Home from the Fair

Getting back to our roots, we had a booth at the Georgetown Christmas Stroll last Saturday and sold fused glass Christmas ornaments, dishes, and jewelry. No pictures, of course; I really meant to take my camera and completely forgot it.

I was very happy with the turnout, considering the day started out drizzly and nasty. At least it was warm!

At any rate, now that I'm not busy firing glass as quickly as possible (and having to order and replace a set of kiln elements a few days before the show--EEK!), I can work on some fun things for me.

I guess I should finish up all those Christmas presents I've started, since the date is only 3 weeks away and we don't want our tree looking like it had a visit from the Grinch in the middle of the night . . . come to think of it, though, if I don't finish, I wonder if my family would go for that story?

My Seven Moons

This is a small wall quilt I created using one of the "bleeding-tissue" fabrics I created a while back.

I machine-quilted the piece, then fused the "moon" pieces on and embellished the edges of them with beads.

The piece isn't really crooked by the way, it's just the camera angle.

Winter Break

Well, I've finally finished with all my classes, which is a good thing since work is crazy again (still?). I wasn't particularly happy with any of the pieces from the Elements class from Quilt U, but I learned how to use a lot of those crazy supplies I've been collecting: angelina fibers & tintzl, foils, puff paint (I love it!) etc., and it was fun.

Here are the finished pieces (I say finished, but not really--none of the pieces are actually quilted, with one exception).

"Water" was the first piece; I thought I would lose my mind creating this piece.

"Fire" was the 2nd, and "Air" (or clouds, in this case) was the 3rd. I'm not happy with the air piece either.

The 4th piece should have been "Earth," but I hated it so much I cut the entire bottom section off and saved only the top. I'm going to use it to make a little journal. This is the only piece I had actually quilted. You can't see the amazing tree trunk that was made with puff paint, since it's in the bottom, discarded section, but believe me, puff paint makes great tree trunks.

Not only were these pieces hard to create, they are hard to photograph because of all the "shininess" in them.

More in a future post about the other class I've been taking (and the unsuccessful projects from it), wet felting.

Earthquakes

Can I just say that people who live in California are nuts? I'm in San Jose on a business trip and had just returned to my hotel room and gotten undressed when it felt like a train hit the building. Apparently it was a 5. something earthquake. I'm happy I'm going home to Texas tomorrow. Give me a tornado anyday. . .

Guided Tours Part Deux

I'm still in the middle of the Elements class from Quilt U, and I'm supposed to be creating an "air" piece. Unfortunately, I've been in training this week and haven't had time to work on anything. I did manage to get the base fabric for the piece painted early this morning before work, but it's been a foggy and overcast day, so it will take a while for the fabric to dry.

As if I didn't have enough to do, I remembered yesterday that I had also signed up for an online class at joggles. com. It was good timing to remember, because the class started yesterday. Apparently my yahoo email account has been digesting the emails from joggles.com with no trace, so I couldn't log in to the class. I think I've worked the problem out with joggles, so I should be bemoaning the fact that I have no time to work on yet another class any day now.

This class, btw, is on wet felting. I recently ordered some osnaburg from JoAnn fabrics because I had a 50%-off deal and free shipping, so a bolt of it was too good a deal to pass up. At the same time, I ordered some felting supplies. I have no idea why. Felting and its supplies are not something I need, not something I need to get into, and not something I have time for.

Sigh. The shopper part of myself must get a kick out of torturing the crafter part.

Guided Tours

The new Quilt U class I'm taking, Elements in Fabric, is kicking my butt. We're creating "element" pieces--so far, water & fire--using fabric and things like angelina fibers, tintzl, cellophane, and sheers. After sweating blood and throwing my scissors across the room (several times) I managed to finish both pieces, but they're both too ugly to post. This is a real exercise in patience for me, since I rarely try to work from a pre-conceived idea, sketches, AND photographs all at the same time and get something that looks both good and realistic without looking cheesy (it's a fine line with all that tintzl and angelina). I'm going to stick with it, though; it's a good learning exercise.

I took a little breather from the class work and painted more fabric. Several issues ago, Quilt Art had an article on using bleeding tissue paper over painted fabric. I tried regular tissue paper but it didn't work. I happened to see some bleeding tissue at Michael's a couple of weeks ago, and picked some up. The results aren't quite what I expected; some of the tissue colors (red & blue) bleed much better into the fabric than others. Some pieces simply acted as a sunblock on the sun prints. Here are the results. The first piece started with a blue background (I used Setacolor transparents mixed 50-50 with water on damp pfd fabric); as you can see, I got a little color from the blues, greens, and yellows, but the red is the most prominent.

















The second piece started with a yellow, buttercup, and red background. I like the playfulness of that one.














The piece on the left started out with a blue and red background. The colors didn't bleed as well onto the red as they did onto the blue.












This one is my favorite; I intended for it to look like translucent wildflowers, but I see trees instead. I think I'll use this for a small wholecloth quilt.