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.

New Work

I told you I was sewing, I really was, but just not as much as I used to do. The church that I go to in Florida is very modern and had very contemporary stained glass windows.....no saints or scenes just shards of color set in pale grey glass. Every time I went there I would think to myself that it had to be a quilt. So a took a couple of pictures, not to copy, but for inspiration. My original thought was to use my hand-dyed fabrics, but decided instead to use Dupioni silk, another favorite of mine.

I wasn't sure how big I wanted to make it, but when one of the fiber groups I belong to issued a challenge for an upcoming show I knew the size. The pieces have to be exactly 18" wide by 36" long, a very doable size. The piece is also supposed to be indicative of our style and this one certainly is. I like to do improvizational piecing and this was no exception. I just start with one piece of fabric and keep adding as I go, adding more pieces and inserting those skinny black strips

And here it is. Not quite sure how I am going to quilt it.

I really tried to make it about two inches longer and wider than it needed to be, knowing that it would shrink with squaring up and quilting. But it ended up 19 "x 36 1/2," so I added the black border. I'm hoping I can cut most of it away after quilting and just bind it in black.

I also did a few cards marrying fabric with stamping. I still had my Dupioni silks out so I added a strip along the bottom of the card, first fusing, then doing a machine buttonhole stitch all around. The bottom flower and the sentiment are popped up with dimensionals.

I will be linking up with Off the Wall Friday.

Little Boxes

I am still having fun with my paper crafting. I've made a lot of cards and am sending them to anyone for any reason. It's your birthday, you're not feeling well, you've had a loss in your family, you did something nice for me.....you get a handmade card in the mail. Everyone who gets them seems to appreciate them.

I also thought it would make a nice little hostess gift, a set of thank you notecards tied with a pretty ribbon. But them I thought how much nicer they would be in a handmade box or folder to match. Thanks to Pinterest, I found some great tutorials and this is what I made so far.

The lid on this one closes with hidden magnets. I had bought a pad of gold foil card stock and thought it would be good for this. The base of the holder is navy card stock. It holds 6 notecards and envelopes. The ribbon is just decorative.

Pretty inside, too.

The same box in different colors and more gold foil papers.

This little box also holds 6 note cards with envelopes, but it closes with a paper band that you slide down to open. I matched the colors and stamping to the cards inside.

This last one looks like a little book and holds 6 full size greeting cards. I had purchased a packet of very cheap inexpensive printed papers eons ago and then they sat there for years. Lucky me, they work very well as a decorative layer on the card stock.

It ties closed with a satin ribbon.

And, yes, I am also sewing. I am making progress on my stained glass window quilt made of Dupioni silk. Today is another rainy, gloomy day here in the northeast, and hopefully I will get a lot of sewing done. You will see it when I finish the piecing.

I am linking up with Off the Wall Friday.

Simple Pleasures

I do love my flowers and plant a lot of them each summer. I'm always amazed by the way they hybridize such fantastic color combinations in petunias. I used to get lured in by the pretty colors but then watch them get leggy and straggly, as least they did for me, no matter how much pinching back I did.

But, ah, these little Million Bells, miniature petunias are self cleaning (meaning no dead heading) that bush out and grow to make incredible displays. I have planted these in my railing planters on the deck. The flowers are only about an inch across, but look at those color combinations!

This next plant was found at the back of the succulent greenhouse (although it is not a succulent) at one of my favorite nurseries. There were only five or six of them and I was completely smitten. The label said that it is a house plant for a sunny window. It has about doubled its size in the two weeks since I bought it.

The flowers look like little purses made of velvet. When a flower has had its day, it just falls off intact, not at all wilted. The name on the card said it is a Calynopsis. A new one to me.

Happy gardening!

May Challenge

The word for this month was Motion. Again I struggled to think up something that I could use from my photos. I went to Google Images to get some ideas and there were a lot of pictures of vehicles in motion and then I remembered the incredible traffic in Viet Nam and Cambodia on my trip there a couple of years ago. I did take a lot of pictures and was particularly smitten by this one of a woman pushing her bicycle laden with fruits and flowers.

As always, I put a Posterize filter on it in Photoshop Elements and printed it on white cotton fabric. 

I outlined the woman, her bicycle and her load with single strands of embroidery floss.

I will be linking up with Off the Wall Friday.http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/2019/05/off-wall-friday.html

Monthly Challenge

I forgot to show you last month's word challenge which was layers. I struggled at first to find a picture of my own, as I am going to do for each word. Then I remembered my trip to Arizona, particularly Sedona, which had all those beautiful sedimentary rock formations.  I had taken a lot of photos and chose this one for showing off the layers so well.

I put the Posterize filter on it in Photoshop Elements then printed it on fabric and hand embroidered it to emphasize the layers. I mostly used a back stitch for the layers and French Knots for the shrubs on top. I used two strands of embroidery floss and after seeing this photo I think it would have been better if I used just one strand, as I am doing in the piece I am working on now. This is 4" x 6", as are all my other word challenges. I will show you my next piece, Motion, next week.

I will be linking up with Off the Wall Friday. 

Still Stamping

I've made quite a few cards since I last posted about it. I think that some people think it's not very creative since I am using commercial stamps, but I beg to differ. There are so many ways to use them and put them together that creativity does help to get an attractive finished product. I really don't care because I am having so much fun.

My new favorite ones to make are "fancy folds" and I will show you just my three favorites at the moment.

 This first one is a pop-up card and it will go to a friend whose birthday is next month and loves pop-up books. It involved a lot of stamping and folding. I really like it.

This one was very easy to make. I used some metallic card stock that I got on sale at Joanne's. It came in a pad of 6" x 6" and had several different gold and white prints.

This last one is called an easel card. This is how it looks from the front. Anyone who knows me knows my fondness for gingkoes. I have used them in many different fiber art pieces. This is a stamp I have had for ages and has been used many times. They were stamped from the same ink pad. The top one was straight from the pad, the next one without going to the ink again and the last using what was left on the stamp. The process is called "stamping off". I then cut them out andI popped them up on little foam sticky bits.

When you open the card you prop it up on the sentiment, which is also popped up and it makes a little easel. I think it's pretty cool and plan to make some more using different stamps and papers.

The last couple of days here have been glorious! Spring has finally arrived and I have been busy planting. I still have a fair amount to finish and I hope to get it done this week. I do love my flowers!