Hello Friends,

 I hope blue sky and sunny days are filling your lives this week.  I will admit that it has been so gray and cold that I am really enjoying the beauty of this sun filled day here.   The sky so attracts my eye that the old song about Blue sky Smiling at me keeps running through my head.   There was a play day for the Quilt Exploration Group last week.  Angela shared Jane Dunnawald’s interfacing and paint altering silk screen work this time.  She is explaining the process here and she has made three pulls through the screen.  You can see all the  dye colors she has mixed for us to use in the cups to the left in the first photo.  This second photo is of Linda doing a yellow and green bit of printing using the process.   We all enjoyed the day and went home with fabric to batch.  Then at the group meeting on Tuesday we shared our work.  This shot is of Linda’s other color piece.  Sue Ellen did not go to the workshop, but she had been busy working away on her fish series and shard them.   She had several others and folks suggested she will soon have enough variations to do a book.    Barb had a fine piece that she shared as well.   She  had modified an antique  print panel of three figures buy cutting them out, moving them and applying to her own idea of a better background.    She plans  to embellish it with beads and hand work before it is done. It sure has a lot of movement and grace  to my eye.   I will be playing the leadership roll at the next play date for this group and I will be teaching stenciling with oil sticks.   So in my typical over do act, I have been cutting  bug stencils.   I will print out a few before the workshop.

Progress Report : Field Pooka
This quilt is complete now.    I change the name from Forest Pooka  to Field Pooka because of the colors.  I though this quilt was far to light to be a forest piece.   It has lots of material that I have altered in it.  The brown on brown sections are a graffiti stencil that I printed last fall and the light almost white areas are a silk screen dye printed fabric that I did several years ago.  It was not real successful as the dye was too old so it came out very light.  But it works here as almost a texture.  The biggest  blue and green panels are from an even older class and are painted  canvas.   The piece  of white and turquoise in the bottom right is one of the pieces I did in the winter when I was in the print with all the plates you have created but never used -frenzies.    This close up shows the quilting that includes machine drawn Pookas  and the brown and  stencil work too.   I really am quite pleased with how this piece turned out and I well may do so forest Pooka in the future.

Blue Bugs        This quilt is done now. It  my be what has lead to all the bug work as there are bug stencils on it.  I felt it needed an additional  bug so I made the dragonfly.   But when I went to try out that stencil I discovered that the body and antenna were too slender to allow for the stamping ink applicator I was using to get to the color on the fabric.  So I used a dye pen instead on the dragon fly.   The   detail also shows another  one of those pieces of fabric from the print frenzy adventure.

The purple loops fabric and the little bit of spiral and turquoise on the top are both form that day.   The bottom edge of the photos also shows a bit of fabric that I had added paper to and them painted over with interference paint.   I am using all that exploration stuff in my work and I feel good about that.  

Slicing Through– working title.   I a few weeks ago  I  said I was unhappy with the work on Purple Trees( March 4) and so I put it aside.   This new project  is one of the other fabric groups from that challenge.  I am still struggling with the slender cut- but Sue Ellen did a little tutorial at the QEG”s meeting and I think I have it now.  I will explore that as soon as I get some time in the studio again.   Anyway this is a start on a new top for that challenge.

Cracked Up     This new  top is all based and ready for quilting.  Again I am using altered fabrics together with some commercial ones. The marbleized fabric is mine as is the salmon colored stuff with the ink on it.  The magenta fabric has decolorant  designs on it that I did two mouths ago.

No Title This is the very beginning of a new work.  The textured gold fabric has been kicking around the to do containers sense fall and I decided that if I at least pinned it to the wall and cut a few bits that I would get some attention.

I hope your days are sunny and full of creative efforts.

Hugs

Carol