New Work

I know, I know, I haven't blogged in two weeks, but I did finish a couple of things. You may remember this small piece that I made from a close-up photo of my Escargot Begonia. It was made for the prompt for that month, Curve.

We have to choose one of our small pieces to enlarge into a bigger piece that will be mounted on a black 30" x 30" canvas for our exhibit in September. I sent the photo to Spoonflower and had it printed at 24" square.

I was very pleased with the true color that they achieved. I had altered the photo in Photoshop Elements with a  Posterize filter. I free-motion machine quilted it following the blocks of color and changing thread colors as I went.

Detail

Last month's word was Radiant and I chose this picture of a Hibiscus flower taken at my friend's home in Florida. The colors were amazing.

Again, I put the Posterize filter on it. The colors really were this intense.

My interpretation on a 4" x 6" piece. I enjoyed doing the  hand embroidery on this little piece, even though it took a long time. I decided that I want to made this one larger, too, and Spoonflower is printing it 26" square, so that I don't have to chop off the top and bottom as I had to do here. I'm hoping that the colors will be as dynamic as they are in the photo.

I am behind on my month's words and have to make it up and do two this month, Rain and Reflection. I am using my own photos for all of them, but I may have to cheat a bit with rain. Don't think I took any rainy day pictures, but I will look.

I am linking up with Off the Wall Friday.

Alleluia

I finished up the quilting on my stained glass window. Now all I have to do is bind it. It will have a very narrow black border, narrower than you see here.

When this was hanging on my design wall with the lights on you could see all the quilting lines and it looked terrific, but to take a picture with the lights on you get a spotlight affect. 

Here you can see some of the quilting. I mixed up the designs as I went along, just having fun. I changed the thread colors, top and bobbin for all the colors, even the two shades of gray. I did this on my Bernina because of all the thread changes. That would have been a pain in the neck on my Sweet sixteen. Also the size, 18" x 36" was very manageable on the Bernina. 

I will be linking up with Off the Wall Friday.

My Lady

I purchased this lady head planter a few years ago and she resides on my front porch for the warm months. I always try to plant something that resembles hair. For a couple of years I did Creeping Jenny and that grew so rapidly that I had to give her periodic haircuts. But for the past couple of years I have used succulents. They don't need as much watering and stay nice and neat.

The succulents that I chose this year were different than last year.

I'm not crazy about the tall plant in the back. I have already cut it back, but it's not doing what I wanted it to do and I may replace it.

But I LOVE this succulent and the way it is hugging her head as it grows and cascades down. Succulents are not known for their flowers and rarely have them. When I purchased this plant back in May it had one teeny, tiny red flower and I thought it was a one time thing. But it keeps getting more. They close up at night and open during they day. So charming!

I also try to have one big plant on the right side of her head that looks a bit like a fascinator, those small hats that some Brits wear to weddings, when they are not sporting huge hats.

The flowers are growing like crazy in my gardens and containers. We had a cool rainy Spring and beginning of Summer, but now it is glorious, hot and sunny most days.

Thinking inside the Box

I showed you my Box City a while back. It was made for my FiberWorks group where we were to make a display using little boxes in any way we wanted. It started out to be just matchboxes, but evolved into using any kind of small boxes. The variety was amazing.

We finally found a venue for our boxes at a charming bakery in Oxford C, The Oxford Baking Co., that has a gallery in their upstairs space and we hung the show this past Sunday.

Jessica Tell sent images to Spoon Flower and had them printed onto fabric, which she quilted and combined with interesting papers.

Chris Wilkinson used Home as her theme, since she was moving into a new home.

This is my Box City with wire armatures wrapped in different variegated yarns. I had so much fun finding different ways to pose my people going about their day

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Susie Lehman used games as her theme. All of the game pieces came from her home.

 Nike Cutsumpas put her famous black and white doodles in the boxes and then put them all in this shadow box, (boxes in a box). It was hard to photograph because of the glass. You can see my image reflected.

Barbara Drillick used a variety of objects sewn into her boxes in her usual meticulous style and lined with colored papers.

Ruth Savasta used travel as her theme and made each of her boxes into a shadow box with a photo travel destinations.

Beth Johnson used jewelry boxes gifted to her by her husband over the years. She combined these with some interesting painting techniques.

Paula West's them was Rock, Paper, Scissors as her theme. A lot to look at here.

Be sure to click on the pictures to get a bigger view and see the amazing details.

I will be linking up with Off the Wall Friday.