Arrgh!

And that's not in the pirate sense of the word!

DH and I were watching TV last night. I was so upset by the violence in the program I had to get up and go do something else. I soothed myself by making a couple of collages in my studio journal and then got ready for bed. Unfortunately, I was so stimulated by the creative juices that I couldn't go to sleep for hours! Now I'm unable to resurrect that creative energy because I'm sleep deprived. Arrrgh!

One day last week I finally picked up my needle and thread and finished beading my journal quilt for May. Remember this?

Part of the reason I got stalled on it was that I didn't know what to use for the backing. I like my backs to relate to the fronts in most cases, and particularly in this case because of the gravity of the subject. In another case of serendipity I was online one day some time ago, probably looking at sale fabric. There was a lovely antique map print that I had to have even though I had no apparent reason to buy it (that I knew of at the time anyway). Turns out it was perfect for the back of this little quilt. I was able to fussy-cut the portion of the world map that featured both China and Burma. I chose the easy route and used it for the binding as well.

So here's my completed 8.5" x 11" quilt that commemorates the cyclone that devastated Burma and the earthquakes that rocked China early in May of this year:

To recap, the heart is made of a silk chrysanthemum damask. Both the color white and the chrysanthemum are symbols of mourning or lamentation in Asia. The pieced background symbolizes the robes of the Buddhist monks who did their best to care for and comfort the survivors. The beads represent the tears shed for lost loved ones.

Technically this will be the last quilt in my series of 12 journal quilts for the Bead Journal Project of 2007-08. I still have the tops from February and April to embellish though so I'm not actually done yet...

Don't Mess With My Great Grandma!

So I found a copy of a picture of young Eva and her husband. Notice who's holding the gun.

Apparently Eva was not only a skilled needlewoman, she was also a crack shot!

We've had three consecutive days of sunshine so far. Whoopee! All the mothballed linens spent time outside and seem to be fragrance free now. In fact, they smell like they've been washed and dried on a line. I love that smell. If we had more dry days around here I'd be tempted to have a clothesline installed.

The beads I ordered for the background of my May journal quilt arrived. Because they were size 11 delicas I assumed they would be the same size as the size 11 seed beads I had on hand. Wrong! They are smaller. They are also a slightly different shape (all of this probably would not have been a surprise to a more experienced beader). I decided to use them anyway because that shape sits better on the surface of the quilt. Because they are smaller, however, I'm finding that I'm sewing them much closer together than I had originally intended. I may have to buy yet another tube of beads!

The beading is going more quickly than I thought it might. I'm trying to leave enough room around the perimeter of the piece to allow room for the presser foot of my sewing machine when I sew the binding on the quilt. I've run into problems with that in the past. That means that once I have the binding applied, but before I sew it down, I'll have to go back and add beads to fill in the gaps next to the binding.

Hopefully sometime during this process I'll come up with an actual title for this journal quilt.

Another Heart

Well, it's been a full week since my last post. What can I say? I've had several minor reactions to chemical exposures. Taken on their own, none of them would have been much more than a blip in my activities. But the cumulative effect seems to have taken a larger toll. There's been a lot of down time. And DH has left on a road trip, taking every camera we own with him. I made sure to get at least a few pictures I could use here before he left :- )

I have done a little more work on my wonky hearts but I'm not going to show you that yet. What I want to share today is this month's journal quilt. It's another heart, this time for the people of Burma and China.

It's 8.5" x 11" like all the other journal quilts I've been making. I used a silk damask for the heart and a batik and a hand dyed cotton for the background. The silk has a chrysanthemum design woven into it. There's a reference on Wikipedia that says in the Chinese culture white chrysanthemums are symbolic of lamentation. White is the color of mourning in Eastern cultures. I chose the background color to represent the Buddhist monks who have been in the backgound of both countries, providing both physical and spiritual support to the people.

At this point I don't have any specific ideas for embellishments. My first thought was clear or silvery seed beads to represent tears. We'll see.

Bead Journal Project for March

Yes, now that it's May - and Mother's Day to boot - I have finished my journal quilt for the month of... March. Actually, it's been done for several days now. It just seemed appropriate to hold off showing you the final product until today. ;- )

This is "Mother Hen," completed:



A detail shot of the two chicks that have already flown the coop...

As well as a shot of the last one to leave the nest...

In my first post about this quilt I mentioned that I was in search of the perfect thing to use in the background areas to embellish and/or quilt the piece. I bought a skein of rayon floss that I thought I might blend with regular cotton floss, but I also bought beads. As you can see, I went with the beads. They are not the beads that I had in mind for the background but they are what the local bead shop had that would work. And actually, they work quite well. They are size 8 triangles in a gold/green colorway. The colors are perfect, and the triangles lay nicely on the surface of the quilt. They're just bigger than I wanted (I would have gone for size 10 if I'd had the option).

Overall I'm very happy with the way this turned out. When I first pulled the fabrics for this particular journal quilt I had no idea or plan to make yet another self portrait. There are just so many facets to any human being! I could probably continue to make self portrait quilts but frankly, I'm getting a little bored with myself. I would like to move on to other subject matter. To that end I have signed up for Sharon B's Studio Journal class through Joggles.com. Class doesn't begin until the end of June so in the meantime I bought Robin Atkins' newest book to read and ponder and play in. I had to have DH make a slight alteration to the book's format however.

All the lovely full-color photographs just created too many fumes for my body to cope with. The sheet protectors don't seem to be a problem for me (!) so now I can put the pages in a used binder and be inspired any time I need it :- )

Ooo, the sun just came out! Woohoo! Time to grab my new book and go absorb some vitamin D.

Happy Mother's Day!

Back to Everyday Life

Our regional weather guy keeps saying there's been sunshine in the area but I sure haven't seen any lately. The sky outside my studio window always seems to be one shade of gray or another. Which is probably why I need these sunshine-yellow flowers on the back deck where I can seem them at meal times!


The temperatures are a little closer to what they're supposed to be for this time of year but the sunshine has a greater impact for me. I am grateful, however, that we have not suffered any tornadoes or cyclones or other natural (or man-made) disasters.

My friend C~ was over here the other day to show me a quilt she'd recently acquired, I think at an antique shop. Except that it's obviously not an antique. The 'boxes' are all made from a fabric I recognize but can't give you any details about because I don't remember where or when I've seen it before. The seller thought the centers of the boxes looked like prints from the 1970's.

It's quilted in a simple undulating line. There are a few small holes in the backing, through which C~ has determined that the batting may be an 80-20 poly-cotton blend. I think she said she paid all of $35 for the quilt. Pretty good deal, I'd say!

I finished my journal quilt for March but haven't photographed it yet. That leaves three more journal quilts to complete for the Bead Journal Project this year. February's quilt needs to be embellished, April and May have to be pieced and embellished. I have an idea for my Take It Further postcard quilt for this month's challenge. We'll see whether that actually gets made or not. And that swap quilt I had to make a second one of? The blogger I was going to swap with has disappeared from the 'net! She hasn't updated her blog in over a month, nor has she responded to my emails to her. I'm a little worried. I hope nothing horrible has happened in her world. I'd sure like to show you what I made though!

Color Me Happy :- )

Woohoo! The sun is shining and I just finished piecing my journal quilt for March!


Yes, yes, I still have a bit of work to do to actually finish it but at least it's pieced! You can see my original thoughts and the fabrics I'd pulled for this quilt here. If you do go back to look at that post you'll see that I ended up not using most of the fabrics I'd pulled. And instead of going with the 'spring chicken' theme I'm calling this one "Mother Hen." Which is very appropriate as another self portrait because I have three children. Two of them have flown the coop; one is still at home, not quite ready to break out of his shell.

For such a small quilt this one sure took a lot of time and effort to produce. First there was the decision to focus on just the one piece of chicken fabric. Then I auditioned green fabrics and brown fabrics and novelty prints and African prints. Very little of what I had wanted to be included in this quilt. They were either too bright, too busy, the wrong hue, etc., etc, etc. I pieced and unpieced and repieced. But I'm happy with what I have now, and delighted to be able to move on to thinking about quilting and embellishments.

It would be nice to go out and really enjoy the sunshine today but I don't dare. It's Saturday, and everyone has their gas powered lawn mowers fired up. Who knows what pesticides or herbicides they may be spreading on their lawns (and thus putting into the air)? Because it's so pretty there will be a lot of people out on the roads too. I don't go shopping or to weekend events very often anymore because of the exhaust fumes and assorted other pollutants that take such a toll on my body. I'm going to stay inside and enjoy feeling healthy for a change! (For as long as I can get away with it anyway.)

Keep Your Fingers Crossed!

Well. Between the head cold and hormone fluctuations and chemical exposures it's been about two weeks since I've felt completely like myself. This is the second day in a row that I've felt this strong. Woohoo! Sure hope I can keep this up.

About the only stitching I've done in that time was to finish up my journal quilt...

FROM OCTOBER!

Yes. Finally.

(I only wish I could get a better picture of it for you!)

You saw it most recently just after I'd swapped out the heart charm for the pirate head bead. I had thought I would use more skull beads, perhaps in a fringe, but once I got all the lime green seed beads on I decided it was done. I also had ideas for some three dimensional effects with the seed beads. That didn't happen either. Sometimes, apparently, less is more.

Part of what helped me to finish this in a more understated way were my husband's comments. I don't often seek out the opinions of others as I'm working on a piece but I was so stuck on this one that I broke that pattern. He was the one that finally gave me a title for this piece that sounded true to me: "Gatekeepers."

Now all I have to do is get caught up on my journal quilts for February, March, and April!

It's Official

I have a cold. Which is sort of ironic seeing as how I wear a mask over my nose and mouth everytime I go out in public and otherwise live in virtual isolation. I suspect my darling little petrie dishes (otherwise known as granddaughters) passed it to me on the sly. Them, I can forgive. However, that household is now coping with a 3 day stomach virus. They can just keep that to themselves, thank you very much!

I have done a bit more beading on my journal quilt from last October. This is what it used to look like:

What you may not be able to see are the lime green glass seed beeds surrounding the patch of large skulls to the right of center. Those same seed beads line the perimeter of the small dark patch of skulls in the upper left corner. I have three rats sewn to the piece, another skull, and a full skeleton. Between the skull and the skeleton is a heart, secured with another lime green bead. And that's how this piece has sat for the last five months.

This is how it looks now:

I have lined more of the focal patches with the seed beads and removed the heart charm. It has been replaced by the pirate skull. I have some more skull beads I'm thinking of incorporating into this piece. It remains to be seen whether my plan for them will work or not.

I think one of the reasons I've had such a hard time moving this piece forward is that I did not have a driving vision for it when I started it. There's no story behind it, or in it, and I've never had a title for it that felt right. At the moment I'm thinking of it as my Rogue's Gallery. That may help me to get it done.

I wanted to also share with you some intuitive piecing I've been doing. I see a house and a tree and a butterfly in this bit. All from piecing scraps and crumbs together!

Bead Journal Project for March

I've been so involved in other projects this month that I've hardly given the journal quilt for March a thought. We're rapidly approaching the half-way point of the month, however, and those other projects are either done or very close to being done. It's time to think about the BJP for March!

One of the things my friend C~ shared with me when she was here recently were some fat quarters of African prints she'd picked up for a quilt she wants to make. I have two stacks of African prints on my shelves, also collected for at least one quilt sometime in the future. Her fabrics got my juices flowing so I pawed through mine to reacquaint myself with them. The ones that caught my eye as I fondled them all featured birds. I pulled them out and thought some more...


They all seem to be variations on a theme: chickens.

Hmm. Easter falls on March 23 this year. Chickens, eggs, Easter... hmm...

Spring arrives officially on the 20th of this month according to the calendar. Well, I'm no spring chicken anymore... By jove, I think I've got it! Now all I have to do is "make it work!"

January BJP Update

So I put the TIF postcard quilt (see previous post) aside to wait for beads and went back to my 'Gemini' journal quilt for the Bead Journal Project. I was going through my stash, looking for something to fill in the background area, when I came across some tiny star sequins. Stars? How appropriate! I even had just the right colors :- )

All the quilt lacks now is a backing and binding. I'm not sure what color I'll end up using for the binding but I'm leaning toward white at this point. We'll just have to see what looks best when I start auditioning fabrics. Here's a close-up:

On another front, I've been wanting to try the Disappearing 9-Patch pattern ever since I saw Calamity Kim playing with it for a doll quilt challenge. Over the weekend I finally did just that and produced this preemie quilt:

Now I want to do a scrappy version! I have a bunch of 5" charm squares that I'm thinking of using as a starting point. Don't hold your breath, it may be awhile before I actually get around to it ;- )

Okay, Okay!

I wanted to post yesterday but service was waaay too slow. Either it was our high winds and rain or lots of internet usage because of Super Tuesday. I suspect the latter personally.

Since the overwhelming response to my question was to add more beads, that's what I did. I was tempted to bead over the first line, per Joan's suggestion, but I couldn't bear to cover up what I'd already put down! I also couldn't do clumps, even though that's what I originally thought I would be doing along the outline. I just did another line of beads next to the first.

I'm not convinced that it's done yet but I have to put it aside to make a commissioned baby quilt. If I do more later I'm thinking it will be something in the background areas to make those areas recede (like quilting lines) and the symbol pop. I can also see a line of beading along the inside edge of the binding once I get that on. We'll see. Today I have to put away all thoughts of the BJP and TIF challenges and think fire trucks and construction vehicles instead :- )

January BJP Progress Report

Since it's the last day of January I figured it would be appropriate to show my progress so far with this month's journal quilt. I have a headache, as if I've been exposed to something again (but I have no idea what that might have been), so please forgive any lack of enthusiasm that might seep through.

I came up with the idea for this quilt at the end of December, after I got stuck on the Solstice quilt. The duality I experience in my world had come up again so I thought I would explore that from the aspect of my sign of the Zodiac, Gemini. I was a teenager the last time I gave any thought to how accurate or inaccurate the Zodiac descriptions might be. I did some online research, my primary source being gotohorscope.com. As it turns out, I found it to be pretty darn accurate! It took a week or two of mulling that information over and looking at various depictions of the sign before I decided how I would approach this quilt.

Above all I wanted to keep it simple. That meant no renderings of twin cherubs or anything like that. Instead, it occurred to me that I might be able to create the sort of roman numeral 2 symbol by free piecing or stacking and slicing fabrics. I wanted to avoid any obvious light vs dark interpretations so instead of making one leg of the symbol white, for example, and the other black, I chose to use colors and to cut the symbol in half horizontally rather than vertically. By using the stack and slice method I could cut both halves of the quilt top at once. My first fabric choice was the green I'm trying to include in each journal quilt. Because the green I chose had pink in it I went with a pink print for the other fabric.


It took three tries to get the version you see above. I mis-cut the first time and got a rectangle instead of the symbol I was shooting for. On the second try I learned that I had to keep the legs of the symbol basically the same size or the symbol wouldn't show well. I was happy with this version until I realized that any beading I might do to outline the symbol would virtually disappear against the pink print or compete with it visually. Back to the stash...

This is my fourth try and I'm pleased with it. I have mixed a bead soup of shimmery white and silver beads with which I will outline the symbol. I chose the white per the information on the horoscope web page. I added silver to represent Mercury, Gemini's ruling planet. I don't anticipate doing much more than simply outlining the symbol with beads this time. There isn't really room for much more than that in my opinion. But who knows? Things change as we work, don't they?

And now it's time to think about what to do for February's journal page. I have a giant heart milagro I'd love to use as a focal point on a small quilt sometime, and February seems like the perfect time to use it, but I'm having second thoughts now. I'm leaning toward thinking of my quilts numerically instead of by month. Like, instead of December and January journal quilts they would be journal quilts 7 and 8. To sort of break free from the associations that might come with the calendar year. I guess my primary goal as I approach challenge projects is to do something unexpected, take it in a surprising direction. Watch; having said that I will probably turn out something completely trite for February!

7 True Things

I've been tagged by Melzie to do the 7 True Things meme. This should be an interesting exercise! (At least for me. I hope you'll find it interesting too!)

The rules are:

1. Link the person who has tagged you.
2. Tell seven true things about yourself.
3. Tag seven new people.
4. Leave a message with the person you have tagged so they know about it.

Here we go...

1. As we get closer to Halloween you will see how much I enjoy the macabre. I have cute witches but I also have a ceramic pile of skulls that are decidedly not cute. (I was going to put in a photo here but Blogger is having problems so we'll try again later.)

2. When I was in high school I ran hurdles in track and field. I placed second in our regional race, up against a girl whose legs were almost longer than I am tall! (I'm only 5'3".)

3. My two favorite shows on TV at the moment are "Ace of Cakes" and "Dancing With the Stars." (I could give you a lengthy list of television shows I enjoy!)

4. I was widowed at age 27 when my first husband died of non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

5. I journal for half an hour every morning.

6. I used to enjoy baking but have never enjoyed cooking. (Since I can't eat baked goods anymore I don't make them.)

7. I have always found it fascinating that I was born under Gemini (the twins) and have felt like two completely different people coexist in this body.

And now for the really hard part: tagging seven other bloggers! How about...

1. Clare at Dordogne Quilter

2. Erin at Go Doodles N Quilt

3. Yankee Quilter at Scraps and Threadtales

4. Holly at And Sew It Is

5. Lin at Purple Fan

6. Sammy at Sammy Stuff

7. Corry at Dutch Blue

And now for that picture I promised you. This is one of the things I've been playing with lately. It may or may not become an official journal quilt but it is that size (8.5" x 11").

This goes back to my love of the macabre. I've had the skeleton print in my stash for at least a year, well before the movie "Ghost Rider" came out. We enjoyed the movie enough to buy it on dvd when it became available. After watching it again recently I was going through my two stacks of Halloween prints and found this print and immediately thought of the movie. I see it as the ghost rider passing by a graffiti-painted wall in an alley. Not quite sure how I'm going to embellish this one but it's tempting to highlight the flames under the bike with beads... After that I don't have a clue!

Let's Try That Again...

I had my DH (the photographer) reshoot "Summer Love," my latest journal page. He even did a detail shot of my sun:

After I made my last post I still had flannel scraps out so I started playing around to see if I could create yet another preemie quilt. I found a couple of four patch blocks I must have made some time ago and added a few more. There was enough of the tiny heart print flannel to make alternate squares, and enough of the odd shade of green to do both borders and backing. Unfortunately, I burned the inside of my forearm on the edge of the iron (reaching across to straighten the fabric if I remember correctly) before I got the borders sewn on. It has taken me until today to get back to the project and finish it up.

It feels good to get some of these old fabrics and blocks used up. I have several more tops and collections of blocks to turn into quilts someday but I'm finding that I'm not that interested in making new, or more, traditional pieced blocks. (I don't do applique, except under duress.) All I want to do these days is piece improvisationally. The nice thing about working with the orphan blocks is that I already have a starting point. That seems to be the hardest part for me: getting started. I need a theme or a challenge fabric or something to get the juices flowing. And I don't seem to be that adept at coming up with ideas on my own. At least, not consciously. When I work intuitively, improvisationally, my sub-conscious seems to have no trouble at all! I was astonished at how Summer Love (see above) developed.

I also marvel at the people who are able to make something just because they want to. I've always needed a reason to make something: a bed to cover, a child to comfort, a gift to give, etc. This business of making something because the making of it gives me pleasure is a foreign concept. One of the reasons I undertook the journal quilt project was to help me overcome that stumbling block. Progress is being made, as evidenced by the Halloween doll quilt I started a couple of weeks ago. (And one of these days I'll actually get it quilted!) Having said that, I now need to get started on the next journal quilt...!

Two More Finishes!

This is not a good picture of my completed journal quilt but it is proof that the quilt is done! I'm calling it "Summer Love" because it represents a place and a time of which I have very fond memories. The beads in particular don't show up well in this photo. There is a circle of beads in the center of my X/sun and a ray of beads extending down each leg of the X. That was the part that had me stumped for awhile, in spite of the fact that I thought that would be the part I would bead first! Ya just never know how things are going to develop.

When I finished the journal quilt I still had some energy left for more creativity. I dug around in my pile of UFO's to see what would fit the bill and came across yet another preemie top! I must have pieced it and not had time to assemble it right then. So yesterday I backed and turned it and quilted it. Ta daa!

That makes 5 preemie quilts to turn in so today I'm working on a sixth one to make an even half-dozen!

Update on Journal Quilts

So here's my finished journal quilt for the month of July:

I'm very pleased with the way it turned out.

And here's what my journal quilt for August looks like at the moment:

Could it be more crooked?!

I have actually taken several interim shots but because of the difficulties in posting they now seem obsolete. In fact, I had a set of three buttons on the lower right-hand side where there are now a series of sequin flowers. The buttons were just too obtrusive. They were "stealing the show:"

So I took them off and replaced them with the sequins.

If you'll go back up and look at the more recent photo you may also notice that I have bead embellished the orange strips of the left-hand log cabin block. (It's pretty hard to see.) I've decided that those beads represent the stump fences so common in the area where our summer cottage was. I know the sun will also be beaded; I'm thinking of leaving the water of the lake untouched. Part of me wants to also bead the print over the house that reminds me of the aurora borealis I saw in the sky one summer night. But that might be too much!

DD is still not-so-patiently waiting to deliver her second daughter. She was so hoping to have an August baby! Instead she may very well end up being one of those mothers who ends up in labor on Labor Day. (The idea does not amuse her.)

Thank You, One and All!

Thanks for the suggestions for dealing with my action papers. Every last one of them is a good and workable solution. I think we even have a clear acrylic wall pocket around here somewhere that I could use (I used to use it, in fact, but had forgotten that we had it). I'm going to wait just a bit before I install anything though because I want to also raise the monitor off the surface of the desk a little and that may affect where or what I can put on the wall over the desk. There's still a pile of stuff I need to go through but I moved some books and things around the other day and the improvement is noticeable:





Once I got the most essential items dealt with I had to do something creative and fun. Remember those log cabin blocks I'd pulled out? There was another block in that pile that I didn't share with you then:



I had it off to one side on the design wall and was contemplating using it as a starting point for my August journal quilt. Do you see the little purple house in the center of the block? Earlier in the week I built a composition around it, with the house block dead center. At the time I was content with it but I didn't have time to sew it together. The more I looked at it over the course of the next few days the less happy I was with it. Finally I took the house block out of the center, moved it to another spot on my design wall, and started over. This time I moved the house to the upper right hand corner of the journal page. Then I put a leftover 'X' block in the upper left corner. In my mind it could serve as a "sun" shining down on whatever picture I was creating. Next I found a couple of those orphan log cabin blocks that featured greens. I used them in the foreground of my picture. To me they were fields of crops. Without being consciously aware of it I was creating a scene from my youth: My folks had a cottage on a lake in the middle of farmlands in western Michigan. All I lacked was the lake. Granted, mine is orange, but that's what works. ;- )




I am much happier with this composition than the first one. (I meant to get a shot of the first one to share with you but got so engrossed in creating the new version that I missed my opportunity.) I have basted the top to a piece of batting but couldn't decide right away whether I wanted to do any machine quilting on this one or not. Overnight I decided to just do handwork to quilt and embellish it. I have a pretty good idea of what I'm going to do with the "sun." Not as sure about the house or the fields but we'll see what develops as I work on it...

Not Much Action in the Nest

This will be a brief post as I'm still not feeling well after several unexpected chemical exposures over the last few days. I haven't had the enthusiasm or the energy to do much of anything but I have made some progress on my current journal quilt:




The bright orphan bits and pieces I recently uncovered are calling to me softly and I have a hint of an idea for my next journal quilt. What I need is to be well enough to respond to these whispers of the muse. Sometimes I can force myself to action on a project or necessary chore. What I'm finding more difficult to deal with are the changes in mood and outlook that chemical exposures seem to cause in me. Toxins alter my brain chemistry, and not in a good way. (It occurs to me that I may have mis-named this blog. It would have been more accurate to title it "From the Canary's Nest" as I am but one of the canaries in the coal mine of our toxic environment.)

Journal Quilt Progress Report

My energies of the last couple of days have been focused on my journal quilt for this month. After I got those appliques sewn on I spent quite a bit of time trying to get a feel for what to do next. I auditioned several colors of beads, some other trims, tried a few "theme" ideas on for size...





Eventually I came across some white rice beads. I don't know what else to call them. They're just plastic, they're not bugle beads, they look like large grains of white rice. It occurred to me that they would make a good outline for a tree trunk. So I stitched the outline of a tree trunk. I wanted to get a picture for you when I had only the rice beads sewn onto my ground but DH had absconded with the camera. He and DS went up into the mountains yesterday. They had a lovely time, and so did I - at home! They took pictures of mountains and trees; I created a tree.


Then I remembered a pretty iridescent glass heart bead I've had for awhile. I sewed it on in the center of the trunk. It may be a knot hole, it may be one of those hearts where lovers carve their initials. Who knows?!


Today I have been sewing on sequins to fill in the trunk of my tree. They're not the sequins I bought last week, but they are sequins nevertheless and I have been wanting to do this technique for a while now. I first practiced it in a workshop with Rebecca Rousch. She does some fabulous work! You can sample it here.





I still have no idea what else is going to go on this journal 'page.' I have no idea what significance a tree - or a white tree - may have. I figure I have the rest of the sequining to do on the tree before I'm really forced to make the next decision anyway.

"Helpmates" Revisited

I had a request for a close-up shot of the center panel of my journal quilt "Body & Spirit: Helpmates." I was surprised to learn that clicking on the previous photo of the quilt did not produce the larger image. I just figured that happened to all my photos automatically! I'm no techie, nor am I a photographer. But! I just happen to have a photographer husband who is home today and who was happy to have the opportunity to play with his toys. ;- )

I'm not sure what you're looking for, but hopefully you'll find it in one of these shots:

The fish skeleton, the key, and the ship's wheel are all charms. The clock is a button. The lock was a button also; I cut off the shank to it would sit more closely to the surface of the quilt. I wanted to tone down the color somehow but everything I tried just wiped off. The heart on her bodice is hematite, the bird fetish is shell.

The lily-of-the-valley-type flowers were printed on the fabric. I just went over them with beads and floss, pretty much in the same colors as was on the fabric. There are four fire polished flower beads, a large blue vintage button, and a ribbon yo-yo flower head. Their stems and leaves are all beaded. On these smaller leaves and the lily-of-the-valley flower heads I used what I know as a leaf stitch. It's the kind of leaf you make when you're making a leaf fringe.

I felt very fortunate to have this bit of textile in my stash and to have it fit the theme so well!