchament paper between the pages so the pages don't stick to one another.

And I wait.

My book is part of the Sketchbook Project. 

Click the link and you can find out the details if you haven't heard about it. 

It's been fun watching artists get started with their book, so I thought I'd show you a little about mine. 

I went through the book and glued the pages together two by two.  I have 20 pages to work with now.  A few may end up having to be removed if the book gets too fat. 

I painted each page, front and back with gesso.  Then added a different water color to each facing page and gessoed over that.  You can see why my book is taking so long to dry.

I've never done this type of work before -  I'm kind of making it up as I go. 

Below you can see one of the painted pages.  The pages are pretty sturdy now and once they are completely dry I think I can put a weight on the book to get the crinkles out.

This gives you a clue about how I will turn my book into a 'sketchbook'. 

Right now I'm using a water soluable stabilizer... 

I think I've heard of an iron out or steam out stabilizer...  Has anyone ever heard of this or used it? 

It might be a better option for this project.