Hello,

Here we are at  the first day of spring according to the calender.   It is also

the time when light and dark are at equal lengths for our part of the world.      I always enjoy watching the world awaken from winters grip and the surge of life as it goes into  high.  I will be watching for little shoots of green this week and hoping there is no more deep cold to cut off the new growth.

Progress Report :Striking Gold   I am done with this piece.  I am excited as this time I have tried a combination of hand work and lots of free motion along with the direct applique technique of the foundations series without the buckram.   I used one solid piece of fabric ( the gold printed material) for the base  with two layers of felt behind it instead of batting and then used the same techniques.    I was not sure that I could do all the free motions work with out the strong base of the buckram for this process.  But it worked.     I used nylon netting and ground cloth on the surface  as well as bits of fabric .  I did some bobbin work on this piece too( the zig zag across the painted ground cloth shown here).  I tried several types of hand stitching on this piece too.  French knots, stippel stitches and some X’s to hold down some of the yarn that was applied to the surface.   I feel like I have expanded my choices when it comes to adding textures to the surface of my work and that is  one of my main goals.

 

Green Grow the Grasses It was fun to work on this pale quilt this week.  The soft colors seems so in tuned with my spring cold.  I have done some of the free motion work in the green grass sections and a few of the little flowers.  I am not sure how I will quilt the rest of the project.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Smoke I am doing hand quilting on this project.  I decided to follow the black and gray painted lines on the silk fabrics as my inspirations for those stitching lines.   I think it will need some machine work as well – but I will not really know the answer to that before I finish the hand work.

 

 

 

 

New Work   As always I am thinking a head so I pulled out a new batch of fabrics for possible use with my next top.   I am sure I will not use all of these on  this work as I plan to work small- but it is always easier to eliminate than to not have enough.

 

 

 Daily’s  The Daily’s just keep coming.  I have only four more blocks with the  black circle and two red rectangles to complete.  Then I will need to dream up a new layout challenge for myself.   Look for that next week.

Keep Creating

Carol