Things are still quite busy at work and I've been feeling the stress. I really get annoyed with myself when I let the stress of things get to me. I did get some things done over the weekend. I completed the floral spray using Rita's silks for my June TIF journal page.I plan to stitch a crewel leaf on the other side. I want the pencil drawings to show through. They don't relate to the design I'm going to do. I want them there to show some of the other possibilities that the fabric has and tell a story. (Inspired by some student pieces I saw in the senior art show at Lawrence college a few weeks ago.)
Across the top I plan some beaded flowers. It's not complete at all but much closer than a week ago!
I also began the back of the journal page--a stash collage. Some of the items have memories and others are just things I'd gathered. The quilt block was made, I believe, by Susan's mom. It's a bow-tie block. My grandmother made my sister and me bow-tie quilts when we were children. The blue piece of fabric in the upper left was from my mom's crazy quilting stash. The lace bit in the middle was from Eileen in England. There's a bit of gauze peeping out on the right, leftover from Steve's surgery a couple of years back. Some of the bits are from this summer's quilt expo classes. There's a bit of canvas and a bit of linen and a scrap of a charted design. I've added quite a bit since I took this photograph.I find photographing or copying a piece in progress really helps with seeing how it really looks. When I took this shot it became obvious that the two white spots really stuck out. I've added some things on top of the linen to tone it down and I've added an off-white crochet bit, about the size of the white lace, just overlapping the lace a bit, to mirror the shape and help tone down that white spot in the middle of the page.
We've had some lovely weather lately...not too hot or cold or rainy. I try to take a stroll around the yard every day (not hard, it's small) to see what's up. Here are day lilies from the side of the house.
And here are my tomatoes and parsley, growing happily in their pot. I need to get some stakes for the tomatoes before they fall over. They have buds!I also began the Studio Journals class with Sharon B on Joggles. Right now it's a bit overwhelming...it's a very chatty group. It appears to be an amazing group of people from around the world. In two weeks, once this conference is up and running, I hope to have time to really get into it.
