Rehash Dinner in Shanghai

Okay here is my February Concept for Interpret This!  For more detail about the quilt please check it out over at Interpret This!  Overall I am quite pleased with it but would love to hear your evaluation of what worked for you and what did not.  Like someone was blogging about recently--it is not "intuition" but a lifetime of learning that makes us good artists.

Just like last time, feel free to make good or bad comments on any part.  Here are some of my thoughts to get you started.

1.  My husband does not care for the bead work on the gold spirals in the background. What do you think? (I promise not to take offense if you side with him or gloat to him if you side with me. Well, maybe only gloat a little.)

2.  This is the first quilt that I have ever put on stretcher bars.  Does it work?  What other type of finishing would you suggest?

3.  I really like quilting like Kay had on her January Concept piece but I worry that a lot of quilting in the background will draw attention away from the fore ground.  Is there enough quilting on this piece?  Any suggestions about how I could have beefed up the quilting and still made it secondary to the overall design?

4.  I know that I tend to have a fairly spare touch with embellishment and have tried to push it a bit more here.  What do you think?  Any visions of additional embellishments come to you as you look at my piece?

5.  Any overall comments on the strength or weakness of the design?

By-Products

Unlike Libby, I am not done with my February "Interpret This!" quilt.  I probably won't be till the minute before the reveal.  And I can't show you my progress on it.  BUT I can show you some by-products.

I am still learning to judge how much dye to make for a project so I had tons of leftover, activated dye left from my February "Interpret This!" quilt project.  I quickly grabbed some pfd fabric, gathered it by hand, and dipped it into the dye.  Here is the result.  I really like it.

President Day Sale Find

Can you tell what it is?  It does have a great sheen doesn't it?  It is 100% duponi silk.  Excuse me for crowing about my good luck but I knew you would be thrilled that, if you didn't get the deal, I did!

Normally for sale at Joanne's Fabric for $19.99, I found a bolt on sale for $4.00 in the red tag section.  And since it was President's Day, the store was having a 50% off sale on red tag fabric.  So, now the 100% duponi silk was only $2.00 per yard.  There was 11 yards left on the bolt--all of which I bought of course!  But wait, there was a 32" remnant wrapped on the bolt.  Since it was less than a yard, I could have it for 50% off the sale price ($1.00 per yard so it cost maybe 90 cents).  So, for a total of $23.00 I got yards and yards of beautiful gorgeous silk to play with. 

Erosion Bundle--Day 26

Here is my erosion bundle on day 26.  We have had some really strong winds this winter and many of my bottle have gotten broken.  But why did it have to the blue bottle?  Anyway, it is close to the bundle so we'll see if it causes any damage to the bundle.

It is starting to get some interesting color to it though.

Project Linus Party

Today between 10 am and 2 pm I was at the local LDS church having a Project Linus Party.  We made 16 fleece blankets, 2 quilts, and one of the ladies brought two crochet-edged flannel blankets that she had made at home.  Here are some of the ladies from today.  I apologize upfront that I did not get pictures of everyone.

This is Laurie from A Yankee Quilter.

This is Rosie who donated the two crochet-edged flannel blankets.  They are beautiful! Well, so is she!

Estelle and Clara were the last two standing (er..sitting) at the end of the day.

Diana volunteered to take one of the large fleece blankets home to finish it.  BRAVO!

It sure felt good to be able to help out the Haiti Relief Effort.

Show and Tell

I have been busy this week finishing a Christmas item (no snickers please especially since I still have a couple to go!) and getting ready for the Project Linus Party tomorrow.  We are having the party tomorrow to make quilts for Haiti.  Project Linus has been asked to donate 10,000 quilts by March 1.

Here is the last of the pocket dolls.  She has 3 pants and shirts outfits in the three drawers to the left, 3 dresses hung on hangers in her closet, and is wearing a flannel nightgown in her bed.  She is going to my niece, Amelia, in Indiana.

Here is some blue fabric I had in my stash and discharged last night to make more interesting.  It will be tied into a teen-sized quilt for Haiti.  In getting ready for the party tomorrow, I have been gathering fabric that I loved years ago and have never gotten around to use.  I have mixed feelings about letting the fabric go--happy it is finally getting used, happy that it is going to a good cause, sure I will have a project next week that I will desparately need it for, and excited that I have room to buy more fabric.  Tee Hee

A Weekend of Dyeing

My boss asked me yesterday if I had any plans for the weekend.  I told him I hoped to spend the entire weekend dyeing. 

He heard "dying" and was confused that I seemed so happy with the prospect. 

But I cheerfully hope to dye, discharge, stamp, batik, paint, stencil, and otherwise surface treat fabric this weekend.  I have been checking on tutorials and advice in other blogs on different surface techniques people are using.  Here are some of the recent ones I have found of note.

Alsokaizen at Kaizen's Journey has an awesome blog with lots of good shibori dyeing techniques.  I especially like the tutorial she recently posted on creating a stripe.

Laura West Kong at Adventures of a Quilting Diva tells you how to create masterpieces from boring fabric.  Laura's blog led me to Approachable Art and Judi Hurwitt’s Rescuing Ugly Fabric blog post. Both of these blogs are really good at not only telling and showing techniques but being specific about the products they used and giving you links to the products. Anyway, both blogs tell you how to paint, stamp, and stencil to your little heart's delight.

I was already a fan of Approachable Art and had bookmarked another 2 posts on her blog. This one is about discharging.  Okay, I am still in the learning phase with this technique but it was the first time I had heard of painting and discharging all in one step.  You can bet I am going to be trying this technique this weekend. 

The second technique she has recently blogged about is melting magazine pages. The technique loosens the inks on the pages to turn the pages into lovely abstractions.  Judi shows in several blogs what she has done with the pages.  I wonder if I could use those wet pages as a monoprint onto fabric?  Unfortunately this technique will have to wait--I don't have the proper grease dissolver to try it this weekend.  But I hope to get around to it soon in my surface design experiments.

Have a great weekend!

Reveal Reworked

Okay, here is my self-portrait with a few adjustments.  I am happier with it now and will send it off to my mother soon. The two changes that I made were the border and the heart. 

The heart is slightly smaller.  It is still the same color, satin, and padded.  It is still important in the quilt but not so dominant.

I took off the black organdy ribbon border and replaced it with an ivory ribbon that matches the border material.  I had originally avoided a light border so the quilt would not blend into the wall.  However, when I auditioned several color of ribbons (including a lovely muted red) the whole quilt just came alive with the ivory.  Well, ya gotta go with what the quilt wants. 

And I am very pleased with the outcome.

Moose Quilt

Here is a quilt I worked on a couple of years ago.  UMA was celebrating their 40th anniversary as a university.  As you might guess, the moose is the mascot for UMA.  The moose is made from UMA t-shirts from over the years and is appliqued onto the background.  I made the quilt top except for the sun.  I did not quilt it and when the top was sent to the quilters, she added the sun in the top left corner.  I had wanted the UMA logo for the 40th anniversary to be quilted in that space.  But it turned out well and is hanging in the auditorium on campus.  Hmm... I was thinking about size.  I can't guess in inches but it would fit on a double bed.