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.

Who has seen the wind?

Who has seen the wind?As promised, I have the photo from Orkney now to show you the wind! It was a fabulous day, windy as always on Orkney . Look at the wool tufts. Look at the grass. Look at the lack of trees - or anything else that could blow around , for that matter! Enjoy!

As an experiment, with the kind permission of Monika , I am posting this to needleandthreadnetwork.blogspot.com . Thanks, Monika. I am sure I am a VERY old dog but you gave me very nice instructions.

Wind Inchies

Who has seen the wind? I have ! When we visited Orkney a few years ago we were driving down one of the picturesque lanes edged on both sides by a woven wire fence around fields full of sheep. The sheep had rubbed up against the wires and the wooden posts for a good old scratch and in doing so, had left bits of their wool behind. As the wind blows CONSTANTLY and STRONGLY on Orkney, those chunks of wool stood straight out from the wires at right angles ! I have seen the wind!-or at least what it does on Orkney!

As I am in the middle of a very busy family time, I am not being very productive in the Inchie department so here is my one and only for this week!I am posting this to everyinchiemonday2012.blogspot.com

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!

Wall Inchies

After an extremely busy week and weekend, I finally managed to come up with a couple of Wall Inchies. Here they are-

Ancient stone walls-

Graffiti walls-

The wall in Grandma's diningroom-

Who could forget the Berlin Wall?

-or the Great Wall of China?

 -

And now, I am up against this one!

But I am posting them all on everyinchiemonday2012.blogspot.com   Hope to see better participation this week!

Ready to quilt

Well, I have sewn and sewn and sewn and all of my little reflection squiggles are now firmly fixed. Time to layer this up and to get quilting. I printed the picture of the quilt top and one of the original photo and they are pretty close. I am not fussed on exactly exact in this case as the whole idea is ephemeral , unreal and abstract. I think I like it better now. We are becoming friends!The jury is out till after the quilting :-)

The original

Quilted interpretation

A lot of licence was taken with the colours but we need drama, after all!

Reflections on a hot summer

Here you can see the actual boat reflections

..and on this one, you can even see the reflection of the sailor , BUT...

I am posting this piece with some trepidation. A year of so ago, we were down at our local marina on a hot , sunny, clear day with little or no breeze. I fell in love with the reflections of the moored sailboats in the water and shot MANY photos. I decided to try one of my pure reflection photos as an abstract sort of piece . I have been at it for days and am still not totally convinced , although now that it is ready to do the thread painting and maybe some couching, I like it better than I did earlier. I have posted  some of the other photos for you to see. OK, here goes! JUST reflections!

...here is the one I am working from - VERY abstract!

...and here is my take on it - so far.

I will take a chance and post this on needleandthreadnetwork.blogspot.com because I value your input.

Sunset Inchies

Sorry I am late! It has been a very busy week but here are a couple of sunset experiments. I used a lot of different materials and am not sure which I like best. It varies from moment to moment.

I used Lumiere Paint, Pink gold Halo, on all of them . This one has Caran d'Ache pastel , stamping ink and a big old sequin chopped up.

...and this one has stamping ink, Caran d'Ache and Pigma Micron pen

''and this one is as above with the addition of gold embossing powder.

Kind of think I like this one best.

I am posting these sunset Inchies on everyinchiemonday2012.blogspot.com
I hope we get a better turnout than last week.

Finshed

I KNOW it is called "works in progress Wednesday" , but the "progress this week is that these ARE done! Yay!! I wish the photos were better on the square but I did my best. I needed to get them in to the shop before the rain so I hurried with the pics. Never mind. They are done and here you are...

Scarlet Ribbons convergence .

 

                                 I had to remove the binding to make it square enough for my liking!

Here is the Chrysanthemum Convergence all bordered, bound and quilted. 

I am posting these on TNTN at needleandthreadnetwork.blogspot.com  Drop by to see the weeks creations from across Canada.

Window Inchies

I have had a very busy week this past week so this is not a stellar production. Here are my window Inchies.

Traditional window , we all have these!

I know what they look like but I am GLAD I do not have a porthole! Not a big boating fan, although I DO love my cedar strip canoe!

Some of my favourite windows are the glorious mediaeval stained glass ones in Canterbury Cathedral.   They were removed during the last war and hidden in Wales, I think, to keep them safe. Between Henry VIII, Cromwell and bombs in the world wars, we are VERY fortunate to have so many real stained glass windows remaining to inspire us.

I am posting this on  everyinchiemonday2012.blogspot.com  Check it out. Maybe others have been more productive and imaginative .