April TIF done!

I had set my personal goal of May 15 for completing this piece with its last minute changes, and I made it! It changed a bit from my initial thoughts to incorporate what I learned last month in Catherine Jordan's class.

I backed it with a lovely hand painted silk by Laura Wasilowski, ArtFabrik. The piece of fabric is a pastel rainbow and I'd planned to use the yell0w-peach end but ended up using blue to green.

One thing I noticed was how the different stitches affected the fabric. I measured each piece before stitching using the same template, drew threads to outline the border and stitched. The four-sided stitch band (second from left) shrunk considerably more than the hemstitched band (leftmost). The buttonhole stitch edgeing added to the size of the band (second from right) and the needlewoven sections in the tree band really pulled in the fabric. I was vaguely aware this would happen but wasn't sure how to compensate for it without stitching the band twice.

odds and ends

I have a few moments before heading home--the conference I've been running is over. (phew!) I actually got some stitching done on my final band for the April TIF challenge. My tree trunks are in and I'm working on leaves!

I have just a last few photos of things from my trip to the EGA Great Lake's Region seminar. The first is a skein of yarn I dyed at a fiber fair: 13th Annual Stephenson County Fiber Art Fair
Saturday, April 19 (here's the page for next year's event--are they on the ball or what?)

This was the most fun! They had it all set up with covered tables, elegant trash-bag protective gowns, mixed dyes in old-fashioned baby bottles, and a microwave to set the dyes. I had great fun squeezing and squishing colors onto my skein. The fair itself was also a great deal of fun. Any and everything to do with fiber--fleece to lace.


The little yellow booklet was our first favor at the GLR seminar. I really got into it and collected a bunch of autographs. The pages fold out this way and that and it all ties with the pretty ribbon. I really enjoyed doing it but, more, once I got home I had a great time reading notes from friends, acquaintances, teachers...

Sampler and Antiques Needlework Quarterly's new issue features an article on autograph books, in particular autograph books with stitching in them or ribbon weaving, etc. It's a really interesting article and worth looking for.

The last photo is of two items I purchased from the Needle Workshop from Wausau, WI. It looks like a great shop and the next time we visit family nearby, I plan to do some shopping there.

The acorn holds a thimble. I really like acorns and have long wanted one of these thimble holders. This one is smooth and lovely to hold and touch.

The long item is called a "soldier's friend." I couldn't find anything about it in a quick Google search, so I'm not sure if the stories are just that or not. The ridged part holds threads. The nobby end comes off to hold needles, so everything is there when the soldier needs it to mend his uniform. I was told it was based on a model from the U.S. Civil War. I think it's pretty cool and "needed" it so it came home with me.

pictures

I haven't taken a stitch all week! I've just been too tired or out in the evenings. So here are more photos from the EGA Great Lakes Regional Seminar. This first photo is a beaded pendant I made in a Sunday afternoon class with Andrea Sapon. It was a great class and she provided an incredible selection of beads (including bringing along her own stash and sharing it!). The backing is ultrasuede.

On Monday-Tuesday I did the Perfect Forest (shown here) with Catherine Jordan (at my guild meeting this week another member showed off the gorgeous fabrics and fibers she had dyed in another Catherine Jordan workshop at seminar). On Wednesday-Thursday I took Cricket with Lynn Payette.

My piece has a LOT of work to go. But here's how far I got in class...mainly just setting up the background to begin stitching. I love all of the choices you have working with layering sheers. It's amazing how different they will look just by changing the angle at which you place them!

We used a whole bunch of different fabrics and sheers and it's up to each person where to put what color, where to overlay, etc. Of course, Lynn had advice (and it was always good) and made suggestions as we went along. It's easy to get stumped--there are so many choices--but generally once you get going it kind of rolls along. All of the class pieces were looking very different from one another.

So, that said, here's a picture of the finished model. Mine will look vaguely similar but most likely quite different, too. In addition to the background, I did a little bit of the cording that will surround each leaf and I completed the wired, detached cricket wing. And, yes, we all know it's really a grasshopper. Apparently, Lynn was told that calling it grasshopper wouldn't sell but cricket would.

These last three pictures are of favors we got at some of the dinners and also my door prize, which was the magazine and wooden post-it note holder. The lipstick tube is actually a cunningly camouflaged sewing kit! It twists right out and you can remove the flannel with pins, needles and some thread. It is a lot of fun.

Most of the favors had stories, which made them even more fun. The story for the lipstick sewing cases was about how they gathered them and how they were able to remove the lipsticks in them.

The spool of perle cotton is in a little snap together ball. They had these for sale, too, and I got a load of them. Now, perhaps, my endlessly tangling perle will be tamed! (They're like the containers you can get from those gumball-like machines that have little toys or removable tattoos in them.)

The pincushions were all hand stitched, but three area chapters. The bases are zinc canning jar lids and many came from the estate of the mother-in-law of the seminar organizer. Some still had the penciled-in labels on them!

I still have more stuff to share but once again, time's up and I've gotta scoot.

TIF-still in April...

I've had the first band here (band #4 overall) done for a while but couldn't get the scan transfered here. (I've learned all new usb drives have software added and our older computer at home does not like this software. (DIRE warnings on what would happen if we tried to install it.) So, I'm back to borrowing my hubby's drive and being extremely careful with it. My beloved little pink drive was officially declared toast today by our IT staff. I'm very sad.)

I added more to #5 after I changed the plan. I used one of Laura Wasilowski's overdyed perle cottons and some silver braid from Kreinik and went wild. It was a lot of fun.

And here's the start of #6. I'm feeling a bit of time pressure so rather than finding textile paints, setting things up, painting and letting the Lugana dry, I used some fabric markers I had handy to block in the general areas of grass, trunk, leaves and sky. It's not as delicate as the painting. Then I pulled and rewove the threads and my plan worked quite well.

I should have put it on a frame but I was working with a small piece of fabric and managed okay. A frame would have been a bit easier, though. Now I've started hemming with a nun's stitch along the folded edge. I folded it because the Lugana's quite loose and I didn't trust just a plain edge stitch to hold it.

Since scanning it, I've gotten about halfway around the edge with the nun stitch. Once that's done, I have a more stable edge to work with for mounting it to a small stretcher frame if I choose to do so.

I think I'll make one big tree in front with a couple behind it. Since taking this class, I've been really looking closely at trees! I thought of a way where I could add more dimension to the front tree by bring a making a branch to the back. It has a ways to go.

We finally are having spring here. We spent Sunday at the Dunes area and saw more wildflowers than ever before (we've gone every spring for the wildflowers for about thirty years now). We saw a couple dozen Jack-in-the-Pulpits! I've never ever seen more than one or two. And thousands of spring beauties. Plus many colors of violets, phlox, toothwort, trilliums (red), hepatica, and lots of plants we don't know. Fields of Mayapples, too, just about to flower.

And Mrs. Bailey's Narcissus. The place where we walk is the Bailly Homestead. The wildflowers are all along the walk between the parking lot and the homestead. And near the very old house are Mrs. Bailly's flowers. This year the grass was full of spring beauties, too. They used to be a bit closer to the house and had bigger blooms: narcissus and hyacinth. Ages ago a docent told us that Mrs. Bailly had planted them in the 1840s. I doubt it's true, but they're still around here and there and we make a point of looking for them each year--they were abundant this year. It was glorious.

regional seminar photos and TIF

Here are a couple of photos of one of my pieces from last week's regional seminar. They explain why my drawn thread piece on change for the April TIF is, well, changing!

They are of my class "Perfect Forest" with Catherine Jordan. She was a wonderful teacher and had lovely samples and ideas to share. Once we got past the pulling and reweaving of linen threads (the entire morning!) the class was loads of fun.

The first picture is my booklet cover, signed by the instructor. Her image on it is pretty small but her piece is very delicate and simply lovely.

The second tree is mine. Catherine hand painted linen for each of us with "green leaves," "tree trunks" and "grass." You can see the large area of pulled thread we made.

I think you can also get a little sense of the feeling of depth that we were able to give to the project. It will be enhanced when the piece is mounted over a painted background (we learned how to do that, too, in our class).

So now I want to make my last band for this month's TIF a tree. My bands were originally designed that the threads are pulled the length of the open area (few threads to pull and reweave) and I could probably do a forest of tiny trees. But I'd rather do one long one so I've been trying to think of ways to manage it. I think I have a solution.

Normally I would pull out one thread completely, clip the next in half and reweave each half in the space left by the withdrawn thread. The little threads that would be left across the width of my narrow bands would not be long enough to reweave on each side if I cut and pulled like ususal.

But if I cut two adjacent threads on the very edge of the open area, snipping one on one edge and the other on the opposite edge, and pulled out the short stubs from the background where I cut, then I think I should have enough thread left to reweave to the edge. A lot of pulling and reweaving though. I think I'm in for a tedious weekend!

more quilt show goodies

I finally got a new usb drive yesterday but my home computer does not like it at all. Which makes it useless for me. I did get some photographs today--very early in the few moments we had some sun before huge storms hit. I'll try to get some up later.

For now, here's the last of the goodies I got at the quilt show. I found the booth of Helen Gibb and her lovely ribbonwork flowers. They are so lovely and delicate. I noticed that Pat Winter of Gatherings found the same booth on her visit. (see here) Helen was delightful and I got a lot of goodies at her booth.

I got a beginners kit with her book, "Ribbonwork: A Complete Guide," a companion dvd, and a lovely zippered case with ribbons galore along with all of the materials called for in her book and the dvd. I had my choice of ribbon colors and that was tough! Behind the ribbons are the stamens, backing material, needles--a ready to go kit!

I also got a kit for a brooch, which I should be able to make once I practice a bit with the materials in my set.

I also got some odds and ends of ribbons, that I didn't get scanned.

Each year I visit the quilt show I come away inspired and full of new ideas.

not much new...

Sorry for the long silence. Events have conspired. My computer wasn't working right while I was away so I was slammed with work when I returned. (My job it NOT running conferences but in addition to my usual tasks, I have a two-day conference next week, another two-day in June, and a week-long event in July where most of the speakers need visa letters post haste!) My thumb-drive also died, which means I can't scan or upload photos at home and bring them in. And I've been so flat-out busy I haven't been near a store to get a new one yet. Perhaps tonight.

In the meantime, I have some photos of my goodies from the quilt show in early April. I'd planned to post them last week but the computer problems prevented it. 'nuff whinging.

I found this quilt a while ago and fell in love with it. At the quilt show I got to see the real quilt, meet the artist, Sieglinde Schoen Smith, and she signed the book for me. Each page is illustrated with a bit from the quilt that is appropriate and the entire quilt is printed on the inside of the dust jacket. It's a lovely book and I was thrilled to meet the maker and see some of her other quilts.

I already posted that I took two classes in the Quilting Arts space. ArtGirlz were nearby and I did the usual damage there, buying some cones for dolls, charms for faces, hands and feet, and felt beads. I don't have photos of that yet, but have been working on one of their new mini-cone-doll pins and will take a picture when I'm done.

Also nearby was a lovely booth for Magic Threads, Julie McCullough's company. I kept eyeing it as I was working on my painting project and scooted in there the minute the class ended. Julie herself was there and we had a nice chat about her dolls. They're lovely with lots of painted lace and delicate touches. I purchased this fairy kit to make a Bluebell Fairy. The kit has everything.

Another of my favorite booths is Laura Wasilowski's ArtFabrik. I've mentioned her before. I got some lovely hand-dyed silks she had.

They're kind of all muddled together here. There is a burgundy/blue fabric, which is a lovely damask weave on the upper right, two rainbows, one pale and one brighter (upper left and bottom). I purchased those to go behind the drawn-thread pieces I'm working on for this month's TIF challenge. There's also a piece with mottled greens in here that I just love (in the middle). There are a lot of color changes in these fabrics and they're hard to show in all their glory. (They're also slippery and don't want to stay flat and smooth on the scanner.)

I have some more scans for tomorrow, too. I need to revel in the goodies -- the bills just hit and I need to remember why.

I haven't abandoned the TIF challenge, although I didn't make the deadline. I have one more band completely done (thanks to a follow-up CAT scan my hubby had Tuesday) and one more than half-way finished. My problem now is that I learned some new things to do with drawn thread in a class at regional and I'm inclined to try to include them in my changes piece, but not sure how to do it. So I'm changing my plan midstream and still planning. I do feel I have much of it together--I know pretty much how this month's page will go together and that's half the battle.