Clock stopped- for now

We are having dear friends to dinner tomorrow and Christmas dinner for family next week so, for the moment at least, work on the clockworks has ceased. Here is my workspace as of midnight last night. I hope to make it pretty in there for our visit tomorrow!

That is pattern, lightbox, water bottle and FAABBBRICCC!

Yukkk, eh! Wanna make a bet that it SHALL be tidy by tomorrow afternoon ;-)

And the progress on the Clockworks??? Well,

This is where I started yesterday .

I had a little dyeing session because I needed a bluer purple to do the bit under the big wheel and lots of other areas.

And this is where I finished off last night.

Can you see the spot I am nattering about??

This morning, I removed and plan to revise the little space on the right side that looks too bright. It is the "hole" in the wheel on the right side. I don't like it as big or as "lively" as I have made it.

Later the same day. I have cleaned the house top to bottom and have made dinner for tonight AND tomorrow night. Have I worked on the clockworks? NO. Not today. In fact, a day off would be good. TWO days in fact. I am just looking at the colours in the photos I took and they are a bit too high! The colours are subtler than they appear here. There is a LOT of detail to be added. I would love to have all of the substrate covered by Christmas but that may not happen. Not to worry. It WILL get done . I am enjoying doing it anyway.

I used the new Steam a Seam II and was a little disappointed by the fact that it DOES sticky up your machine needles :-( Ah, well, I just keep an alcohol wipe handy and keep the needle clean that way.

The microwave is beeping at me so I am off to deal with that . I plan to send this off to the needleandthreadnetwork.blogspot.com. This could be my last post before Christmas. It is, however, my plan to write a little Christmas message to you all next week so watch for it!

Nostalgia, Sentiment and Peaceful Coexistence

Many years ago, when I was a boy ( tee hee) I lived a pretty monastic life on a busy street in Hamilton, Ontario. There were very few children to play with and besides, I was a solitary sort of child anyway- always living in my own head and content with my own company. (What's new, I hear some of you ask???) I was always away somewhere else in my head, creating, imagining, dreaming! This week, two hollyhocks that persisted after the great garden culling of 2013 came into bloom in one of our front flower beds! They are not very tall and not very profuse bloomers, but they ARE in bloom! I had to dig out the old ones last year as they had succumbed to rust and weevils.

Those two little stalks of bloom INSTANTLY transported me back to my Granny's garden on that busy street in Hamilton. Very little in the way of flowers grew in that garden but hollyhocks DID bloom there. To amuse myself , I used to pick a few blooms - and Granny grew LOTS of colours- and matching buds. Then with a toothpick, or sometimes a straight pin, I would transform the hollyhock flowers into beautiful dancing ladies or fairies in colourful, fluttery gowns. I know now that I was not alone in my pursuit of this pastime but at the time, I felt terribly clever :-) I am not sure if Grandma or Aunty Lizzie showed me how to make these dollies or if I just figured it out by myself, but they were a magical outlet for my passion for flowers as well as for my passion for creating.

Today, in case I had forgotten some little trick in making hollyhock dolls, I googled it and found that I remembered EVERY step! I learned a new step too for making little "faces" too, but as that was not MY way, I ignored it. Then, of course, I had to make one doll, just for fun. I WOULD have made a whole bevy if I had had enough flowers but this one was all I felt I could spare!

All the same bloom, just different views!

I find I still love making them and have the little flower doll in a bit of water. She will likely have perished by morning :-(

Well, that is most of the nostalgia. On to sentiment! In preparation for the impending visit of DD, DSIL and Baby O, we are in a frenzy of cleanup and of chucking out to make room . Baby O is not THAT big but he comes with EQ!!! The EQ needs room so DH is trying to clear out some long held stuff in his little study so there is room on the floor for a Pack 'N' Play and a desktop clear enough to use as a changing table. I have been down in the grotto throwing out magazines, books :-( and fabric etc. Some of the discards tugged at my heartstrings but a lot of it needed to go ages ago. WHY DO WE KEEP THAT STUFF??? Then, came the hard part!!!

Years ago when our daughter was a boy ( again with the tee hee) , she was bound and determined to be a palaeontologist and to that end, she became VERY keen on geology and fossils etc. We spent many magical and wonderfully educational summer holidays in Nova Scotia , beach combing for fallen fossils at Joggins ( you are NOT allowed to pick up ANYTHING off the beach there now but we were actually encouraged to do so way back then) AND, DD learned about forams- or foraminifera, to give them their full name. Forams are tiny, one celled creatures that live in the sea and when they die, their minute skeletons wash up on the beaches , invisible to the naked eye except as a little, lacy line of dried foam on the sand ,but spectacularly exquisite under a microscope. We all had a BALL collecting sand samples and then looking at the samples with a borrowed microscope from the school where DH taught. Google the word and see for yourselves.

We collected sand samples ourselves and friends who were travelling collected them for us too. I had several big boxes in my laundry room devoted to samples and as Archaeology is now DD's chosen field, I called and asked what to do with the foram stuff. She said what I thought she'd say- chuck 'em out! She said, rightly so, that if she needs more samples , she now knows where to go and how to find them.

Well, that was a HEAP of sand and we had samples from all over the world- Nova Scotia, Scotland and England, Philippines, South China Sea, Indian Ocean, East and West coasts of USA etc. WHAT TO DO?? I simply could NOT just chuck it into the garbage- so, by way of Peaceful Coexistence, I mixed the sand all up , threw in some little shells and I am going to distribute it in our garden, symbolic of a bringing together of the whole world at our house!so now, the sand and shells from all over our poor beleaguered little world, will join with good old Canadian garden dirt to help amend it into a fruitful medium for growing- hollyhocks and other beautiful things. I call that a good day's work!

And , as a parting thought, I got two emails today that made me smile! They were announcing that two of my quilts have been juried into Central Canada SAQA's Fibre Content show here in Burlington this year in September-

Bruce's Favourite

Wire Fence II

That was nice to hear on a very wet , hot Monday!

I believe I will pass this on to the needleandthreadnetwork.blogspot.com I was not going to post this week as I have clearly been doing other than quilting. However, I am now in mid experiment( stay tuned) and decided that I would pass this off as WIP ;-) Hope you have all had a great, productive week!

Making some progress

OK, I actually HAVE a WIP!! I am working hard on finishing the new piece, Wire Fence I. It is called Wire fence I because there will also be a # 2 and possibly more but this is definitely enough to be getting on with just now. I am working from photos I took on a drive by last fall when the wild grapes were ripe and the Virginia Creeper was at its most flamboyant! I have a nice little collection to work from so here is number one to date.

Partly finished this stage. MANY stages to go!

I normally like Steam a Seam II Lite for my work but , sadly, SAS is not available just now so I am using EZ Steam . It works. It is sticky so it stays put nicely without heat till you are sure, but Steam a Seam, IT IS NOT!!! For one thing, it is just TOO sticky when you are doing something complex like this. It sticks to me, to itself and is generally a huge nuisance. COME BACK STEAM A SEAM!!

I am going to post this to the needleandthreadnetwork.blogspot.com I haven't much to show but a few people have been following this piece's progress , so here you are. Hope you enjoy it and the other posts on TNTN. 

Bag done and new venture!!!

Well, that Little Boy can arrive any time now and there will be a nice place to keep some diapers etc when he is "out and about"! The bag AND the changing pad are fini! Yay, Me :-)

The finished bag- closed up!

And the "business side" of the changing pad OPENED up!

The fun big grommets

The pad in a pocket

The bound and finished pad. It stays so nicely folded when not in use.

All we need now is a baby to use the bag. Soon enough , I expect. As of tomorrow, six weeks to go. This has been a diversion and a fun job to do. I have one more bag to make - for ME this time. I have some fabulous fabric which shall be unveiled eventually - once I get a few other things out of the way. BTW- I do NOT plan on a career change- from Fibre Art to Bag Making !!

Now- you may have wondered about the frenzy of work before Christmas- several biggish, major pieces of new work in a short time. Well, I am making an unofficial announcement , more info soon. Late last summer, I was honoured to be invited to participate in a small group show at the Homer Watson House and Gallery which will take place later this spring. I am one of four Fibre Artists who have been asked to take part. The others in the group are Marg Notar ( also a SAQA member), Joanne Young and Carol McLean. The other three are all Kitchener- Waterloo artists and I am a "foreigner" from Burlington . I am really thrilled to be involved with this . I have shown my work often in the past- watercolours and batik, but the quilts have never really been seen publicly. As I have no samples of the other women's work and as I do not know what their parts of the show are to be called, I will wait to make a more formal announcement . My part will be called Passions- because it will include pieces from my nature collection and from my Kintyre (Scotland) collection, two things about which I feel passionately. I will announce dates later and will issue a more formal invitation to any and all of you who are able to attend. It would be grand to meet some of you face to face.

I guess that is all the excitement for this post :-) I am posting this to the needleandthreadnetwork.blogspot.com and hope that you will join me there to see all of the interesting work going on just now. Marg, Joanne and Carol's entries in this year's Grand National can be seen here by clicking on Local Colour at the bottom of the page. Hope this works! Grand National Quilt Show 2013

Poppies done and dusted!

Closeup of the finished stitching

The finished piece

Well, I did get my Poppies sent off to SAQA last week and now, I am in "baby mode" for  brief time , making a diaper bag. Once that is finished, we will check all of my quilts for proper hangers and make new ones where needed. I have one more piece I am dying to make before the babe is due ( early March!!) I hope I can manage that.

Today is my birthday so we have some plans- well, apparently SOME of us do :-) One thing we are doing is going to the Apple Store to the Genius Bar to ask a few questions and after that... who knows!! It is looking like it MIGHT be a little sunny today  which would be nice. I have not checked the temperature but  we have had a very mild weekend and lots of ice melted but I think it is cold again today. There is a Carolina Wren serenading me from the back garden as if he thinks it is spring. Silly, dear little bird!

I am going to post this to the needleandthreadnetwork.blogspot.com when the time comes. Not a lot for me to post today but this piece is finished and mailed away. Have a grand Tuesday and enjoy TNTN.

Glowing poppies

No, not GROWING! Glowing Poppies! I took this photo ages ago, just one of those happy accidents . The poppies were really red but in this particular light, they glowed golden orange to scarlet and the background turned out very nicely. I am finally making some progress on it. Good thing, as it is due in Houston TX by 31 January for the SAQA trunk show. So far, so good!

Here is my little photo. LOVE this picture!

I painted silk Habotai for the background using Dye Na Flow paints. It seems to have worked pretty well- VERY well, actually. I want the two main poppies to be very crisp and in focus and the background  to be watery and soft.

Here are my two poppies and part of the background ready to fuse.

I am using hand dyed cotton for the two poppies but apart from the green stems and buds which will also be cotton, the rest of the red/orange mushy poppies in the background are being made with translucent fabrics over the painted silk. I have fused polyester chiffon for some of the bits at the top left and down the right side. The two fairly distinct poppies are going to be made of silk chiffon painted loosely with Dye Na Flow.

Two painted gloppy poppies ready to be made fusible and then cut and pasted.

I did not know how well the translucent fabrics would be with fusible material on the back. I have used Misty Fuse ( white) and it is fine- nicely transparent. Not much of this is fastened down yet, but it soon will be . If I have more done before before it is time to post this to WIP Wednesday, I shall add to the post. I am going to post this to the needleandthreadnetwork.blogspot.com. Hope you will check out the rest of the posts there. ALWAYS something interesting to see there!

Well, I HAVE made some progress , so here are the latest pictures. Hope you enjoy them . I SHALL post to TNTN , as promised :-)

The bottom poppy

The top poppy

Here is the finished piece so far. It WILL eventually be 7" x 10" when I send it to SAQA. Right now, it is just a bit larger
to allow for quilting and facing.

And now, I post!! Enjoy. 

As promised

Here is my next endeavour- my Aunty's glorious hydrangea! Are these not colours to die for!! Well, at least they were colours to START dyeing- for making this quilt:-)

I spent much of yesterday testing and recording colours, came up with a palette of colours and started dyeing. Here is where I am to date.

A few pieces for this quilt , including the test piece where I dropped my colours. It was intended as a throwaway, but LOOK at it!

The photo, the pattern and the fabrics so far.

Just a different view including the graduated piece. More on it later.

I have recently purchased a DVD and book by Ann Johnston, American Art Quilter and Dyer of note. VERY exciting and informative. Both are called "Color By Accident". In her DVD , Ann shows how to dye a solid piece of fabric with graduated colour(s) , either one colour from palest pastel through to a nice intense colour, or by blending one colour into another or others. VERY useful!! I used a pale Ecru enhanced by Golden Brown, fading out to a combo of Lilac, Wisteria and Violet. Sadly, I forgot to use the soda ash BEFORE adding the colour but , in a stroke of brilliance, I put soda ash into a spray bottle and SOAKED the piece before allowing it to dry flat on the table. The whole piece was wet, smoothed onto my dye table and then colour spread around by gloved hand. I have not pulled it out flat to show you but have folded it carefully so you can see the gradations of colour. The colours are very pastel so it is hard to photograph out full.

This is sort of a boring series of pictures but I have shown you both sides and both ends by folding and turning it all over. COOL, eh!

Now I will do another series , same kinds of colours but deeper values and another deeper graduated one more along the brown to violet line. It will be a fairly large piece, 24 inches along the short side, so it will take a fair bit of fabric in many colours and values. Most of the pieces here are fat quarters. The grad piece is about half a metre wide by the width of the fabric.

Tomorrow, I plan to post this to the needleandthreadnetwork.blogspot.com. It is only Monday now, so ... Maybe by then I will have more pieces to add.

And- I DO!! I have started a new batch, sort of mid value colours for this same project.

Here is a new graduated piece still lying wet on the table. I DID remember to use the soda ash FIRST!!

My table slopes a little, like a mortuary slab!! ....

...so... the dye runs and drips off the plastic cover into a basin full of old newspaper. This will stay here for a couple more hours before I rinse and dry it.

The remaining eight  fat quarters batching on the dryer.

OK, NOW when the time is right, I shall post to WIP Wednesday! Enjoy this week's posts.

Little shopping trip and a few extras

Needed a couple of things at the grocery shop this morning so we went to Waterdown, ON along my favourite local road. I have been watching the Virginia Creeper and the Wild Grape along there for weeks waiting for the right amount of colour change. ALMOST there today so I took a few pictures. One of these days, you may see one of these done in fabric:-)

I really like the chartreuse leaves against the slatey blue of the little grapes. The fruit is PROLIFIC this year!

I also like the flat blue with the shining red leaves of the Virginia Creeper.

Shot into the sun on a breezy morning but what a glorious brocade of colours!

Love this but I would tone down the emerald green background to a softer, yellowish green.

How do you like the little grapevine hoop!!

I also photographed a most marvellous hydrangea given to my Aunty at Easter. Here are a few photos I did of it. ALSO quilt material!

Am I having fun??

You betcha!

Isn't this colour amazing!!

I have LOTS to keep me busy now. I am quilting the Gloriosa and will post some pictures later this afternoon on this post when I add it to the posts on the needleandthreadnetwork.blogspot.com I will just add the Gloriosa pics at the end as you have seen the quilt recently. I AM enjoying some VERY heavy thread painting. Hope YOU like it too.

As promised, here are a few pics of Gloriosa at her current state, partly thread painted. L O N G way to go to finish but this is a start!

A few shots of the thread painting to date. 

Just starting on the big bloom.

The petals on the smaller bloom.

Centre of the smaller one...

...and the whole, untrimmed piece this afternoon waiting for me to get some energy to finish the stitching on the rest.

NOW it will go to Needle and thread network!