And the Winner is..........

KIM! I used a random number generator and your number came up. Congrats to you and thank you to everyone for their wonderful comments.

This card will be on it's way to you shortly

A Little Behind

Have you been wondering where my responses to The Creative Prompt Project have gotten to? I am just a little behind ........well, a lot actually, but I will try to get caught up. It may require being very "creative" so for word # 81 "Middle" I think this photo says it all.
Prompt words, #s 82, 83, & 84 are Curve, Compass, and Crimson. I have combined all 3 with this doodle. A Compass is a great tool to draw a perfect Curve and this one has a piece of Crimson lead!
I will be posting the winner of the postcard tomorrow morning, so if you have not yet entered, there is still time, just be sure to leave a comment in my Sept 16th post below.

Playing and Sharing........(maybe with you)

A couple of weeks ago I got to spend a few days with a fibre-artist and long time friend. Not only did we have a wonderful time catching up but we also got in a little "play time"
Sometimes this is when some terrific spontaneous designs can happen. We were testing out a number of different supplies, when I quickly drew a feather that I could paint to see if there would be much "bleeding" across the lines. Once I got it home, I realized that I really quite liked it, I added a little doodling and turned it into this postcard.I decided to make a couple more based on that same design
This one is using some tiny scraps left over from a previous painted fabric project, the little circles were coloured using Sharpie markers.This one was done using a marbled fabric, the colour placement was not planned, I drew the individual feathers onto the paper side of fusible and simply pressed it to the marbled fabric and then cut out the feathers, sharpie markers were again used for colouring the circles.
Here comes the "sharing" part of this post...........would you like to have this postcard? I am afraid the first 2 are spoken for, but this third one will go to one of my blog readers. To have a chance to find this card in your mailbox, just leave me a comment. Are you a regular visitor or have you just recently come across this blog? I know that there are lots of you who visit often but don't always leave a comment and that's okay, but if you want a chance to win this card you'll have to let me hear from you. Remember to be sure I have a way to contact you. I'll announce the winner next Thursday, Sept 23rd so you have lots of time.

This n' That

I attended a couple of Antique shows in the area this weekend and came away with this pretty little machine along with it's original box and clamp all in excellent condition.
I also scored this beautifully carved wooden box. It is from Wheeler & Wilson sewing machines.
The fall issues of The Canadian Quilter and A Needle Pulling Thread magazines, both have wonderful layouts showing the winning quilts from this year's Grand National. It is always exciting to see one's work on the pages of one of these slick publications. You can learn more about The Grand National quilt show hereAnd finally, here is a little peak at what I am doing with those black and white prints I painted a little while ago. More on this later

Pointing the way to a fun Tutorial.

I notice as I work my way through blog land that there are always some terrific tutorials out there, but who has time to actually make all these wonderful things? Well, here is one I came across that just seemed so quick and easy that I had to give it a go.
Cynthia at Idle Hands Empty Brain walks us through a super simple and fun to make thimble holder (or any little treasure really)

Go on over and check it out. I made mine to hold my thimbles, I added a small lobster claw so that I could attach it to my needle book. Made a couple extra for friends.
Mind you, I only went green as far as using the plastic lids, I must confess that I machine sewed what could be done by machine and of course did the rest by hand. You can have lots of fun adding nifty little beads and trinkets too, maybe you have a favourite earring that has lost it's twin or other broken bits of costume jewelery, just one more way to recycle and re-use

I think these could easily be made in several sizes and have quite a number of possible uses.

Don't toss that out!!!!

A little recycling finishes the Row Robin quilt. A short time ago, a friend called me to say that while helping her daughter move they had discovered this huge roll of Thinsulate Insulation hidden away and forgotten up in the attic (you know the stuff that goes into coats, gloves, and so on) She could not take it and her daughter did not want it........If I had no use for it .....well it would be heading to the landfill. So this baby is living at my house.
I knew it would be great for free motion quilting practice and maybe some small pieces but what about an actual quilt? I decided the Row Robin quilt was a good one to "test" this stuff on.
It has been machine quilted on my domestic machine and been through the washer and dryer. It came out great, you would never know that this is not expensive batting. It kept it's shape, no stretching, no bearding, no distortion and it is uniform in thickness. In case this experiment did not have a happy ending I did not want to waste expensive fabric on the backing so I purchased a 100% cotton sheet at the thrift store for that purpose.
Something else I had wanted to try, was using a water soluble thread trick, you see, normally I spend a good long time thread basting by hand my quilts to prepare them for the free motion work, mainly because I hate using pins. But not this time! I pin basted the sandwich and then with regular thread in the bobbin and the wash away stuff in the needle I stitched in the ditch (sort of) to anchor the whole sandwich together then removed the pins, now I was ready to do the FMQAfter the quilting was complete I took an artist paint brush, dipped in water and ran it down the water soluble thread stitching lines. The basting thread on the quilt front dissolved which made the thread on the back simply release completely. TOO easy!!! Here is a close up look at how this was quilted.

Still Playing with Paint.

No brushes this time though. I decided to do a little over-dyeing (but with paint of course). Pulled some pieces from my pile of black and whites. Mixed up several different colours and made sure the paint was evenly distributed through each piece, (used that technical technique of sopping up the paint and squishing it a few times) the pieces were left to dry and then heat set. These are for a small project I want to start soon.

Painting Workshop on DVD

Recently, I purchased the DVD "Painting Fabric for Wholecloth Quilts" taught by artist and instructor Judy Coates Perez. Her work is completely amazing so when it arrived in the mail I could not wait to give it a try.
I have been playing with textile paints for a little while and really enjoy the process, but thought it was time for a lesson.
Along with the instructional video, you also receive a download of an image that can be used in this project. Once I had the outlines traced, I painted in the background.Next, I worked on the foliage, flowers and little flying creatures.
Here is the finished piece. (These photos were taken under different light conditions. The finished piece is most close to the true colours.)

I choose to work with different colours than what was on the sample. I thought I might learn more by not simply copying Judy's work exactly. The piece you see here measures a mere 7.5" square. I definitely want to attempt this on a larger scale.
Earlier this summer I took an on-line colour theory workshop offered by Judy and was delighted to find that I was able to apply what I learned from that in completing this exercise.

This was just so much fun! I may leave this one alone and do another that I will quilt.

Am I Going to Go ........Straight to Hell????

Quilter's Hell? I am not sure if I have committed a horrible offense. Here is what I have done.
This past January our guild decided to have a "row robin". I have never participated in such an endeavour before but here is what we did. We broke into several groups of 5, we were each to create a row to pass about the group. You could also include instructions, likes and dislikes, scraps, and so on. I simply said that I really would like a "scrappy" look, do not care much for blues, and provided some "background" fabric so no matter what, the finished piece would be cohesive. (my row is far right)
Each month, each of us would then add a row to one group member's quilt and pass it on to the next. At the end we got our own row back along with 4 others that we could then turn into a quilt.
Above, are the rows I received. I arranged and rearranged but could not quite make it work.
There were a few problems.........the most challenging being that none of the rows were the same length and some seam allowance issues.
What was my solution?..........What was my offense? Well, in an attempt to get a more pleasing balance, I took two of the rows and CUT them right down the middle. Gasp!!!! Yup I actually did that. Took another quilter's work and sliced it in half. I also added a number of strategically placed diamonds...........shhhhhhhh!
Here is the "flimsy" ready to back and batt...........my plan is to finish it with a colourful scrappy binding.....I sure hope my row robin teammates will still be speaking to me when they see it.

How to Paint your own Gradated Fabrics......The Basics

In case you thought it was a difficult process and that I was kidding when I say it's simple to do, I thought I'd just take you through it step by step.
First of all, don't worry if you don't have the same sophisticated equipment I use......I am sure you have something that will work.
You will need to round up a container to actually mix the paint in ( here I used the "lid" from a store bought cake ) but any plastic container that gives you lots of room to splash will work, gather up some paper towels, an old raggedy towel to protect your work surface, some rubber gloves, a container of water, something to measure with (I used one of those little cups that come with cough medicine), a sheet of plastic ( I used a clear leaf bag cut open), stir sticks or Popsicle sticks to scoop out the paint from your measuring cup(don't want to waste a drop), coarse salt ( optional) and of course some white pre-washed cotton fabric.
Okay, so after you have eaten the cake and Popsicles you are ready to begin.
This time, I actually measured everything (I normally just eyeball it)
For this session my fabric pieces are essentially fat eights, each measuring 9 x 22 inches but of course once you get the hang of it, you can easily increase the amount of paint/water mixture to accommodate larger pieces of fabric.I measured 12.5 ml ( 1 Tablespoon) of pure paint and into the bowl it went followed by 7.5ml of water. Swirl it around to mix it all up and throw in your first piece of fabric. This will be your darkest most saturated piece. Sop up the paint mixture and squeeze out the excess ( back into the bowl of course) do this a few times to be sure you have good colour throughout your fabric. Again, be sure to really squeeze out the excess, you don't want to waste anything and you won't want to wait forever for your fabric to dry. Now take this piece and lay it out flat on your plastic sheet. ( I lay my plastic on a piece of Styrofoam so it is easy to pick up and move should I need to)
You are now ready to create the next shade, add another 7.5ml of water ( or just a wee bit less) to your paint mixture, swirl it around to mix well and toss in your next piece of fabric. Repeat as before, sopping up paint and squeezing out the excess.

Just keep repeating this same process with each consecutive piece of fabric, adding that extra water each time to continue to dilute the mixture. See how my last bit of paint looked......very weak but just right for my lightest shade.Once you have laid all of your pieces of painted fabric out to dry, you can decide if you want add some salt. Sprinkling a bit of coarse salt (pickling salt) onto your damp fabric will cause some interesting effects. The salt will "draw" the paint and move it about, a little goes a long way.......and you never really know what you will end up with or you can just leave it be as a "solid" and skip the salt altogether.
That's it, just clean up your little mess ( I rinse everything thoroughly with warm water in the laundry sink and re-use it time after time)
Okay, now you have to wait for the fabric to dry so you might as well go see if there is any of that cake left.
Once your fabrics are dry, you will need to "Heat Set" them to make them permanent. Simply press for a few minutes with a hot iron. ( if you used the salt, you may need to scrape/pick off the dried crystal that remain before heat setting")
Sometimes, ( okay, most times) I get a little carried away with the salt and will need to rinse my fabric after heat setting to get all of the salt completely out.
Here is the result of this paint session that created these gradated oranges.