Velvet Night Garden

Finished my velvet piece in time to show at our Tote & Gloat show tomorrow. Click on any photo to see more details.
Have a look at how this project started here, then I added foils here, so began the next stage with this

Since last time I have just added some black misty fuse with a few wee stars and bronze glitter to add to the night sky feel.

Next step was to audition different colours of organza overlays. Amazing what different looks they give to the piece.

Bronze

Silver

Cerise Pink

Black

Lime Green

Comparing silver and black

I think Angie often uses black, but my choice was the silver in the end - I like the sparkle...and so to stitch.

I stitched with metallic threads mainly in the bobbin. If you outline quilt in black first from the top, you can easily see where you are going from the back. Of course there is still an element of surprise when you turn it over.

Last step was to trim the organza away from the background. This the finished piece before being framed.

Hope you have a fun weekend.

Calendar challenge : April/May

The warm autumn colours of my April base turned out to be appropriate for the wonderful indian summer weather we've had this past month

I managed to keep up with filling in the days, but have been concentrating on stitchy projects this month, so it finished without many other changes.

For May, I turned to my new acquisition of Dylusions sprays. As I'm sure most of you know, they are wonderfully bright colours, and are making me so happy.

I'm even saving the paper towels from my experiments for later use ;-)

I had been really inspired by this Youtube video of a ghosting technique by Dylan Reaveley (creator of Dylusions)

I sprayed some gorgeous colours on my ordinary journal paper and had a go, but the ghosting didn't work as well as I'd hoped....I think it looks better in the photo than in real life actually.

I had been hoping for more regular spaces to write in. I wasn't sure if the sprays had soaked into my paper too much, so I gessoed my pages first

Liked that different look, and then tried again with the water.

Liking this as a background, including the happy accident that I hadn't cleaned the stencil first so when I tipped it over I got this lovely gold glisten transferred over on the right hand page.
I'm consumed with trying to finish a couple of stitching projects before an exhibition on Saturday, so here's what I've managed for my base page for May. I cut the letters and journal squares from the paper of the original trial. Imagine they are glued down!!

Come back 1st June to see how this page ends up. See other pages at the kathryn wheel, or check out our flickr group.
And I know I always say this, but Geninne's art for your desktop this month is especially lovely
Happy May

Little Girl's Quilt

I finised the second baby quilt last week. You might remember the fabrics gathered here.
This one is for a wee girl and started off like this

The colours were fine, but the balance of pattern interest was off...

until I added butterflies

I added some fusible to the back of a couple of butterfly print fabrics, then fussy cut and ironed them on. They have now been edge stitched as part of the quilting.

Thrilled with the end result.

So pretty don't you think?