Trees.......thread and real

Here are a couple more photos of the tree I have been working on as a thread painting lesson. (see my last post)
I used only 3 colours of thread.

and this is a piece of tree I picked up while walking through a park the other day. The tree is dead and has been stripped in preparation for carving.
Check out the texture ( This is what it looks like under the bark, I think it might have been caused by the Emerald Ash Borer, which has destroyed many trees) I have some ideas for this piece of wood

Following a lesson plan

A little while back The Quilt Show had several video lessons by Nancy Prince on thread painting. The first project was called Solitary Tree and I decided to follow along. There was a downloadable file of a tree that could be printed, but I wanted to use my own drawing for this.
I started with a very cool piece of fabric for the background and hand appliqued this circle to represent the moon.Next, the tree was drawn using a Sharpie marker onto some water soluble film
It was backed with stabilizer, then put into a hoop
and following the directions.........the free motion stitching has begun.

More to come

How Unfortunate........

As many of you know I had the distinction of designing the logo for the CQA mini conference, Quilt Ontario, that was held here at the end of May. That logo appeared on bookmarks, posters, in the CQA newsletter, brochures and even on tote bags, and each time the logo was just as it had been designed. Of course, the conference is over, the paper is probably in the shredder or recycling bin, and the bags will likely end up in a drawer somewhere.
The one thing that will be around for a long time are the pins that were made, attendees purchase these pins, many collect them at conferences year after year.
How unfortunate that someone at the company producing the pins decided to "change" the artwork. Now I am fully aware that when reproducing artwork on a pin that is roughly 3/4" across, it may not have the same level of detail.......BUT.......I certainly did not expect to see this.

Here is the way the artwork has appeared on everything.....except the pin

here is the pin.

an employee at the company decided that the roots and branches should be black...........uh......that is not how it was designed and not how it was supposed to look.

Apparently this employee felt that he(or she) were "improving" the design.
How unfortunate.

Edit: It was and is not my intention to make an issue of this. I just found it curious that the artwork was reproduced unchanged on a great many items..........what circumstances led to the pin being different, I don't know. The company responsible did acknowledge the error and has made an effort to compensate for it. I guess the lesson is that it is always a good idea to be sure you can get approval when having work like this done to avoid surprises.

Because you know I am wierd......... right?

I told you I would show how I my that little kilt.........if you want to know why I made it, well, I guess its just because........just because I am weird.
When I saw the theme for this year's Wee Quilt Challenge was DYI Plaid, I had lots of ideas for making some interesting and complicated plaids.......but for some unexplained reason, I really wanted to see if I could make this tiny little kilt. Don't forget this pieced is quilted, which means I was going to have to see if I could actually pleat something 3 layers thick.
I started "designing" my plaid by drawing some simple lines on paper and adding colour until I had something I liked. Then I drew that same grid pattern directly onto some plain white cotton using a Sharpie marker.
Because I did not want to have to worry about a hem, I first folded the fabric in half so that the fold would become the hem of the kilt and drew the lines on both sides. (so if you look under the kilt..........you will see the plaid is the same inside and out)
I played and manipulated the fabric, used lots of pins to be certain the piece was large enough to handle all of the pleating that would soon happenThen it needed to be coloured. I used blue, green, orange and navy colour pencils to fill in all of the squares and lines, being very mindful of the placement of each colour. Once it was all coloured, I brushed a thin layer of textile medium over the entire piece (front and back)
I cut bits away........some to be used for the waistband and some to make the side fringe. I used a lightwieght interfacing as my "batting" layer. Straight line machine quilting added the final lines of the plaid.
Normally it would be quite difficult to pleat something that is 3 layers, but I think the added stiffness from the textile medium actually helped with this, of course, so did lots of pins, a little starch and a good hot steam iron! I tried to make this piece to as functional as it could possibly be.........in other words it could actually be worn (by a very tiny person) The finished "Kuilt" is just 10"high.
Here you can see what the piece looks like when it is fully open. There are teeny darts, a little buttonhole to allow for the buckles to pass through, it even has a designer label and is finished with a very small kilt pin.The belt loops on the back are really just for the hanging rod so that it could be displayed on the wall.