Reemay so far

Taken in natural light- VERY bright sun!

I moved it out of the sun as much as I could and got this with forced flash.This is truer colour. The first one looks faded.

I am making progress on this project and am liking it more as I go on. I really like the contrast between the crispy, hard Reemay and the glowing, nubbly Dupioni. The whole central motif is now stitched and I am in a quandary. Shall I leave the empty holes as they are or shall I do some quilting in there too? I will definitely do some work in a pretty variegated lime, yellow thread around the outer edge on the limey green silk.

I have no backing on this yet. I am quilting on the silk backed with batting. I should post a picture of the back side. I really like the wrong side of things.

The wrong side of the reemay

A little closer up but it does not look well focussed here. My apologies, but you do get the idea.

There! Done!! I LOVE digital photography!

Smile Inchies :-)

Fat Honey bees hang around flowers and make honey! What's not to love about that?

Butterflies are some of nature's extravagances- perhaps not fabulously useful, but SOO lovely. Maybe the Creator decided we needed a built in smile inducer. Works for me!

Dragonflies are a little more useful than butterflies, but still elegant and evocative of happy summer days beside peaceful ponds.

What makes YOU smile? I know some of the things that make ME smile. I adore little kids' art! It is filled with smiles , although I have seen some children's art that makes me very sad too. however, today, we speak of smiles. Make someone smile today. Smile yourself. It is good for you and good for everyone around you too. I have a friend in England who always says, " Smile! It keeps the opposition on its toes! " That is true :-)

Now, the concept of Happy Dancing Yaks just makes me guffaw! To heck with smiling!!These two are my copies of drawings done by our daughter, aged four years. Big smiles on the Yaks and on Mummy in the next Inchie. Note the tres glam high heeled shoes too!- and , smile!

Sad smile, Happy smile! This was what our daughter called frowns and smiles. Neat concept, no?

In closing, I would say that smiles are something we should all strive to show to the world. Try HARD to make someone smile every day. There is plenty in the world to make us sad and fearful, but a smile is always therapeutic- for the Smiler and for the Smilee!

The last post ( today!)

Here I am again! I have doodled all the doo dah day!Too darned addictive! Luckily I never tried drinking or gambling :-)I'd be doomed. On a serious note, I see some great potential for cool free motion quilting. We shall see.
AND, we have had an Alberta Clipper dump an inch or so of sticky snow, the sort that looks GORGEOUS!

Snowy garden

The getaway!

Look! A squirrel eating Finial!

Reemay continued

Well, I have added a few more bits to this piece and have now backed it with batting and have begun quilting. It is very fiddly but I never mind fiddly! However, as you can see from the closeups, looking so closely at this while I quilt REALLY shows how hard it is to cut  smoothly and how much practice I need ! I did get better as time went on but I need to finish the two yards of Reemay I ordered and maybe I will BEGIN to smooth out my shaky cutting. I did it with a hot knife and a little round, pointy end on my soldering iron. Practice, they say, saves milking time! I hope it improves hot knife cutting too!

The whole piece as it now stands. I found my #80 Superior topstitch needle was making big holes in the Reemay, so I dropped down to a # 60 needle. MUCH better!

Not too bad from a distance

Now you see the shakies!

Now you REALLY see the shakies! Gotta get hold of this soon . This is too interesting and has too much potential to have it messed up by incompetence.

As an added bit, I bought myself three pots of yellow primula yesterday. I LOVE spring flowers and I LOVE spring! When I got them home , my dear Husband asked if this were " the flowers I bought you THIS week?" I looked him in the eye and said, " Harrumph!" Anyway, they are gorgeous and now sitting in the front window even as we experience an Alberta Clipper! It is VERY pretty outside too so maybe some more pics later.

Gorgeous, eh? AND, the deep golden one with the dark eye smells heavenly! Mmmm! Love it!

The project so far

Today's step- I dyed a silk background and trimmed the overlay - and added some more holes around the edges. Then I ironed it onto the silk. Remember, there is Wonder Under under the overlay! A bit crude, but I am liking it , I THINK??

Two things

I have been messing around again ! In light of the Sketchbook Challenge, I had a look at Zentangles. If you are not familiar with the term, Google it! It is GRAND fun - IF you like to doodle- and I do. I have been Zentangling a little bit and find it relaxing and it is getting my right hand limbered up a bit for drawing. I have included a couple of closeups and you can see how wiggly my hand is. Hopefully, it will improve. This is REALLY fun. Try it! You'll like it!

 I told you that I had a wiggly hand- BUT it is improving. Who knows where this madness will end?

The second thing I have been working on is this-

The beginning of this piece- almost. I painted the reemay with Setacolor paint . I then ironed Wonder Under onto the back side before I began cutting. Once the Wonder Under was cool, I began cutting with my soldering iron. NOT as easy as it looks!

Apart from some more roundish holes around the outside, through the blue and green, this is the main piece all cut and ready to fuse to the background layer. It will be hand dyed . Stay tuned!

I would strongly urge everyone who quilts or who does Fibre Art of any kind, to look at the blog and website of Betty Busby. If you do not know her or her gorgeous work, you are in for a huge treat! It was Betty's beautiful work with Reemay that got me interested in trying it. I have used Lutradur, Tyvek, Evolon and lots of other industrial fabrics but Betty's use of Reemay is stellar and REALLY lit my board. Having cut this one small piece, ( 18inches square) I can REALLY appreciate Betty's work. It is so delicate and so controlled - and huge! Mind you she does quilt on a longarm, but even so....

I plan to dye a background for this , layer and quilt it and decide what to call it. It makes me think of a composite flower like Coreopsis or a sunburst but I shall await the outcome to decide on a title. I told you before I am the Queen of Serendipity!

One more shot on a background of plain white Dupioni silk.I MAY try dyeing it but it is not so easy and looks grainy, OR I may just go with some nice white cotton lawn to dye. It will take the colour the way I want it to. Watch this space!

By the way, you can find Betty Busby at bbusbyarts.com and her blog is bettybusbyblog@blogspot.com
                                                                       ENJOY!

Snow's gone. Oh, Deer!

Apparently our mild winter, and a huge natural area behind us is not able to provide sufficient food for the wildlife in our environs! My husband put the garbage out today and noticed that our very dense, very tall, very vigorous euonymus that grows up a trellis to shade the deck in summer, is denuded from about the five foot mark, all the way to the ground. Normally, you cannot see its bare legs and the junk under the deck! Take a look at THIS!

Bare legged Euonymus!

Cleanly nipped off!

Must be very gourmet stuff!

             SOME people dine in the proper locations! Some people are polite and well behaved!

Universe Inchies

At our house, we have had an unending fascination with the universe, astronomy and Quantum Physics. I do NOT pretend to understand it! I would like to, but I don't-at least not enough to explain it to anyone. I do, however, stand in awe and the more I see, hear, read and learn, the more awed I am . Here are a few paltry Inchies illustrating  some of the kinds of components of our marvellous Universe.

The Big Bang

A spiral Galaxy

A chunk of Deep Space

Stars are born here in a wispy gas cloud

Spiral Galaxy on edge with a few Red Giants

Nice big Spiral Galaxy

Badly illustrated but I tried!

My Little Universe. Look, Ma! No Black Holes!!!

Sketchbook

I had surgery on my right hand a few years ago and have avoided my sketchbook generally because the hand is a little " stupid" sometimes. However, when I saw the Sketchbook Challenge, I decided it is a good thing to fiddle in one's sketchbook --- so I did. I started a new one in honour of the occasion . The doodles are not wonderful at all but it has gotten me started. I am looking for some interesting shapes to use in a new piece I have in my head using some new and interesting materials and techniques. As you may have guessed by the doodles, Nature is my muse.

This was fun. Good to be back with a pencil in my hand !