Tote and Gloat

On Saturday our local Quilt Club (Rose City Quilters) had its annual show and tell event. There is a big morning session of showing quilts which are then displayed, and we have a guest speaker, shops and guest exhibitors.

This year my friend Katherine and I were asked to exhibit some of our mixed media fibre art. This is what our display looked like.

There's always plenty of inspiration to be had at these shows. There's  a quilt challenge set for club members....remember this piece of floral fabric when I showed you round my studio?

Unfortunately it hung on my design wall for inspiration but never got made into anything...others made lovely quilts with it. These are my 4 fav ones.

by Anne Adams

by Sonja Revell

by Dianne Southey

by Caroline Noaro

So talented - you won't be surprised to learn that all of the above won prizes.
And of course I had to make a few wee purchases.
I'm looking for a new hand stitching project and am thinking these will be lovely together

I'm also keen on doing something Indian-inspired in the future, so these threads will be perfect.

Next time I'll show you my woven sari ribbon piece finally finished.

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