Hummingbird with Columbine

A lot of quilting on this baby - the thread matches the green so you have to get close to see the texture. Came out really good.

The stamens are embroidery floss soaked in a fabric stiffener then couched on by hand.

Size is 40”x28”

Soothe your soul

Soothe your soul

Cairns made by wrapping batting and fabric over interfacing and sewing each rock separately and then sewing to background. 

Wrapped on 9”x12” canvas

Whales tails in Vermont?

There are two whales tails not far from my house in landlocked Vermont. Here is their story:

Reverence is a sculpture in Vermont created by Jim Sardonis in 1989 that depicts two tails of whales "diving" into a sea of grass. It is meant to symbolize the fragility of the planet. The tails were made from 36 tons of African black granite and stand 12 to 13 feet (3.7 to 4.0 m) tall.

You may have noticed I haven’t been blogging much lately. For one I have almost given up on the blogger platform since I only have an iPad to post and it’s not easy to do . I have started a blog on Wordpress to try it out and may just go with that one. The address is here.

Also I’ve been spending most of my online social quilts time on Facebook in our quilters show and tell group. I’m on there daily and find it more interactive.  When I stop blogger completely I will put up a post with the link to Wordpress. I would love to have you join our show and tell group.

Camels hump art quilt

Drawing a face

Faces are hard for me but after watching a video on the sketchbook revival this past week I learned this. (Unfortunately the classes are over. They were free but for only one week) 

First draw two lines for eyes and one for nose.

Do a little scribble under the eyes

Draw up from the nose into an eyebrow and add an eyebrow over the other eye and add a line for the mouth

Add a smaller line under the lip - nothing over it, keep it simple

Now draw in the outline of jaw, neck and any hair but try to keep it simple.

 Don’t be blue - you can draw faces.

 All your friends will be green with envy when you show them this technique 

In the class she used a heavy watercolor paper and watercolors but since I don’t have watercolor paper and I am a quilter I tried fabric. What makes this technique cool looking is that the lines get blurred. In the class she used regular graphite pencil and then added water with a brush and the pencil lines sort of smeared but you could still see what was going on. She used some of the smear to shade etc. with the fabric that didn’t work. I changed to a charcoal pencil and it was better  but not great. Inktense pencils might work really well with this but I haven’t tried that yet. I did take a spray bottle and wet it all then took a regular colored pencil and colored. It blended some. I’m going for a blended ethereal look. Although these two are far from that. This was all for fun and play and this is an easy way to do a face.

Try it! You can do this!

Mellow yellow

The goal is to make a quilt using yellow and from the color wheel (which I never use) pick the color or colors to go with it.

Yes, yet another challenge. This one is from step into your art 2019 on Facebook. Sorry I can’t include the link as the iPad app I use for blogger won’t do links

I picked purple, a complimentary color

Out come the scraps

Onto the machine using quilt as you go

Although I have the need to quilt the hell out of everything (that is the fun part after all)


I love how the quilting came out, leaving those purple strips I quilted makes them really pop. So much texture in this one.

This one is from start your art 2019.is from start your art 2019.his one is from start your art 2019.

Big yellow taxi quilt

My quote challenge is finished. It’s actually song lyrics but adjoining Mitchell thought them up and said them many times so in my mind that’s a quote (close enough)

They took all the trees

And put them in a tree museum

And they charged all the people

A dollar and a half to see 'em

Don't it always seem to go

That you don't know what you've got

'Till it's gone

They paved paradise

And they put up a parking lot

One of my favorite songs and one that resonates with me since the city I live in just loves to cut down trees and put up buildings and parking lots.

The lyrics are written (quilted) all around the border

The tree museum 😂

Improv log cabins

After watching a Craftsy show called mini mojo’s I knew I had to try these wonky log cabins. Just take a bunch of scraps and haphazardly sew them together in a log cabin fashion. So much fun! No worries about straight cuts, seam allowances - just color. In the class she added stitching like you see on the left cabin and it does add that extra handmade - ness factor that I like. She called it quilting and I suppose technically it is but my mother taught me how to hand quilt and this is not it. Ok Carol, get with the modern program, go with the flow and accept change. It took me awhile to embrace modern quilting and now I really like it so give me some time to call a running stitch with 3 strands of embroidery floss quilting. (Sorry Mom) 😳

 Of course I made it into a journal cover and quilt cabana quilts is having a monthly challenge with this month being improv so posted it on her group.


Here is the back.

Have you embraced modern quilts? Would you call this quilting or stitching?

Pollinators quilt bee

All we are saying ........ is give bees a chance  ✌️🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶

Pollinators hummingbird quilt

Well apparently blogger is not letting my iPad app show photos

Please go to https://fabric.art.blog/2019/03/15/pollinators-hummingbird-quilt/ to see. Sorry for the hassle

I love how this came out. I searched thru my stash for hours looking for the background and finally ended up with this mottled purple. So glad I did.

I had big problems with the bud but after much trying this and that finally fixed it.

The humming bird is from a pattern I have for sale on Etsy. Just enlarged it a bit and put it with this hot pink flower.

We still have snow on the ground so I need to look at hot pink flowers and green borders. 

Sea foam quilting design

I love this quilting design that I saw on Christina Cameli’s Craftsy class. I think she called it sea foam.

 It has great texture and goes fast. You normally wouldn’t have all these color changes. This is my test sandwich for whenever I change thread or bobbin to make sure things are going right this the many colored threads.


Basically you start with a wiggled line going up and down. Make sure not to make your wiggles the same as the line next to it. You don’t want to echo here. Randomly wiggle and randomly make a little pocket as shown in the blue. Fill with pebbles and continue. Try it - it really is easy once you get going.

My hummingbird quilt is almost ready for the binding. I had one roadblock but I fixed it.

I probably should have left this alone but got it in my head I didn't like the color.

So I painted it with inktense blocks but liked it even less.


But adding these snippets left over made it Oooh la la! 

I’ll have it ready to unveil next week.

I came across this beautiful barred owl yesterday and it had broken its wing and couldn’t fly. Luckily someone came along and arranged for someone to come and rescue it and brought it to the rehabilitation center. Unfortunately they said the wing is broken really bad and he might have to be euthanized. He’s going to a vet today to find out for sure. If he does at least he won’t suffer out in the below zero weather and starve to death since he can’t hunt not being able to fly and we gave him a fighting chance. I stood there and we locked eyes for a few minutes. Owls are magical birds. 

Pollinator quilts

I’m working on a quilt to be in an exhibit about pollinators. If it weren’t for the bees, butterflies, insects and others we wouldn’t have anything to eat. Then we die. I’d say that was important. With all the land being torn up, trees and vegetation chopped down for the never ending buildings that seem to have to be build for some reason unknown to me we should all value and grow plants around our homes. Less grass, more plants, flowers and yes weeds. Think twice before you pull up that milkweed next time. Monarch butterflies need them to live on. 

Ok, off my soapbox and on to the quilt.

I spent a lot of time experimenting with butterfly making. I learned to draw them

And tried a few making a few for a quilt

This guy came out kinda creepy and no way can I get him on a quilt but he’s kinda cool anyway. Maybe I’ll hang him up somewhere

In the end I ended up with this one for my quilt

His wings are done using heavyweight fusible on both the orange parts and the whole wing. I made another wing the same but in reverse and fused them together so it has both sides you can see. The orange fabric didn’t thrill me on its own so I dabbed on some yellow paint. That thrilled me 🥰

The white dots are also paint dabbed in with the wrong end of a paintbrush. The body was fused on the quilt first and then using black thread the legs and “hairy ness “ is free motion quilted while also sewing the wings on. Because the wings are reversible they are only sewn to the quilt near the body.

And here is the quilt! I used a half layer of wool batting and a layer of thin cotton and the quilting really shows up nicely. The idea of the quilting came from a quilt I saw on the quilt shows newsletter. It didn’t have the fillers but the idea of a sun like circle in the corner and then rays filtering down. Filing this idea for future quilts.

Signing off for now from ice covered frozen Vermont ! I can’t wait for spring

Fairy bowl

After watching this video on how to make a small “bowl” from scraps and soluble stabilizer I thought I would try it.

 Cut up yarn, felt, anglena

 Another layer of the soluble put on top and sewn with a crosshatching 

 Covered a jar with plastic and rubber band to hold it down then dried overnight.

 And there you have it! A fairy bowl.

 Not very practical but are fairies practical? I think not.

 Someone on Facebook suggested putting one of those tea lights in it so my fairy bowl now sits on my mantel lighting the way for all the fairies that live in my house 🥰

High

I finished my quilt for the page 20 challenge. You take any non quilts magazine, open to page 20 and make a quilt from something from that page. 

The first magazine I saw had an article about legalizing marijuana in our state so I took the word “high”

I’m afraid of heights and this is as close as I will ever come to looking down from a tLl building. Makes me dizzy just looking at this. 

Made using mostly fusible appliqué. 

There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in

 I just finished this challenge quilt. The challenge was a quilt with the theme “ into the light”

 A favorite Leonard Cohen quote was my first thought. The color illuminating around the crack is made using inktense water color blocks. 

 Then to balance I needed another quote and found this one. 

The light light at the end of the tunnel is not an illusion...........  the tunnel is.

Think about it 😎

The great gatsby quilt

I’m a member of an art quilt challenge Facebook group and our challenge was to make a quilt based on a book that has been banned at one time (or still) you would be amazed at some of the books people don’t think other people should read. This is a free country, right? 

Anyway, I had never read the great gatsby which was on the list of banned books and loved the book! Probably the reason it was banned was the fact that Daisy’s husband was a bigot and said some things unacceptable in today’s world but people need to realize this book was written in 1925. Things were very different back then. The racial slurs have nothing to do with the story line what so ever. 

Remember when Gatsby looked longingly across the bay at the green light on Daisy’s dock at night? 

I’ve been wanting to try improv curved piecing and thought this would be a great place to do it and it worked out nicely.

I used inktense  blocks for the light and then added a bit of stitching around the light part.

And on the back is a quote from the book.

I love challenges because it makes me think out of the box. The next one we are doing is to take a non quilt / crafty magazine, open it to page 20 and make a quilt inspired by something on that page . Can be a word, article , ad, color, feeling - whatever. Just has to come from page 20. It’s every two months so there is plenty of time and if you are late the quilt police will not be sent for you. It’s a no stress group.

Come join us here !