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...

Night time Wild flowers

Here is the silver gray rendition of the Wild Flowers series, Under the Gibbous Moon. The flowers consist of 2-3 layers in various sizes, the smallest centers being comprised of thick metallic thread. Leaves are from the several shades of silver gray thread also. New to this series is 'grass'. I used my long rectangle cardboard form, stitched two lines 1/2" apart down the center of it, as well as all around the perimeter, then sliced it right down the center. I have 11 more wild flower bases ready to quilt, all in the WILD colorway.

WILD Flowers 101

WILD Flowers tutorial-another free motion embroidery play!

Pick your palette. Light, medium, dark works well. Any kind of thread. Variegated is fun to use on the 'bubble quilting'!

Choose your shape(s). Sturdy cardboard (cereal boxes, cardboard that comes in stacks of scrap booking paper, packaging-my rectangle shape below came from the box my surge protector came in) or strong paper plates. I cut one paper plate circle, then re-sized and stitched it back together to get the egg shape. Flatten the ends for easier wrapping! Circles are difficult to wrap-the thread wants to slip and slide. Place double sided tape around the perimeter to help tame it. Don't try for precision wrapping on circles, unless you want the huge hump of crossed threads in the center of your flower. Slightly sloppy disperses the threads and is easier to 'nail down' in the 'quilting' stage. Squares and rectangles are the easiest shapes to wrap, so they are a good shape to start with for practice.
The larger the window, the larger the finished shape. The wider the border, the wider the finished fringe. (you can always trim it down shorter when finished)

First wrap, North to South. I usually choose the darkest thread.

Second wrap, East to West, same dark thread.

Repeat the wrapping process with the second color, North-South, East-West. (I usually choose the lightest shade) The more you wrap, the thicker the fringe and shape. Wrap to taste, or as long as your patience holds! :?}

*Be sure and set your machine up for free motion embroidery. Feed dogs down, less tension, less pressure foot, hopping/embroidery foot.

Begin by sewing a straight stitch around the window's perimeter to initially secure the threads. I have now changed to the third thread, 'star of the show'. If you struggle with threads tangling in the hopper foot, just place a piece of clear 'Solvy' on top of the thread to keep your foot free to move and not tangle up.

Begin the decorative stitching in the window. I like to use 'bubbles', but there are no rules, just the need to 'link' all the threads together to make 'whole cloth' when released from the cardboard frame.

Bubbles completed.

Time to snip all the threads free from the frame, releasing the fringe.

Fringe released, piece complete. Begin again-it's addictive!

WILD Flowers-work in progress. I am creating the stems by wrapping various fabrics around cotton rope. I free motion embroidered the leaves in all kinds of colors and variegated threads. I am auditioning borders. PLAY! IMPORTANT UPDATE
Choose your background colors and size, piece, quilt and bind it, THEN place your flowers, stems and leaves onto it. So much easier than trying to work around all that fluffy stuff, stems and leaves! :?}

Morning Glory aka...

Exuberance!

Now that I have used the skill saw to cut a thin piece of plywood to size, put a layer of batting on the front of that plywood, glued and stapled blue, then green, hand-dyed fabric on top of that, then placed the quilt, then applied some more flowers in the border with a grand finale' of a few hand stitched stems, Husband has changed his mind about the 'Elvis velvet painting'.  He now proclaims, "That'll sell!"   :?}

Detail