Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Odds and Ends

This is one of those “clean-up” posts; bits and pieces of things I’ve been doing, cool stuff, and WIPs.

A few weeks ago I won a blog giveaway from Lori of Laughing Girl Quilts. This was one awesome giveaway: fqs of Radiance fabric hand-dyed by Lori. And wow, are they gorgeous!

radiance_pfd_dyed

I don’t know a lot about this fabric, but it’s apparently a combination of silk and cotton. One side has a lovely sheen (the silk, I assume), the other a beautiful soft hand. Thanks again, Lori!

Here’s a piece of fabric I dyed a while back. I wasn’t crazy about this piece, and was going to use it for backing an art quilt. I went to iron it, and suddenly I saw a landscape in it, complete with trees and a stream. Can you see it? I think I’m going to experiment thread-painting this piece to enhance the landscape elements:

landscape_dyed

Here’s a piece I’m working on that involves paint, sheers, and FMQ with metallic thread:

heart_sheers

Here’s a small patchwork quilt I’m making from the “leftovers” of the gem quilt:

leftover_blocks_wip

In the centers of the blocks, you can really see the havoc wreaked by my 1/4” quilting foot being so far off. Anyway, it’s nice to use up those leftover blocks and scrap pieces.

And finally, more 6x6” weekly journal squares. The first one is from quite a while back; I wasn’t having much success preparing my own printable fabric, so I had to wait until I could buy some. This square is week 21, July 12-18. Influences: feeling tired, sick, and in pain. Too much heat and loneliness. On the positive side, I did start writing my morning pages again:

zWeek21

Week #28 was influenced by a new technique—learning to make yo-yos, and by wanting to attract a little more “color” (that is, good things) into my life. The blue braid around the edge represents my blue feelings that week:

zWeek28

Week #29 (last week) was influenced by my need for orderliness (and the clean craft room that brought about), along with relief that we finally got some heavy rains to cool things off and ease the drought (minutely) in Central Texas:

zWeek29

That’s all for now, folks!

3 comments:

Lori Gravley said...

Michele, I'm so glad you like the fabric. And I can see the trees and the stream. I can't wait to see what you'll do with them.

Deborah said...

you've certainly been busy. i particularly like the yo-yo quilt with the blue braid. were you also using different sizes of yo-yos or do certain colors just look larger or smaller than others

Michele/TextileTraveler said...

Yep, all different sizes of yo-yos. I bought one of those clover yo-yo makers, but then figured out its super easy to make them any size without the yo-yo maker!