Forest quilties

As you might recall I participated in Lenna Andrew's forest quilties swap and today the mail brought me 4 quilties from this swap.
The quiltie on the left is made by Darlene Kihne from South Dakota. What I love about this quiltie is that it has 2 layers. The top is a photo printed on extravorganza. this is attached with eyelets to a photo printed on silk. The quiltie on the right is made by Lise Saether from Norway. Lise used lovely autumn colors on it. Incorporating snippets of fabric and angelina covered with organza and free motion quilted it. The internet world is small. On Lise's blog I saw that she also participated in Kate's ALQS2 swap and the Textured Surfaces class given by Carol and Lynda.

The quiltie at the left is made by Marianne Baugher from Maryland. With the quiltie Marianne enclosed 3 little baggies with feathers, seeds and some snake skin (I think). A lovely thought. The quiltie at the right by Vicki Jones also from South Dakota. Vicki stitched yarn representing aspen trees on the quiltie. The fabric she used had photos of trees printed on it. Large sequins are the fallen leaves.

Thank you ladies for participating in this swap.

atc's and fiber cards

I have been working on some small stuff. A couple of extra atc's - for coming year's birthday swap I need more than 30. For these I used wall paper, foam, tyvek, several colors of paint and paintstiks.

And as it is the time of the year to send christmas cards. I made a couple of these:

For a few special people I make the cards myself, for all the other ones I just buy cards :-) For these cards I used commercial fabrics, angelina fibers, sequins and beads.

complex cloth

This week I have been working on 2 pieces of complex cloth. This is a swap from my surfacing group. A piece of fabric is send to another member who adds something to it. This is done in total by 4 members. The 4th returns it to the owner.
This blue fabric is now finished. It started out as a snowdyed piece of fabric. Than bubble wrap was used with white Lumiere paint. Third step was to add snowflakes with Jaquard paint. I did the final step. For these spirals I used freezer paper as a template and silver paintstiks.

The orange fabric was dyed with marigold, dusty rose and a bit stormy greay. The second step was done by stamping with Lumiere copper. I added another stamped layer to it by using bubble wrap cut into the shapes of leaves and using antique gold textile paint. One more step will be done to this fabric before it is returned to it's owner.

Ice dyeing

Ice dyeing is a variation of lwi dyeing. The soda ash soaked fabric is put into a container and put into a freezer till the next day. For these 2 pieces of fabric I started with a red dye - don't know the exact name anymore as I have thrown the empty container away - and on the left piece a bit of mustard. After batching and rinsing the pieces looked like this.

They had a bit too much white to my liking so I repeated the whole proces again. On the left piece I used again mustard, on the right piece sun yellow and this is how they looked after batching and rinsing:

Much better, don't you think?

Crunched paper

This fabric I made using crunched paper as a stamp. When you crunch a sheet of (printer)paper you get an irregular surface. Because of this irregularity the paint is not all over the stamp. The irregularity gives a lovely effect and is great for background fabric. I used different greens and blue paint on a limegreen procion mx dyed piece of fabric. I made this fabric for a swap with my surfacing group and right now the fabric is winging it's way across the pond.

Paint

Normally I like playing with paint because it means that I am working with textiles. Not this time. At the moment I am busy repainting my walls and ceilings. I really needed a different color scheme. So the coming time I will not be able to show you much creative stuff, as this painting is going slow. Anyway I can show you these pictures of before:

and during:
About 1/5 is done. When I feel I have done enough for the day, it is very easy for me, to just leave everything as it is and for instance read a book. I don't care whether the room is a mess at that time or not, I need a break:-)

award and fabric postcard

Sherryl nominated me for the Kreativ Blogger Award. Thank you Sherryl! We met first at an online class with Pamela Allen and ran into each other again in another online class. My guess is that this will happen more often in the future :-).

Okay here are the rules of the award:

1. The winner may put the logo on her blog.

2. Put a link to the person you got the award from in your blog.

3. Nominate 5 blogs.

4. Put links to the blogs.

5. Leave a message for your nominees.

I have a list of blogs I read on a regular base but I will limit myself to 5. Here they are:

- Celia, Celia makes gorgeous books and is also active in other textile arts

- Kate, Kate manages to post almost every day and is the organiser of the ALQS and the 2009 Birthday ATC swap

- Kelly, Kelly is my best friend, she is a fiber artist who loves the words 'what if'. A bit overwhelmed by live at the moment which is the reason that she does not posts much right now.

- Von, Von is a great surface designer. Check his blog for his latest creations.

- Lynda, Lynda combines paints with textiles in a wonderful way. I learned so much of her online class.

Not only did I win this award I also won this fabric postcard made by Sheila for her blogger anniversary giveaway. With this luck maybe I should buy a lottery ticket today as well :-)