Thanks to Michele

A few months back I wrote to Michele of Quilting Bloggers, et al, and she generously offered to let me yak about my upcoming life adventures. So, today was my first guest blog, and I am scheduled to share with readers once a month. Enjoy the read, leave a response to the question of the month on QG's page, and a lucky winner will be chosen each blog to celebrate.

More wool dyeing

Mostly Kool Aid* and food dye.

Procion fiber reactive dye, Kool Aid and/or food coloring.

 Wool takes color so well, so fast, so satisfyingly! I may not be able to stop dyeing until my wool runs out... A few more days and the sap will rise up enough for me to start following the recipes for vegetative dyeing. I have always wanted to do that with wool, because I get some nice color on my cottons, but the pix of wool are much more gratifying. It seems like most of the recipes out there say, "You can get this and this and this color with wool! Oh, and good luck with cotton."

Program Prepping

I am scheduled to 'be the program' for the quilt guild I attend each month. I am to tell a little about what an art quilt is, how I got into fiber art, and show-and-tell scads of my work. What's not to have fun with?
So, I have a growing pile of notes and books and online research, but today I finalized a sample sheet to show why I am a fiber artist; no rules, try anything once, endless variety and do I have to say it? FUN!

From top left, clockwise...

1. I colored the flower cartoon, then tried ironing it onto fabric. Not good...
2. Then I colored directly onto fabric and ironed. Oh, yes!
3. Next I used fabric markers. They were okay.
4. Then I tried crayon onto light heat n bond stuff. Hmmm... further research needed.
5. Satin stitched individual cloth petals then joined them into a lily. Not overly impressed.
6. Free motion embroidered on a sparkly nylon fabric. Kinda cool!

Bahhhhhh!!!!

Guess what I did to celebrate National Quilting Day? Yep! I dyed wool for the very first time. I went online and scrounged around and used the food dye w/vinegar method. I have had fleeces stored for YEARS.
I knew I would use them someday...

And I sure liked the colorful outcome! :?} 

These  will fly to the UK with me for my class with Gilda Baron.

Phewww!!!

     The thrill, and relief, of getting my Quilt Festival International of Ireland 2012 submissions mailed off. I spent over a week getting them ready. I made two of the hydrangeas, a frog and the blue butterfly for donation to the quilted garden portion of the show. They will be given to charity by the Festival after the show.

Much improved!

Pretty-but wrinkly...

     As far as quilt entries are concerned, those pieces admired by the chair of the festival here on the blog meant taking them apart for shipping ease. Le Couleur Pourpre had to come off the stretched canvas, which was something I really should have done earlier, as it had a few 'bobbles' in the stretching. I gave it batting, backing and then quilted it divinely using shades of thread to match the background shading. I think it helped pop the color! Putting the dark maroon on as binding helped pull the center framing forward. It looks great now!

     I HAD to enter one of my Wild Flowers-it is for the quilted garden section of the show you know! I chose this one. All I had to do was add a hanging sleeve, in case the hangers of the show can't use the wrapped stick.

And the most work, but my pride and joy, was removing Exuberance from its 30# plywood mounting, adding the batting and backing, making more of a quilt out of it. The line between fiber art and quilt art gets murky. Fiber art needs to be 'hang on the wall like a painting' framed out. Quilt art needs to be, well, more 'quilty'.

So, those are off to Ireland. And today I threw my batik quilt 'into the ring' on McCall's design star contest. More on that later...

Butterfly Blue-quilted

I am fairly sure a new addiction has been born...

Quilted Butterfly

11" wingspan

Technically, this butterfly is a quilt...three layers, fabric/batting/fabric. Free motion embroidered colors on top of a cheery yellow commercial fabric. I stitched pipe cleaners to the underside of the wings, so this butterfly is pose-able! I attached it to the top of one of my wild flower quilts. The quilt was already 'over the top' so why not send it soaring! :?}

Batik II

Thanks to the encouragement (and guilt inducing support) of an online UFO finishing group this batik is now a done deal! Yes, the scrambled layout is on purpose-it took me days to arrange! And the free-motion machine quilting (on my 35 year old Viking) includes my favorite 'snail shell' pattern plus lots of uplifting words, such as joy, peace, love, bless. All this in response to the last class instructor's comment, "I love quilts that make my eye travel, search for, and find surprises".