Sunday, June 5, 2011

Mommie is taking a day off...

OK, well that is not entirely true.  I've spent 3 1/2 days at the "Quilt-o-rama", as my husband calls the local Quilt Show.  I have totally neglected the house, and some of the people in it!  So sweet hubby took the kids to church.  I stayed home and cleaned up clutter around the house.  I still need to dust and finish laundry.  But for the most part it is presentable.  Now I am Enjoying a little reward...
No one tell hubby that I am using the computer and eating at the same time ;)  This is a lovely piece of Dobash that has been in the fridge for 3 days!  Still tastes great.  Prefect with a cup of strong tea.  It's still steeping in the picture.  Don't you love my china.  This is my "good" china, although according to those in the know...it's not GOOD china.  It's was my grandmother Rivas' china.  Therefore it is good to me.  When I was making my tea I couldn't find a tea cup, only mugs.  You can't drink tea from a mug.  So I pulled out one of grandma's cups.  Then I needed a plate...so I thought why not have a solo tea party.  And that's where I am right now....

Rainbow Scrap Challenge....June is Yellow.  Yellow letters wouldn't show up.  And this just looks weird. Yellow is my favorite color.  Unfortunately, yellow can be a hard color to come by.  This is what I started earlier in the week.


 I dyed the yellow fabric and then painted over it with brighter yellows to make it splotchy.  Then I grabbed my flower book and fabric sharpie and wrote Latin names for flowers all over the back.  I thought it needed a little color and dropped blue in areas. Pieced the ground with bright greens and hand appliqued the stems, leaves and flowers.  With all the machine work I've been doing, I have missed the hand work.  I'm thinking about doing hand quilting as well.
I added hand embroidery to the flowers.  The blue flower center is filled with the bullion stitch with green silk thread.  That was fun.  The pink flower center was made with little loopy knots in shiny rayon thread.  This is going to AAQI when it is finished....hey it also works for the Scrap challenge.  Two birds with one stone.

Some of you may have heard me complain about the lack of Fabric stores in Mobile....we have none.  The 2 "craft" stores don't count.  So when we have the quilt shows we look forward to the vendors.  This is what I came home with...
3 beautiful, if not blurry, Batiks.  The yellow I bought 1 yard the others are 1/2 yards.  Daughter #2 said the yellow looks like a giraffe, she's right.  The purple looks like alligator skin.  Really cool.  No ideas on how to use them yet!

 These lovely hand dyes made me drool.  She had lots of beautiful colors and designs.  The top piece is dyed and rusted.  Very COOL!  These will be used in the quilt made from the drawing below.  No my little one did not draw it! :)
I also bought 3 yards of PFD, to see what all the fuss is about.  I usually use plain white, Kona, or really nice muslin.  I keep reading about something called Lutradur, so I bought a yard of that.  I think it's time to play!

Big Question:  We had the Hoffman Challenge "Dolls" traveling show.  I have to make an art doll.  Can any one recommend a good book for a beginner?  I checked one out from the public library, but would like a recommendation.

Happy Quilting
Caren

1 comment:

Angela said...

Love how you made that background fabric. I have just started making fabric dolls and have quite a few books. Most have beginners patterns and ideas in, but they all differ quite a lot. Do you know what sort of thing you want to make? Are you wanting a pattern to follow or something that will guide you in making your own design?