Trends

I often wonder who decides what is "in" or "out", whether  in fashion, home decor or even house plants. Who decided a few years ago that everything would be some shade of gray, from baby clothes, to wall paint to furniture? Remember avocado green and harvest gold in the 60's? I also remember house plants from that era. Everyone had an asparagus fern and/or spider plant.

Now the new darling of the house plant world is the Fiddle Leaf Fig. I do like to watch make-over shows on HGT. Mindless TV, good for hand stitching by. It seemed like every makeover had one or more of those trees. I had read somewhere that they were temperamental and also pricey, but when I saw one in Costco for a fabulous price, I thought it was worth a try. I had just the spot for it in my family room and it looks great there. I've had it for a few weeks now and it seems to be thriving. The tag said it likes to be moist so I regularly check it to make sure it's not dry.

I have since put some moss down  to cover the plastic pot in which it came.

Yesterday I found this dead leaf and thought it was fascinating. It is very stiff and leathery and has such interesting mottling. I can't bear to throw it away, but Im not sure how I can incorporate it into an art piece.  It's about 11 inches long.

I have a friend in Florida who makes terrific wall art out of discarded plant material she finds on green trash day. She uses palm fronds, husks, etc. I'm sure she would know what to do with this. But for now I'm hanging on to it and see if I get anymore. But not too many because that would mean the plant is not doing well.

SAQA Auction Piece and a Collage

I contribute a piece every year to the annual SAQA Benefit Auction, but I didn't think I was going to make it this year due to various things going on in my life and not feeling inspired to make anything new. I was only sewing masks, lots of masks. Then I started going through my small pieces and came across one that was about 15" x 22". The auction pieces have to be 12" square. I had made this piece for a solo show a few years ago and thought it would cut down perfectly. I made a 12" mat and slid it around until I found a section I liked.

This was part of a fine line piecing series of small quilts and this one is Fractured VII.

These will be prfessionaly photographed, thank goodness. No matter how hard I try, I either get an out-of-square picture or one with uneven lighting, like this one. But you get the idea. The original piece was faced and I laboriously picked off that facing because I had no more of this red fabric. Somehow I didn't have enough to face this one, so I decided to bind it. I also didn't have enough to do a French binding and I just did a single layer and I am so glad that I did. I don't think I will ever do a French binding on a small quilt again. Not more clunky corners and a nice tidy binding.

I love this backing fabric and much more of it showed on the original piece, but with the smaller size and the sleeve ((also cut down from the bigger piece) and the label, much of it is lost.

The auction isn't until Sept. but you can go here and read all about the auction, how it works, and see some of the pieces that are already on display. There are some fabulous pieces there.


Our monthly college challenge for my FiberWorks groups was Insects. I chose to do dragonfly.

I used a multiple of resources for this one. On the far right is a page cut from an encyclopedia page. Yes I still have  a set of  Encyclopedia Britannica in the basement purchased when my son was little. I was throwing them away, one by one for a while and then forgot about it. Luckily I still had the one with Dragonfly. The others were photographed from two unabridged dictionaries that I couldn't bear to cut up. The large colored dragonfly was printed onto tracing paper. The teal and white are embossed velvet made with a dragonfly stamp that I already had. The background between the printed sections we're stamped with a stamp that had printing that were not really words, but looked like words from a distance. I stamped it in gray. I am pleased with the results and consider this a true mixed media collage. It was done on a 9 x 12 canvas board. I don't remember next month's word, but I would like to do a series like this.

I will be linking up with Off the Wall Friday.

More Masks

I know, I know, I said I was through making masks. But since we are all going to be wearing masks for the foreseeable future, some of the organizations that we have donated masks to before have asked for masks with no ties. I really liked the Olsen masks that I made, but they did have ties, and while they were a very good fit for me, they were a bit of a hassle to put on. I did it in front of a mirror. I tried to adapt the pattern to one with elastic loops and it was very unsuccessful.

My niece had found a pattern on line that she liked and I tried it. It is so much easier to make, much less sewing and it has adjustable elastic ear loops. Here is the link. It has no center front seam, but instead uses darts to shape the face. It actually gives you rather pointy nose, but I found it was easier to breathe thru without the fabric right against your nose.

So I hauled out that stack of batiks and tried one this morning.

You thread the elastic through craft beads to make it very adjustable .

I have a lot of washed light blue and cream colored flannel and that is what I will use for all the linings. It does have a pipe cleaner in the top to make it easy to shape to your face.

I really like  to sew, yet can't seem to find the enthusiasm to make a new art quilt or even a charity quilt, so this will keep me busy for a few days. I just got new kitchen chairs and I want to make boxed seat cushions with piping. I ordered fabric online and it came yesterday, but I will put that off for a while.

I'm linking up with Off the Wall Friday.