Hello,

I am greeting you with flowers because my husband did the same to me this week.  I enjoy the rich deep color of red roses.

I realized that tomorrow is the full moon and it is Friday the 13.   I wonder how often that happens?

Saterday was our second play date at the Verna Fire Hall.   We again were exploring the Gelli Plate and its many printing wonders.  There were 10 folks this time and only three of us were repeats from the time before.    This shot is of my work table at noon before I fired up for my second layer of fun and surprises.   I made a mistake and left half of my paints at home.   But I chose to see that as a challenge and because I did not have any red, orange  or purple all the pieces will work together do to the limited pallet.

I had a wonderful surprise yesterday as Patti stopped by.  She presented me with a gift of two of the squares she made using the  fabric yarn I had given to her last week.   She sure is enjoying her new pin loom!   Both  of these squares use the  the same  weff fabric yarn- but the color she used for the woof really makes them appear different.   The black sure tones down the color!

I went to visit Nancy this week too.  She works on a tabletop to lay out her work.   I do realize she has a much more realistic feel for how the project will look on the bed by doing it that way, but I really like working vertically myself.   This quilt will be the summer quilt for her own bed when it is done.  She is building a rainbow layout across the main part of the bed top with some black and white added in for interest.  This is also the quilt she made the clouds for last week.  They are set to go in the pillow sections of the quilt.    She lent me this book on color to read before I take my color  classes at QBL this summer.  It is written for paintes, but I am enjoying it throughly.   I am sure thankful I live in a time when one can just go purchase paint off the shelf instead of collect the materials, grinding down  the pigments and mix the formulas to get the desired colors.

Progress Report:  New Work One     I thought I should revisit some of the fabrics I made in the soy wax class earlier this spring and use them.  I pulled one and then I noticed how it worked with the rust fabric I did last fall and  a piece of the stencil work I did last winter as well as some stamping work I had done the winter before.      So I started this possible lay out.  It was too  monochromatic so  I added some  blue to the  mix.  The blue is from my stash of self embellished fabric too.   Things will surely shift and change from this starting point- but I try to be open to the changes the fabrics suggest as I work along.

New Work Two  I piled up a second collection of fabrics as a starting point for yet another new quilt.  It is not “talking” to me in the same way the brown one is so this may not go beyond this point.  I just have  to live with it a bit.

New Iris’s     I was not happy with the way this  quilt   was going.  It was coming out too much like the first one I did earlier this spring.  So I let it hang on the pin wall for two weeks.  Then  I decided to add another layer to the work.   I painted purple Iris’s like the ones I saw in Monet’s garden last month.     I then sewed organza to the  back of the flowers and truned them to create the new blossoms.          That process is very time consuming when the shapes are as complex as these are. It takes about 20 min to do each one.     I will start to applique them to the top of the quilt this week.

 Daily News

The title of this work has changed because of how I want to finish this work.  I decided I want it to be   a flexible  work that could change.  To that end I have finished these squares off with each of them having a velcro patch in the center of the back of each “block”.   I have only started this process and so I will be doing the flipping of the units and sewing them shut by hand for a while.  Soon I will build a back unit with its own corrisponding velcor units placed four inches apart all over its surface so one can add or subtract any square from any location at any time.  I think I will limit the back unit to 30 squares( or velco  spots)  to invite as many possible playing combinations as possible. ( and one  does not need to fill all the spots)  I hope it is fun to play with  when I am done.

Keep Creating

Carol