Another Play Day

Working with friends yesterday and we had a productive yet fun day. Last week we did some playing and spread threads, yarns, rovings and fabric pieces on a foundation then covered them with light weight fabric and free motion stitched over the top anchoring everything down. Then we ironed them under baking paper to melt the light weight fabric, which melted a little. Forgot the heat gun so we could really give it some heat. We were happy with our play day. A couple of postcards were made with the pieces.
Forgot the camera that day and didn't take any photos. Yesterday we had another play day and I did take photos. Working from pictures Lexie and Trish made Journal size pieces after we did some melting of fabrics with the heat gun.

Lexie's Leaves
Our friendly photographer worked with a great photo she'd taken of leaf litter. some of the leaves are free motion stitched to give a 3D look to the piece. More stitching to come.






Trish's Beach Scene
This beach scene is looking great and I look forward to seeing it when the stitching is finished. It was fun working with limitied pallets, only choosing from the fabrics they had to hand. I love Trish's rocks at the bottom of the small hill.




This is the piece I played with using some of the pieces we melted. I placed them on a foundation, covered them with black netting then free motion stitched around and over.

New Work Progress

Funny how you start off thinking "This is what I'm going to do" and then you begin and as you start working on the piece the original idea can change and take on a form quite different from what you originally had planned. I started off with the photo below but things have changed drastically. I'm liking where this piece is going, the plan now is to add more leaf shapes that I'm going to find in my garden.

Really happy with the way these leafs worked. I used bleach to paint in the lines and it worked really well.

New Work Started
Took these photos of part my garden. I've always thought the tree trunk would be good to reproduce with fabric. I have begun working on the leaf litter under the pot which I'd like to include in the piece.

This is the start of the leaf litter and I've started working on the grass. I'm using spray glue to build this onto wadding then free motion stitching things down. Its very freeing and so far I'm very happy with the way it looks.

Beach Scene Stage 2
Teresa added some more pieces to her beach scene this week. She's very happy with it and has started the free motion quilting.

Helping Hands
38" x 44"
This is a piece I've been working on for over a year.

Each year we have 'White Balloon Day' to increase public awareness of child abuse. One of my Journal Quilts, (made for the 2004 Quilt Art Journals project) depicted the October event and it occurred to me that the Bravehearts Organisation that works towards helping abused children and raising awareness of abuse might be interested in this piece in a larger format as a fund raiser. I emailed them with a picture of my Journal Quilt and an offer to make a larger one for them and they said yes thankyou.

It has taken longer than I thought as I could only work on it when I was able to deal with its message. Today I'm going to send another email and let them know its ready.

Close Up

and Septembers Journal Quilt.

8 1/2" x 11"

Painted Backgrounds
Had some fun painting some backgrounds to use with my big tree fetish. I love big trees in my quilts.
I sold a couple so now have to do a few more and I haven't been able to use one myself so might have to hide one just for me.

Here are two for you to see.

Teresa's Beach Scene


Working with Teresa yesterday was great fun.
After her success with her first drawing and the piece she made from it she was ready to move on to something larger.
Working with the few dyed fabrics she had and a few pieces from my scrap box this is what she was able to do in only a few hours.
The sky fabric was a bit too blue so we worked on it with a rag soaked in some bleach, dabbing it here and there to give the piece some clouds.
Next time there will be some plants added.
The pink fabric was one of Teresa's largest pieces and the only piece big enough to use as a border, it brightens up the whole piece.

Friends Heads

Had a great weekend with friends and managed to get them to let their hair down and work on a portrait each. Julie-Ann on the right is blossoming into spring and Ann is trying out Tranquility. Not really their type of work or colours but they were happy with their
efforts