Malachite detail

Here is a detail photo of the quilt I am working on now. The fusing, quilting and facing has been done so now it is time for the beads. This will take quite some time as I intend to stitch on lots and lots of seed beads.

Gold vein

And here is my 2nd quilt for the theme Treasures. This time my inspiration came from a gold vein. No hand dyed fabrics this time, but all commercial ones. Size is 17"x24".

Turquoise

For Voyage this year's theme is Treasures. It took me quite some time before I found an interesting take on this theme, but finally I settles for precious stones and metal. Here is the first quilt I made, called Turquoise:

I used my own hand dyed fabrics for this, covered with a layer of zapped lutrador. Size is 17"x24". I am linking this post to Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday blog. Take a look there to see what other artist did.

eco dyeing

In the 70ties I dyed my own hand spun wool with plants, but since then I have not done any eco dyeing till this week. For these 4 bundles I used pieces of copper wire and sticks of black walnut to wrap the fabric around. Placed leaves and flowers on the fabric, rolled it and and wrapped everything with cotton thread. I did this while I was still in the US. Packed these bundles into my suitcase and cooked everything yesterday with some iron sulfate.  This morning I took the bundles out off the cooking pan and this is how they looked: 

After rinsing and ironing the fabric looks like this:

Some prints are interesting, others not so. My guess is that I used too many layers of leaves/flowers. Some leaves/flowers were sumak, black walnut, astilbe, clover, geranium and lily. Aiming for better result next time.

New quilt

It does not look interesting yet, but this is the background for a new quilt I started. For Voyage the theme this year is treasures. This does not look like a treasure yet, but that will come. Size will be 17"x24". Now it is time to start quilting it.

Stamps and stamping

This month I am talking about stamps and stamping on the Fire blog. Not using 'official' stamps, but stuff you can get from your supermarket, dollarstore, DIY shops or trash. Check out the link, 3 posts per week.

A long walk home

For one of my online groups the theme was 'A long walk home'. I took me some time to find an idea fitting for this theme, but during one of those sleepless nights I found it. Remember MASH? In the centre of their camp they had a sign post with the names of cities which were important to them. This is my interpretation for this theme:

Background fabric is a drop cloth, all the other fabrics used are my own hand dyed ones.

Spring

It is still a bit chilly here (around 50 degrees F), but the blossom trees are in full spring glory:

title

Thanks for the suggestions. For this one I will go with Dancing Circles. The other suggestion - Ripples - I will keep for another circle quilt. No doubt there will be many more in this series :-)

Embroidered circles

And this is how the embroidery turned out:

To be honest, not an improvement. So while I was watching a movie, I ripped the embroidery stitches out. That means that the quilt is now completed. Only I have to find a title. I am not in favor of numbering my circle quilts, but I have to say, it is easier than coming up with titles :-). Any suggestions?

Circles

Katrien delayed my quilting, but finally I completed it. This is how my latest circle quilt looks like now:

I intend to do some more hand stitching on it, so that the brown circles stand out a bit more.

trying to quilt

I am trying to quilt on this new piece, but Katrien - one of my cats - insists that she wants to sleep on the quilt at the same time. She is not getting the quiet rest she wants, so she sweeps her tail all the time. You can guess, my speed is practically nil. So far I managed not to stitch the tail :-).

New circles

Finally I was able to comple a quilt this week. It is another one in my circle series. This one I called 'Random Circles' and I used a mixture of commercial and hand dyed fabrics for it.

Size is 12"x24". The circles are hand drawn, which explains why they are not exactly round :-). Now back to making more samples for the Fire blog.

busy

The blog looks like I am playing hooky, but I am working on my samples for the month of May when I will be posting about stamps and stamping on the fire-blog. This means that I am busy, but I cannot show you anything yet.

canvas

Creativity has been low the last couple of weeks. Maybe next year I should hibernate during the winter months :-). The only thing I completed this month is this canvas:

It started out as a circle quilt, but I was not happy with it. So I cut it up in circles and added these onto a painted canvas. Looks much better now.