spring at last finished + postcards

And this is how the quiltlet for the Another Little Quilt Swap looks when it is finished. For the daffodils I used fake decoration flowers with seed beads and I added a little metal lady bug on one of the tulips. I am very early to have this one done as the mailing date is July 1.

When I was cutting the fabric for the tulips I did not count how many I had done so I ended up with a numer of left overs. These together with some green fabric scraps turned into these fabric postcards:

pounded fabric

This picture is another one of my pounded fabrics. However when I made this one, I did not pay attention to what kind of paint I picked. When I took the fabric out of its bag I saw that I had used transparant Setacolor and the bag had been in the sunshine some of the time. At first I was disappointed but when I had a good look at the fabric I started to love it more and more. Here you see a detail:

It did not turn out as I had expected, but I am going to do some more experimenting met transparant paint as I love the way it turned out.

give away winner

It is time for the result on the give away. In total 19 people left a comment. I used a random number generator to decide the winner which is number 11 or in other words ......... Judi.
Judi, I put the fabric in my suitcase and mail it to you when I am in the US.

spring at last part 2 and Dutch group

I have started to add applique to the quiltlet I am making for the Another Little Quilt Swap and this is how it looks now. For the tulips I used one of my handdyes. The fabric for the leaves are two different sun prints. If I can continue like this, the quiltlet will be finished in a couple of days. More pictures will follow later.

As you may know I also run another group http://challengequilts.blogspot.com/ With this group we make a theme based quilt (20"x20") four times a year. I heard from several people that they would like to participate but that the English language was a problem. For this reason I decided to start a yahoo group in which we will do the same only with Dutch postings. If you are interested in joining this group let me know and I will send you an invitation.

spring at last

As you know I am participating in Kate's Another Little Quilt Swap. Today I started working on the quilt. I cannot say for whom I am making it, but I can show pictures of how it is coming along. The picture above shows the beginning of the quilt. I used a shibori piece of blue fabric and a parfait. They are glued to a backing fabric. I will be adding applique on, but whenever I use this technique I machine quilt the piece first. For me this is much easier this way. As you can guess from the title spring flowers will be added. More pictures later.

resist

Here are two pictures of the same fabric. The one on the left is how it looked first, dyed with golden yellow. For the second step I applied Elmer's glue on it. For this I used what was probably the wrapping of a box of chocolates, one of those plastic containers with a motif on it. I applied the glue with a foam brush, pressed it lightly on top of the fabric and repositioned it. Let the glue dry for 24 hours. For the final over dyeing I used cayman island green and mixed the dye powder with soda ash water. Because the glue is watersoluble I did not want to use lwi but applied the dye mixture with a foam brush on to the fabric. After batching, washing and rinsing it looks like the picture on the right.

pounded fabric plus give away

After a week of (im)patient waiting I could open the plastic bags with the pounded fabric. This is what they look like. I used different textile paints (Trapsuutjies, Setacolor opaque and Probrite) diluted with water. Because paints were used instead of dyes the hand of the fabric changed a little bit. Each piece of fabric is the size of a fq.
As this is my 100 posting I am giving one of these fabrics away. All you have to do to make a chance of winning one of them is to leave a comment behind the coming week. Next Sunday I will pick a name.