journal quilt

This month's journal quilt did not turn out exactly as I hoped it would. I used embossed pink felt and some red felt with shimmers in it. Handembroidery connects the 2 layers. Next step was to add metal 'springs' to it, but the craft wire I had was too thin to get the effect I wanted. I have to get me some thicker one so that I can finish this journal quilt later. But today is the last day of April so I had to leave it like it is now. Size is 7"x10". Title is 'Connections'.

Canal houses

With a group of friends we are working on a whole row of canal houses. Each will make 10 houses, which will get swapped so we all end up with 10 houses made by 10 different people. Kate, Kelly and Gena have blogged about this project. This time they are faster than I am :-). The storm at sea blocks took up most of my time. They are almost done so I gave myself some time to play. This picture shows one of the canal houses drawn on a stabilizer called Rasterquick:
I marked the important lines, like where is the position of the door, the houses, top of the roof. You get the idea. The nice thing about this project is that - as long as the fabric is hand dyed or painted - you can use anything technique you want. I looked through my stash for fabric I could use. My stash is so big, that I knew for sure that I could find proper fabric. The fabric for the sky and the water is glued onto the stabiliser. For the house the fabric is fused. To create the effect of glass in the windows I used Angelina film.

More storm at sea blocks

Not much new to show you. The last couple of days I worked on the storm at sea blocks. On the picture you see 2 sets of them, one blue for the sky and a green one for plants/grasses. I counted how many I had till now and that is 11 of those sets. In total I need 18 of them. It is not the most exciting thing to do, but at least I am making progress.

Storm at sea

The background for my c&g final assessment piece will be made from storm at sea blocks. A traditional block which has lots of points which have to meet :-). Here is a picture of one of the piles of (part)blocks:
And this shows one of the finished blocks. Size is 10"x10" (25x25 cm).

Not all blocks are going to look like this. About half of them will be made from a combination of the 2 bigger elements. At the moment roughly 1/3 of the background blocks are done, but the coming weeks I still be working on them. When they are all completed and put together I can start with the more fun parts like quilting and applique.

Identity check

The present theme of the Dutch challenge quilt group De Uitdaging is contrast. A great opportunity for me to work with my favorite black/white fabric. Finding a subject was not that difficult, for rather quite some time I wanted to do something with fingerprints. I applied some ink on to my fingertips and pressed them on paper. This was challenging to get a clear print. Afterwards I remember that using ink pads would have been a much better idea. Anyway out of a whole sheet of ink spots there was one suitable pint I could use:

I enlarged this print to the size I needed. For this challenge the size is 20"x20"(50x50 cm) using Rapid Resizer, resulting in this linedrawing:

This I copied onto transparant paper, pinned it on black fabric and quilted all the lines using black thread. I removed the paper and using pearl white Lumiere paint and a small brush I painted all the lines. When I uploaded this picture I realised that I should have ironed the quilt before I took the picture.

Security measures are getting more and more strict. That is the reason that I called this quilt: Identity check. Due date for this challenge is May 1, but I had miscalculated and thought that it was April 1. Okay, better early than late :-)

journal quilt

A few days late, but here is my journal quilt for March. Background is woven fabric, the red one is a snowdyed piece, the purple one a regular handdyed fabric. The tree is stamped with Lumière textilepaint. These stamps I made from sticky foam on transparant picture frames. Every branch was made with a different stamp and because they were on these frames, it was easy to see where to place the next one. Free motion quilting was added. Size is 7"x10" and I call it 'Dawn'.

zentangles

The last couple of days I have not been busy with fabric, but with this:
They are called zentangles and can be very addictive :-). I used card stock the size of atc's and artist pens in different sizes.