Christmas Surprises

It's Christmas week for two of my quilting groups.  Yesterday the Anything Art group met at Ruth-Ellen's for our annual holiday lunch to celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah.  We all helped make the potato latkes, and Ruth-Ellen made the kugel.  

In honor of the season, I made some little ornaments for the ladies to select.

Some are made from a piece of needle-felted batik enriched with silk roving and other fibers.  The shiny one on the left is made with Textiva film and bits of ribbons and threads that I fused to a piece of Timtex with Misty Fuse.

Here it is, upside down...thanks, Blogger!

I made quite a few of these but they were snapped up yesterday at the art quilt bee meeting!  Each one has a little bead, mostly ones that I made from Shrinky-Dinks painted with Lumiere paint.

I received a very nice quilted, beaded fabric bowl from Toni yesterday.  She cut up a quilt, tucked in the sides, and voila!

Roberta made us each a fabric-covered notebook covered in cheery Ultra-Suede.

Sideways this time!  What's going on?

Tomorrow it will be Christmas brunch in Wake Forest with my Whacky Ladies bee.  I don't get to participate in all their meetings anymore due to the distance involved in driving at night, and also because we often leave for the mountain cabin on Thursday nights.  But I am looking forward to seeing them again tomorrow!

Red Flowers Postcard

I found a little time to make a few more small surprises this weekend.

I rediscovered my needle-felting machine (Babylock Embellisher) and made a little birthday card for my former daughter-in-law.

I felted the red silk roving that I dyed with Kool-Aid to a piece of hand-painted fabric.  I also added some yarn and some very sparkly variegated fibers that I purchased.

The back is a piece of a watercolor painting with some added stamping.

I needle-felted and stitched some more bookmarks, which I will wait until tomorrow to post since they are surprises for my art quilt bee.

We got the Christmas tree put up and some of the indoor decorations.  I still have to hang up the Christmas quilts and put out the Nativity scene.  Not to mention get my house ready for all the Turners to come for our annual Christmas dinner next Saturday.  A busy time of year, but a wonderful season of love.

The weather has turned slightly colder, which helps it seem a bit more like Christmas.  But it would really seem more like Christmas if it would do this again!

Wednesday Works-in-Progress: Satin Pillow top and some Needle-Felting

First up for Work-in-Progress Wednesday: a quilted satin pillow top for a baby pillow. I started this a long time ago with some leftover satin from my White Wedding Quilt. I ran into a little bit of bad tension (railroad tracks) and put it aside to do some frogging (rip-it, rip-it!) That finally happened while I was sitting around and the Dish Network satellite guy was here...or was it one of the Time-Warner Internet guys...we have had lots of service workers here in the past month! Including the HVAC guys yesterday who finally fixed our upstairs air conditioning system. Oh, I slept so good last night!

For this little pillow, I stitched a border area...no measuring, that's just not me- LOL! I did some "piano key" borders with my magnetic lock on the Gammill, but forgot which way I was going when I rolled down. Anyway, that became a design element, so some of the stitching is vertical and some is horizontal. I promise I don't drink Margaritas before using the long-arm!

The center is just playing around with free-motion stitching.

Yesterday I finally got a call that my Bernina is ready to pick up at the shop, so maybe I can get some of my quilt backings and this pillow put together.

Since I am doing a demo with my Babylock Embellisher on Thursday night, I have been putting together some little pieces of fiber samples. Here are a few bookmarks, with ribbons and Angelina, beads and ribbons.

Some silk and Angelina on batting...

and on dark cotton (there is a piece of painted muslin in thecenter under the silk)

some silk fibers and Angelina on a piece of dyed Dupioni silk, which I found out bleeds terribly!

I did not know this fabric would bleed so bad. I bought a pack of mixed colors of the Dupioni silk at a quilt show in Illinois years ago, and have been hoarding it and using it sparingly in projects. When I did the one above, I wet the piece after needle-felting, and that's when my bathroom sink turned purple. This will probably be used for fabric postcards.

One last bit of WIP news about my Oriental wholecloth quilt: I decided I had done all I could with the piece as is, but it still needed something. I hit on the idea of making it the view out of a Japanese window. That would require some kind of borders. So I did a little research on Japanese architecture, and found out that the name Zen Garden would be incorrect for this quilt. Zen Gardens do not have water features, just stones, plants, and raked gravel. The gardens represent landscapes such as mountains. But Zen Gardens are not the ones with the bridges over ponds. So, that WIP will get a new, more accurate name.

I am off to weed some flower beds before it gets too hot, and then to drive to Raleigh again to pick up my beloved Bernina!

Needle-Felted WIP's

Here are some new pics of what I have been working on during the few hours of time in the mornings before I report to work.

This is the first project from the Trash to Treasure fabric from the Creative Challenge. I took the largest piece, quilted it to a piece of muslin with dark green and bright pink threads, and folded it to make a clutch-style purse. The flap is kind of funky and wavy. The lining is a fuchsia-colored moire fabric. Right now the flap is just pinned down until I decide what type of closure to use. I also left openings for a strap, but am undecided about whether or not I want one.

Then, I was messing around with my BabyLock Embellisher, and tried to create a fabric with similar colors as the Trash Bag fabric, but not as crunchy in texture! This piece has only a piece of commercial cotton as the base. It is a beautiful painterly-looking fabric with gold metallic dots. I have added silk fibers and some rainbow organza that I stamped with turquoise metallic paint. I also added some Angelina and yarns. I wet-felted the piece, then zapped with a heat gun. I am loving the look of this.

The last piece is needle-punched to a piece of soft cotton batting. I covered it with some orange hand-dyed fabric, and just added some silk, organza, sari ribbon, organza, and other bits of fabric. This may become a postcard background.

Finally, I received the first of the two Collage Mania pieces I purchased in the mail yesterday. Fluttering is even more beautiful in person. Please visit Annette Rogers' website to be blown away by her talent in painting and fiber art. We have had a nice e-mail correspondence, during which I found out she lives in Raleigh and also has a house in the North Carolina mountains not far from our place.

Embellishing Fun

During this week, when the weather outside was cold and wintry, I spent a couple of afternoons entertaining myself with my Babylock Embellisher machine. I finished two small art quilts that I began right after Christmas.

I definitely was imagining a warmer place and time...

The first of these is called "Tropical Waters." I remember being in Nassau and watching each wave roll in, and admiring all the shades of blue and green.

Tropical Waters, 2009, 6" x 6"

The fibers include silk tussah tops, wool roving, Angelina, Tinzel, Dupioni silk, and cotton. I actually incorporated an old experiment in making fantasy fabric with water-soluble stabilizer and stitching together. After needle-felting the top together, I took it to my Bernina and quilted swirly waves. I added some tiny seed beads to the waves, surf, and sand for additional shine. The border is zigzagged with a silver thread that also has a little silk roving tucked in.

Tropical Waters, details

The next piece is very similar, but I added yarns to make a tropical island. I have never been to a tropical island with mountains rising practically from the shore, but I can imagine one! This one has a bit of dimension at the edge of the beach to represent shrubbery. OK, I should have started quilting in the center, because the fibers bulged up, but didn't that add a design element?

Tropical Island, 2009, 6" x 8"

Then, I decided to try a project from the book Needle-Felting Magic by Margo Duke. This brooch includes chiffon and silk from the two scarves I purchased last weekend, some silk sari ribbon with a silver glitter stripe, some yarns and ribbons, a little glitter glue, some shiny beads, and a few of those charms I made from shrink plastic last summer. It is a little over three inches in diameter.

Valentine Brooch, 2009

All of these pieces will be for sale in my Etsy shop soon. I can't decide how to hang the little quilts. I am considering mounting them to stretched artist canvas, but am toying with mounting on Plexiglas.

More Fun with Felt

Yesterday, we took down all the Christmas lights and decorations. They always come down a lot faster than they go up. I set a goal to have it all done by 5:00 PM. We almost made it, until it was time to take down the undecorated tree. Our tree this year was ten feet tall, hand-selected by my husband in Ashe County the week of Thanksgiving. We had to purchase a new base for it to hold water. The trunk was too fat for our old base. Plus, I wanted to be double-sure that no water would leak on the new wood floors. So, DH starts peering under the tree to un-bolt the tree from the base...and discovered that some sort of insect decided to breed in the water over the holidays! EEEEEEEYEWWW! At first, we thought they were spiders, but it turned out that they had wings. Thousands of these things. To me they looked like baby deer flies. Anyway, it took two disgusting hours to clean up all the mess. What a downer of a way to end the holidays!

The day before that (New Year's Eve) I played around some more with the new Embellisher. I bought this copy of Cloth Paper Scissors a while back, and remembered an article by Pokey Bolton on Needle-felted ATC's (Artist Trading Cards.)

I have no desire to make ATC's, but thought it would be fun to make some backgrounds for fabric postcards.

I started with a piece of fuchsia felt, of which I for some reason have vast quantities, and punched down some strips of fabric scraps, mostly in turquoise. Then, I started adding bits of my left-over fibers, and ribbons. I took the piece to my sewing machine and added some machine stitching. Then I cut the piece up into three postcard size pieces, and a few leftover bits.

These were really fun to do, although more time-consuming than you would think. They have lots of layers of stuff, creating some dimension. I will probably add a little bit of beading before making them into postcards.

While working on this project, I experienced the first broken needle on my Baby Lock 12-needle embellishing machine. Got to admit, I was a bit afraid of those twelve needles at first. Mainly, that I would stab my fingers with twelve needles at once! There is a removable finger guard that I do not intend to remove while needle-felting.

Well, I had read that you should not continue to use the machine with a broken needle, even with eleven others to continue the work. I noticed a clunking sound once the needle broke. So, out came the instructions. I was going along fine until I had to put the needle casing back in the machine. A mere forty-five minutes later, I figured out how to do it. The needle casing reminded me of a Gatling gun.

Wishing you all a happy and safe new year with lots of time to try new things!

A little more Christmas...and first felted pieces

Here are a few more holiday photos. My brother-in-law Richard has a new orange kitten named Tigger. Doesn't he look like he belongs on a December calendar here?
Soon after that shot, he began eating the pinecones. He and CJ spent most of their time chasing and teasing each other.
We had a new great-nephew this year. Here is my BIL ,Grandpa Grady, with his son Philip's baby, Zach. He was a very friendly baby who looks like he is also very well-fed!

Yesterday I finally started playing with my new toy, the Baby Lock embellishing machine. I started out with a small pink felt square and added wool roving and Angelina, yarns, and sari ribbon.

It is great to just move the piece under the machine, and never have to worry about starting and ending threads! Later I added a piece of sheer fabric with gold spots, and burned some of it off with the heat gun. That sort of finished the edges of the felt.

I found an issue of Quilting Arts with some felted backgrounds for landscapes, so I tried a couple of those. You use netting on the back and top, layer yarns and roving in between, safety pin, and needle-felt. These were fun and could be some future postcards.

Finally, I got a piece of lime-green fleece and used most of my pile of thread, ribbon and yarn bits. It ended up looking sort of like a strange-colored forest. The fleece really got distorted, though. Probably too stretchy to make a good base.

On all of these pieces, I liked the back side as well as the front. Better even, on this green one!