Decision made

Well, I have finally chosen a background fabric for the Coleus Project. It is one of my hand dyes , chosen after having bought some black cotton AND , having dyed a dark mottled piece in colours I THOUGHT would work. They did NOT - but I have a great piece of dark fabric for another project ;-) DH says this piece works well and he is my best advisor.

There is still a lot to do to this so it is not fused down yet. This will be a busy week so I am not sure when it will get done but I HOPE to get some work done on it soon. My classes start this week so - gotta concentrate on that . (BTW, the orange dot in the top left of this photo is a pin head, NOT part of the design!)

Making good progress

I had a busy night last night. I managed to start the fill-in process and finished it this morning- at least on the main piece. I dyed some really nice antique mustardy greeny gold pieces yesterday- and they were too blah! Great colours but they may get overdyed to spice them up! In the end, I used pieces from my hand dyed stash to better effect- or I think so anyway. Here are a few pictures of the process to date. I have lots of touchup I want to do once the main piece is completed. There need to be some shadows and highlights to lift and separate the leaves from each other. Sounds like that old bra ad from years ago! " Suddenly, you're shaplier!" Way to go ;-)

Sorry about the mess! I was working on my acrylic painting sheet on top of the light box so all of my housekeeping sins are obvious :-(

Front side of the previous picture. The long stringy bit on the lower right is another piece that I may add later.

And here is the partly filled main piece on my black display board. What am I going to do for a background? The black is dramatic for sure, but so predictable! Hmmm!!

And, finally, the whole piece filled and ready for the details and the extra little bits to be added. Still no idea what to use for background.

Long time since the Last Post!

It has been a busy week and promises more for the next while. However, I have finished the Reflections piece and have started another - with Reemay again! We visited St Jacob's last weekend to see Elaine Quehl's lovely exhibition and the town was almost as attractive as Elaine's quilts! There were huge tubs of foliage and flowers everywhere. Looking at then, one would NEVER suspect that southern Ontario had had such a dry summer. Maybe the PEOPLE of St Jacobs have been thirsty, because the plants in those tubs certainly were not suffering! I got some lovely , colourful pictures of the spectacular coleus leaves. That inspired me to start a new little quilt . Here goes!

Stunning colour, no? These were fabulous.

Here is my Reemay mask in progress. I drew the pattern, had it enlarged at the printer's and then traced the pattern onto the back of my Reemay. Once the whole pattern was in place, I covered the back side with Wonder Under. Then, with the aid of my trusty soldering iron, I started to cut-  and cut----- and CUT! VERY tired, sore back last night! BTW, the kitchen light fixture is reflected on the glass I was working on!

The cut out mask and my working photo

Mask all cut out, I put it onto a sheet of acrylic and went to town with Setacolor paints and Dye Na Flo

Not in very good focus, but here is the mask drying before I continue. I will do more detail once the paints have dried.

Now, it is time for a walk. It is crisp and breezy - but our sunshine has disappeared. Ah, well, nae problem!
Next job, dye some fabrics for the background and do another couple of smaller masks. Stay tuned!

I am going to post this to needleandthreadnetwork.blogspot.com. There will be lots of interesting things to see there. Drop by for a visit!