About half way?

I am still making progress on the hosta piece. I THINK I have the top about half finished. I have been juggling it with garden cleanup, medical appointments for DH and trying to photograph the spring wildflowers. Here is the hosta so far...

A fair bit of the big pale blob in the centre will be covered with other bits

The next bit will likely be the top right corner. I will do that little bit before I tackle the bottom right. I THINK I am fairly pleased so far. Speaking of hostas, I see lots of ours coming up in the gardens, always a cheering sight!

For those lovers of blue like myself! This is scilla siberica up pretty close.

Only a few more days until Greg the Mower Man comes to harvest the crop of long grass and the scillas!

Not sure how the black background happened but I think it looks OK.

A new hellebore I bought this year. It is a LITTLE bit ahead of the ones that have lived here a long time.

The magnolia is FULL of promising buds and I do a  little dance daily as I pray for no more frost to spoil the bloom!

This is the VERY early red hellebore that has lived under the sitting room window for many years. In my fervour  to clean up out there, I accidentally chopped one flowering stem off:-(

As well as garden photos, I have been in the wood behind us photographing mosses and wildflowers and tree twigs! Here are a few...

More bloodroot

Tiny exquisite mosses and ...

Manitoba Maple.... 

and some sort of willow

It has been a busy week here in our house. In case I never mentioned it before ;-)- I LOVE SPRING!

On that cheery note, I shall post this to the needleandthreadnetwork.blogspot.com, suggest you check the site out and see what our fellow fibre artists are up to - and if you like photos, check out "rtquilter on Flickr" too.

Slowly, Slowly!

I am making progress with the filtered hosta. It begins to look like something. I HOPE it begins to look like a Hosta heavily filtered with Photoshop! It is a slow , painstaking process as there are soo many little pieces but I am really enjoying doing it. I may need to dye some more fabric as I am about to switch to a new bunch of colours- away from the very high and the very low values and into a more intermediate area. There is still more high and low but I will not be back there for a bit.

This is the progress to date. Look at that!! Almost 1/4 done!( That said, there will be a LOT of little wee touches when the main work is finally done.)

The next major section after one more section in these colours is high chartreuse and mid olive.

I am currently wearing two hats! I bought a new Macro lens for my camera. I was fairly happy with the last one but not ecstatically so. Today- ECSTASY:-) I bought a 105 mm f2.8 Nikon Micro lens and at this point, I am REALLY happy with focus, sensitivity and ,so far, NO chromatic aberration!!

Here are a few examples of the things I have been playing with. Bear in mind that this has been a very fleeting tryout. I KNOW it will be much better too when I have time and energy to pursue it more thoroughly and more carefully. However, for a cursory tryout.... YAY!!!

Bloodroot- I do love the way the leaves clasp the flowers before they are fully open. It seems a lovely protective  "gesture" on the part of those leaves! Can't wait for another nice dappled sunshine day. I hope the bloodroot lasts!

Bloodroot in our woodsy garden. LOVING the leaf texture!

My beloved Helleborus niger in full bloom. 

H. niger and some scilla buds

Bloodroot again- just for the texture of that big leaf!!! Our Trillium Grandiflora have not started to show yet. That worries me as we have DEER in the garden and trillium has proved a tasty treat in years past :-(

I have started a Flickr Account at "rtquilter on Flickr". If you have time , pop over there and have a look. There are many many REAL photographers on Flickr too :-)  Be SURE to check THEM out!!

I will post this now to the needleandthreadnetwork.blogspot.com Today, I actually HAVE a WIP!! Enjoy your visit to TNTN.

A Little Bit of Progress

It has been a LONG , busy week so not much has been accomplished but I am making some progress.
We have had a lot of appointments this week so time has been scarce. I HAVE, however , made a meagre start on the green piece ( that is different than Green Peace!)

How exciting is THIS??? - Not very but it IS the background fabric, a tad wrinkly.

I HAVE, actually gotten a but done on the actual piece- still not very exciting, but definitely a start.

You MIGHT recognize this as the top of the picture. I intend to do this top and left side first. I am looking forward to stitching this one. I think I will have FUNNN!

Out to a medical lab today for DH and I found this wall. I like walls and fences and doors/portals. This one is interesting!

Kind of cool. Before I finish this post I will dig out a couple of other photos of walls that I like. May do a little series with them. Aren't you glad you don't get invited over for dinner and a picture show at OUR house!!!! Yikes!

And here are a couple of other door/portal/walls that I love and that I may well use as a wee series.

View from the door of a barn on High Tirfergus farm

A gate to nowhere at Saddell Abbey

The house door at High Tirfergus Farm

I am going to post this now as we have a weekend of company this weekend after a VERY L O N G week of medical appointments! Enjoy your weekend.

Happy Easter and a new beginning

Happy Easter all. Hope you are all enjoying family time and better weather than we are having- although DH just said that every province in this Fair Land today has had/is having snow!!!! Harrumph!

I have started a new piece of work. It is based on this photo That I showed you last week.

This is a heavily altered, multi filtered ( in Photoshop) photo of a very pretty hosta I bought last year. I am hoping to really abstract it further so it becomes a study in greens and textures. Wish me luck!

To that end, I have started work on it.

The pattern has been drawn by me and enlarged and printed by my favourite printer man- Ted.

I have traced my printed pattern onto freezer paper using the light box to see all of the little lines.

I have spent a lot of time dyeing and here are my colours . I may still have to do more of some colours as I might have been a tad stingy.

There is a LONG way to go, of course but the basics are begun. It will eventually be about 36" square
I expect. As I have been so slack of late, it feels good to be back in the saddle again. I hope this turns out as I envision it. Hopefully, I will do a LOT of surface stitching to mimic all of the cool textures I managed to get with Photoshop.

Isn't that COOL! I LOVE the little spidery black lines. Look for them soon ( or later) on a quilt near you :-)

Again, Happy Easter all. Here is a little parting shot. SOMEONE had fun today!

                                                             HAPPY EASTER 2015.