Saucy Ladies - Day 3

I went out this morning, shopping for Hair.
Harder than I thought. I have a few ideas I'll audition tomorrow.

For now, the girls are all stitched down and they found their dancing shoes.

Saucy Ladies - Day 2

This is going very smoothly. I think I had made all the decisions before hand.
I kept the background simple and uncluttered with minimal stitching.

The girls are in place, anchored but the edges are only partially sewn down.

I have the hair for the gal on the right, but I need to go to the store tomorrow to find a red or orange mitten to unravel for the hair for my other lady.

And the shoes.
I made a beach. Heels don't seem right? But they are the easiest.
Colour?
Don't know yet.

Saucy Ladies - Day 1 - Finally

After a few false starts, here we are.

And there are two of the three fabrics that needed to be used. The last is a sky blue.

I'm happy with the crayon highlights even after I changed the 'pink' for a more intense sample.
The suits are fused but the ladies will be needle turned.

Well Its Only Been a Week!

Still haven't started on my challenge piece.
A friend brought a quilt for me to finish. How can I say no.
I still have plenty of time. 

This was a lovely rich design and she choose a deep rust to finish it with. I'm not a big fan of high contrast on the backside. As some one pointed out to me I'm hypercritical of my own work. When I'm working on someone's quilt I'm too close to it and I see every little slip and tremor. But in the end it is lovely, as you can see.

It just took a long time.
I just had another birthday and standing on my feet for days? didn't agree with my feet like it use to. I took a lot of breaks.
I think I need to raise my prices.

Oh! I missed a spot! Can you find it?
Fixed it. MY friend was kind enough to send a picture if the quilt on her bed.
I love to see where they will go.

Preping some Old 'STASH'

To end a busy week we decided it was time to move things around in my workroom. We've had a mouse issue this winter past so some items have to go.
One thing I gave a couple of lazy hours to, 11 discarded shirts .
196 buttons later, I have 11 piles of very nice material. Hubby liked this brand of shirt and I loved the sand washed colours.

They deserve to be used together in a project.
The collars and cut offs?
Great in the garden.

Guild Challenge - 2018

Time to get down to work as this piece needs to be complete by April 10.

Our Tri-annual quilt show is this fall. As usual the guild has offered some Northcott fabrics for their Challenge. (As usual its a tad.......ugly?)

The theme is 'Anything but Square'
Now that's a deceptively simple? concept. So simple I've sat on these fabrics since last fall trying to become inspired by fabric I don't like and would never use.

But in the last few months I've simply been trying to work up the nerve.
Why?
Because I came across a wonderful piece of art by Jenny Klevering, a hugely popular European artist.
It took awhile to hunt her down as my first contact was via Pinterest. People are not always consistent or accurate when it comes to giving sources. But I managed to work back many levels and contacted her in Germany. She happily gave me permission to make a rendition in cloth and is looking forward to my efforts.

Why the nerve?
Well by North America standards some may think it in poor taste or grotesque.
I LOVE IT!
I have since the moment I laid eyes on it.

Those two rather "BUSY and GAUDY" fabrics will make wonderful bathing suites, albeit very small.

I've spend quite a bit of time already on head stuff. The hows and whats.
The flesh is the only real issue here. The shading and shadowing are an integral part so I played with crayons first.

I still want to try some other materials but I think after this weekend, away with the Grand, I should be in the head space I need.
Stay Tuned.

Second Quilt for my Friend

This one was more twin in size.
The 'panels' had a oriental feel (materials) so I adapted a feather /leaf pattern to have a Ginkgo feel. The fill between the panels and the border is freehand bars.
The backside shows the stitching better. The two parallel lines down the length of the the fill area are marks from the basting I applied. Its been removed to leave only the bars. The marks/creases will disappear with use and/or a wash.

More Silly Fun - "Fleecing" the lamb

I found a few minutes to play with this fellow today.
The contrast of the 'white' coat helps with the realism. If this was all white, the dark eyes and muzzle would stand out and add to it. They don't show on the brown.
So I put white over the brown body.
Better. But................
Right now I don't know where the wool ends, tapers, thins.
I need to see the legs and the areas around the neck and ears.......up close and personal.

Back to the internet?

Time out for a Quilt

Blue and white are my favourite colours, my high school colours actually.
This was a nice lazy pattern of imperfect and irregular feathers.
It was a Queen size so the quilting did take two days.

Workshop with Maggie Vanderweit

We're lucky in Guelph to have this talented artist live nearby. It gives us access to a lot of her workshops.      http://www.stonethreads.ca/

She gave an Abstract workshop yesterday for a large number of my guild members.
I attended.
I've decided I STILL don't understand ABSTRACT.
I just don't get it. I'm sure it has a lot to do with my expectations.
I was very comfortable with the first part. We distressed the canvases by cutting them apart and reassembling them. That was mindless, but I really didn't know where to go from there.

I saturated mine with paint while others were more delicate? adventuresome? using stencils and stamps.

I was disappointed with my results at the time, (though one was acceptable), but today I'm feeling a bit more kindly towards all four of the pieces. Maggie said I would!

This morning even the backsides had their merits.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!

But that's why we attend workshops to step out of our comfort zones. Maybe we should attend with NO expectations.

LOL

The first of each series is the raw distressed canvas. That was fun. Yesterday I hated this one. I'm feeling warmer towards it now.

Unfortunately a worm slipped into my head and this now evokes the monster from the Netflicks "Stranger Things". But maybe that's OK.

 The back has an entirely different feel!

Yesterday this had been the best of the lot. Today? Nope!

A friend tried to salvage this one by applying some of my cheesecloth. I would have used red, she chose pink. It DID make a difference.

This last one???? Doh!

So I haven't a clue what I'm going to do with these. It will be interesting to see if this experience affects my future work in any way. I still have the cloth I created last summer with Maggie.
At the moment.....it's too precious to use.
Thanks Maggie!!

Felting - Evolution in Action

From pig to burro! 😁

(Straight pins for eyes..not wasting my purchased eyes $ on these first efforts.....rather funny. If I had red pins for eyes..............)