Summer Afternoon - Day 4

Its not as though I work all day on this.
Since the heat broke yesterday evening, there's time spent in garden, weeding of course, and catching up with the neighbours, these are important too.

The stitching fill for this is not intended to be total. I'm leaving gaps. It softens the look.
One more session should finish it.

I stopped today...... because the bobbin ran out.
As good a reason as any.
Now for a book, on the chaise, in the garden.

Summer Afternoon - Day 3

Finally found some time this afternoon and started in on finishing the trees themselves.

After stitching the branch pattern in the upper left corner, I worked for about 2 hours 'drawing' leaves.
I don't usually use variegated threads on these pieces but today it fit.

A cooling summer storm has finally started to roll through town, so that enough work with the machinery today. I'll enjoy the rain for now.

Squirrel - Final

A hour of fussy cutting liberated this frisky guy. For a little insurance I coloured the cut edges with the wet ink pencils. Sometimes the white bating peeks through.
Adding more fur in the appropriate colour anchored this fellow securely.
A small piece of 'branch' grounds him.

Early Morning Painting

Really early morning stuff.
Nothing on my agenda today so I finally took myself outside at 6:30 AM to paint in the cool still air. The weather has been too hot during the day to consider but I'd gradually moved things out of storage so I could act at a moments whim and replenish my fabrics.

I have a goal in mind.
Northern lights.
Yes, I can abstractly cut fabric and suggest the impression but I think I should be able to get paint to do a reasonable job.  Its the fading off into nothing, and they way the colours cross without blending that is still just out of reach.
If I used opaque paint then the lightness would disappear, so I need to play, play play with the transparent pigments.

First 4 off the line.

Playing with 'barely there' I added salt to force the paint to move and hung it up to control the direction.

The drama created by the pigment movement is astounding, and the wetter the fabric the better the action.

Each is different but reminiscent of sky or water.
A quick hot iron set the paint so these pieces are ready for phase two.
We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Pesky Squirrels

I needed to be down stairs with the laundry. I decided it was a good time for a quick thread sketched squirrel.
After drawing the pose onto a piece of semi rigid stabilizer, I coloured it using watercolour pencils. A quick brush wash and the colours blended. Now the white background is partially concealed.

I added a piece of batting behind. This was all done using quilting weigh thread only.