Frottage

It's been sunny and warm here the last few days. While I absolutely adore the sunshine it got too warm to leave the windows closed and now I have a headache, I assume from poor air quality. That's probably the most frustrating thing about this affliction: it's almost impossible to know exactly what my body is reacting to. On the up-side, this headache is not so bad that I can't function.

I took advantage of the sunshine over the weekend to go outside and do some frottage for the first lesson of my online Studio Journals class. I'd never done this technique before (unless it was when I was a child and I've forgotten the experience!) but it's quite simple. All you do is lay a piece of paper over an object that has some physical texture to it and use a pencil or crayon over the surface of the paper. I discovered that you don't always get what you'd expect. In doing some research on the topic online I also learned that when you rub over a wood grain in one direction you'll get one result, but if you rub over the same area in the other direction you'll get a different look. (Here's the link to that site.) I'm anxious to get back outside and try that.

In the meantime, here's a commercial applique I had in my stash...

and the rubbing I did of it:

I used a Prismacolor pencil to do the bird frottage. The one above was done with a regular pencil. That's the impression I got from the lid of a plastic pencil case I have. Down in the lower right corner you can see two tiny elements I lifted from a cut glass bowl. I now have pages and pages of this stuff to put in my studio journal!

Playing Around

It doesn't seem like four days since my last post! At least I have something to show for my absence...

I've had a bunch of junvenile prints in my stash for a long time that are cute as heck but I could never seem work them into anything. Finally I decided to just bite the bullet and cut them up into strips a la Bonnie over at Quiltville. I cut those prints and some others I wanted to get rid of into mostly 1.5," 2.5," and 3.5" strips. Then I picked up a couple of strips, sewed the short ends together, and before long I had this:

It's not quite up to preemie size yet. It needs another 3" in width and obviously needs to be trimmed across the top. I expect to add a narrow strip to each side to get the necessary width. The rows (columns) are not sewn together yet because when I got to this point I received a tiny little box in the mail. Probably the smallest size the Post Office will let you get away with mailing anymore! Inside the box was a set of salt dough medallions made by Sara S. If I were a better photographer I would have taken their picture for you. Because they are white and kind of shiny there's no way I'll be able to get a decent group shot of them. However, I was inspired to use one of them right away. In fact, I was inspired to try several things I'd been wanting to play with for a while now...

The medallion I chose to use features an impression of a set of long skinny leaves. I put that on a Color Catcher sheet that had been dyed this lovely color by going through the wash with one or more things that bled. I've been saving some of my more colorful used sheets for just this purpose. The bulky (boucle?) yarn is couched down with a variety of beads. I tacked silk roving under and around the nest charm. I also finally got to use a few of the vintage rectangular sequins I've had in my stash for a long time. The one problem I ran into was that I'd stitched the Color Catcher sheet to a piece of Peltex before I added all the other embellishments. So now I have a finished top but all the threads are exposed on the back. I will not use fusible products because of my chemical issues. I think what I'm going to do is use double-sided tape to adhere a piece of watercolor paper to the back to finish that side.

The one thing I would like to do is figure out a way to enhance the background somehow. It's too late for this particular effort, I think, but there have been a couple of other pieces where I've felt the background lacked something. My first reaction is to seed stitch the background with floss. Sometimes that's just too much effort! I guess what I'm looking for is a way to make marks on the background that will be subtle and not time consuming. And not harmful to my delicate system ;- )

A Truly Liberated Quilt

It was kind of a busy weekend around here. My sister came up for a visit so I had to do some cleaning I'd been putting off. It was good to have that kind of motivation ;- )

Since I haven't been stitching for the last few (several?) days I decided to finally show you the first quilt I made for that one-on-one swap I did awhile back. This is the one that my husband wouldn't let me give away when he found out that was the plan! (It's a little dark in this photo.)


"Cosmic Goddesses" is roughly 17" square. I started by free piecing the stars, then used scraps to soften the sides of the batik face panels and make the sawtooth strips.

Other scraps were used to fill in around the stars and faces.

I couldn't even imagine machine quilting this top. Instead, sparkling it up with beads and sequins seemed like the thing to do. I also did some outline stitching along the seamlines in the centers of the star blocks.

Pat at Gatherings found pastel colored sequins at Eastertime and generously shared some with me. The aqua sequins were perfect for this project. I used a lot of tiny star sequins too!

To me, this quilt epitomizes liberated quiltmaking. It was completely free-form, unplanned, and spontaneous - everything that a liberated quilt should be. I had a blast making it, right down to sewing on the last sequin, and it shows. Which is probaly why my husband wouldn't let me give it away!

Starting A New Year

Yup, this little girl is now one year older.

Wednesday was a delightful day for me. It began with DH presenting me with this gorgeous bouquet of flowers:

DD and her family picked out a new jigsaw puzzle for me to do and I have a new book to explore courtesy of my sister:

I also have a new quilt to make. One of my sisters-in-law sent me these:

A treasure map panel from Hoffman Fabrics and co-ordinating fat quarters!

Does that say "little boy" or what?! Too bad I don't have a grandson on the way ;- )

Not to worry ~ I'm in no hurry for more grandchildren. And who knows how long it will be before I get these made up into a quilt anyway! Still, they will be fun to play with. When I finished up the postcard for June's TIF challenge I found myself looking at my stash, thinking about using up some of the older prints finally. I really have to do something to make room for the new fabrics that seem to keep showing up in spite of my efforts to resist them!

What's the Story?

This particular story is about my postcard quilt for June's Take It Further challenge.

The challenge was to "think about stories that are and stories that are possible." That really threw me for a loop because there seemed to be so much to choose from. Sharon came up with the challenge based on her ruminations about our stashes. My stash includes everything from vintage fabrics to new prints and a variety of embellishments to boot.

I thought I was going to use an assortment of fabrics, even some vintage ones perhaps. But in the end I used only one print, and I used it because one tiny image in the print sparked a question in my own mind.


Do you see the little sign in front of the farmhouse? It says "Farm for Sale." I saw that and wondered what the story might be behind that sign. Why is the farm for sale? It looks to me like the print was designed to represent the Great Depression of the 1930's but I didn't really want to focus on that specifically. Besides, the farmhouse in the print wouldn't fit in my 4" x 6" format. So I cut and pieced bits of the print until I felt I had a cohesive whole. There are actually seven patches in this little postcard quilt.


Once I had it pieced I did some embroidery to highlight specific features.


I would have preferred to have had the farmhouse in the picture, but I did the best I could with what I had. Overall I'm pleased with it, and I used some embroidery stitches I haven't used in a long time, thereby taking it further!