Yesterday was one of those miserably hot and humid days that we often experience here in the southern US. Just too hot to handle a big quilt. My sewing room is on the third floor, actually a converted attic space. Even though it is air-conditioned, it never really gets cool on days when it is in the mid-nineties. So, I decided to play with small pieces. I found a small piece of Sulky Solvy water-soluble stabilizer, and made a small sample of Fantasy Fabric using fibers, ribbons, shiny thread, and Angelina. This piece is very small, maybe four by six inches. It looks like ocean to me! And each side looks a little different, because I used turquoise thread on top and a lime green on the bottom.
While I had the Angelina handy, I tried fusing some to Bounce dryer sheets, to get a sort of transparent shimmery stuff. I also fused some Angelina to bright hand-dyed fabric, along with some silk sari ribbon that has a silver center. I used Bo-Nash powder to fuse all this to the fabric. These might make good postcard backgrounds.
Then I fused some Angelina'ed fabric and laundry sheets to a leftover piece of Timtex, the stiff interfacing I use in fabric postcards. I made some funky-shaped bookmarks, then added some beads.
Then I remembered my vow to do all the sample projects in Vikki Pignatelli's book Quilting by Improvisation, and went to the section on improvising blocks. This time I used a light stabilizer by Sulky, and made improvisational log cabins. You just cut the strips for each round in a funky manner, iron under the edge that will cover the previous round, and stitch down with an invisible zigzag or blanket stitch. I got two of these done. I used darks on the center and outer layers, and light or bright greens on the second layer. This might look kind of woodsy if I ever finish enough to make a quilt.
