Journal Quilt #39

Well better late than never, that's my motto! This week's journal quilt is looking rather like a collage. I started out with the background that's made from a slop rag...a piece of fabric from past dyeing and painting sessions. Then I placed on the watercolored face, which I did a short time ago (aka-a month or two ago). The rest of the pieces...purple flower, green wavy lines, black border were all scraps left over from fused projects. And last but not least I did some thread embroidery and wrote on the word 'dream'. Dream on!

Stuff for Sale

I'm going through my studio again and have decided to try and sell some books I no longer use. Also I am going to try selling my lampwork beadmaking kit. I tried doing this and I just don't think it's my thing. It's a complete beginner's kit.

Some of the books include quilting, scrapbooking, decorative painting, and sewing.

I'm selling through eBay. If you are interested, please have a look here.

Check

That is in "check", that's done! Or, check that one off my list. Or, "art tags" - Check! (that last one was airplane cockpit language). CHECK!



The photo shows all 288 of my fabric art tags. Sue and I are each making these to give out when we are in Houston. See her post here. I'm so glad I've finished with these. My poor little fingers were a tiny bit tired and sore after inserting all those grommets.

Maybe Done

Well I worked quite a bit on my jacket yesterday. I think I'm done....but I may still do some tweaking if I think it needs it. Here are photos of the front and back. I decided not to do too much to the front as I wanted the focus to be more on the back. Notice the cute little fabric cuffs? I love how those look.

Denim Jacket Progress

I found a little time to work on my jacket. I have finished the painting and have moved onto adding some appliquéd flowers. I've only worked on the back panel of the jacket this far. I want to add some touches on the front and maybe the sleeves.

Journal Quilt #38

Well this week's quilt came about from a discussion on the Fibre&Stitch Yahoo group regarding flower stitch feet for sewing machines. Someone on the group talked about a simple way to sew in circles, which is basically what the flower stitch foot does, to my understanding. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

One of the gals from the group, Wendy, had posted on her blog some time back about a knock-off method to stitch circles and she even showed us pictures. Her post is here. So I thought I'd like to try this method and see how it turns out for me. The only thing I did different from Wendy was I didn't bother to put an eraser bit on the top side of my thumb tack.

I found this method rather fun and the circles I made were perfect. I used 4 different stitches on my machine.

In My Spare Time

When I'm not working with fabric, fibers, and such, I have a few other things I like to dabble in. One of them being mosaics. The above coffee table was a rummage sale find about two years ago, I paid $2.00 for it. The top of the table was a little rough looking but for what I had in store for it that was okay.

Did you notice the part where I said I bought it two years ago? Well yes, that's about how long I've been working on this project. Yesterday I finally got far enough along with it to put the grout on. That was fun, like playing in the mud. I'm going to let the grout set really well over the next few days and then the next step is to turn it upside down and sand and prime the legs and underneath areas. I will then paint some designs in coordinating colors. Hmmm, I wonder if it will take me another year to get that part done.

Journal Quilt #37

Presenting.......this week's journal quilt. Batik background, hand-dyed fabric, and watercolor painted design on cotton duck.


The next five photos show some of my results from last weekend's get together with Amy, Jenny, and Sandy (three local gals). We tried out shave cream dyeing. The first two shown are on cotton duck and the last ones are cotton muslin. Over all, I'm not totally thrilled with my results. I think I should have also tried some silk.






And this last photo shows more progress on the denim jacket project.


And last but not least, I would like to thank all of you who come to visit me here at StegArt. For those of you who leave such wonderful comments, thank you! Some of you I can send personal replies to when you leave comments, but to those who I am unable to because of no email address....thank you! And thank you to those of you who visit but don't leave comments....I also appreciate that you enjoy my work, er...at least I hope you do.

By the way, two new free projects were posted over at the Fibre&Stitch web site today...one of them being a small flower quilt that I did. Enjoy!

Denim Jacket Progress

Here's my progress so far. No detailing yet, just getting some color blocked in.

Sarah's Fabric Page

Well I finished the page for Sarah. In my last post I showed the painted design I had drawn. Sarah chose this theme for her fabric book..."a woman's work is never done". This page marks the last page swapped in this particular swap and I thought after all the other pages in her book that depict women working and such, that maybe at the end of a long, tiring day, the hard working woman needs to soak in a bubble bath...but she's so tired, she falls asleep. Sarah, I hope you like your page.

I Was on a Roll

And then I ran out of black thread. I was in the middle of making a whole bunch of art tags (see Sue's post here) and then suddenly there was no more thread. I was even running errands yesterday and could have stopped and bought some, had I known. Well I'm not making a special trip. So there!

So what am I working on now? Well some painting. Here is a sneak peek at my project for the first challenge on the Twelve by Twelve group. The first challenge is "dandelion". I'm not going to show the entire thing until I'm done. Sorry!


Next is a test I'm doing. I want to paint a design on the back of a denim jacket and having never done this before I thought I'd do a small sample piece to get a feel for painting on the denim.


The next photo shows a design I drew and painted with watercolors. It's done up in greens because it's for a swap and the recipient of this piece chose greens as her colors. This will be applied to a background of green fabrics. Sarah, don't look yet! Well that is if you want a surprise. But if you are reading this it's probably too late.


And last is my new studio helper. My old iron bit the dust. It would heat up, but the water started leaking out the reservoir. And I just didn't like the mess of it.

Embellished Bags

I recently embellished some felted bags and pouches. This was very enjoyable. All of the felted bags and pouches are from www.joggles.com. They come in a ton of fabulous colors and styles. Sort of like potato chips, can't stop with one. Enjoy!

Journal Quilt 36

Down to the wire on this quilt. I've always considered the deadline for my weekly journal quilt to be midnight Saturday. I did start this one yesterday, but today I got busy and didn't get back to it until evening. For this week's journal quilt I used a technique from an article in the premier issue of Fibre&Stitch, written by Carol McFee. The title of the article is Lutradur & Lace. I enjoyed making this and now want to keep my eyes open when going to yard sales and the thrift stores for vintage lace.


And somehow I ended up with two issues of this magazine. Fiber Arts Sep/Oct 2007. I think what I did is I subscribed to it recently and forgot about it...then when I saw it on a newsstand I picked it up. So, if anyone would like this one I'll gladly send it to you if you pay for the shipping. Just email me and let me know.

Twelve by Twelve

I was invited to join in a small group of art quilters. The group is called Twelve by Twelve. We are working with a challenge word/theme every two months and we are to create an art quilt based on the word in a 12" x 12" format.

We have a group blog where we will be posting our bi-monthly results. It can be seen here, if you wish to see what we make.

Our first challenge is 'dandelion'. I haven't decided yet what I'll do as I just found out what the challenge word is, so hopefully I'll think of something over the next week or so.

My New Bag

Well it was time I made myself a new handbag. The Go Girl Bag I'm currently carrying is showing a little wear and it's been around about a year now. Here's the shiny, new version.

Happy Labor Day

Hope everyone is having a great holiday weekend. I've finished the gourd birdhouse I showed in a recent post. It was really hard to get a good picture of it. It has a glossy marine type varnish for it's protective coat and that was a bugger to photograph as it always wanted to be so shiny and glare into my camera.

I've gave this gourd to my parents as an early Christmas gift. They travel in the warmer states during the winter months and I didn't want to ship it and risk it getting broken.