stitching and drawing

Inspired by one of Jude Hill's classes, I've been handstitching, now drawing eyes mostly with Inktense pencils, then wetting them to make them permanent. What a trip for this "if I can't do it by machine, I won't do it at all" woman.

wallhanging pogress

This is the current state of the wallhanging from my last post. I sewed down all the fabric and batting pieces with black cotton thread, then embroidered with various cotton and rayon threads and washed away the stabilizer.

new wip

The background fabric is a half yard of "hopelessly-losing-the-glitter" fabric, folded in half, right sides together. On that I laid down heavy layers of scrap batting and fabric. I topped it with wash-away stabilizer and now I'm trying to free-motion all over the surface. Not easy, I just broke the second needle.

crossing

For this small wallhanging I raw edge appliquilted the fabric pieces.

i miss the city

Another small one that will be mounted to stretched canvas. I layed out all the pieces on the sandwiched quilt, then the raw edges were machine "appliquilted". The quilt edges were blanket stitched by hand, with 6 strands of variegated embroidery floss.

and it keeps growing...

still crazy after all these quilts

That's what this quilt will be called, once it's done. Often people ask me how I come up with the names for my paintings and all I can reply is that they just "arrive" in my head. It works everytime for me. And it seems that it's the same with my quilts. Last night while happily piecing and cutting, I suddenly knew it.

This is where I'm at right now, 24 small blocks, 2 big ones.

yesterday's progress

I pieced and cut, then pieced and cut some more and at the end of the day I had eighteen 8 1/2" blocks (plus one 16 1/2") on the table. Since I worked with the same fabrics for the last quilt I made, I'm getting a little tired of seeing them. But I promised myself not to cut into any yardage, until I have used up at least some of those strips and scraps.

free piecing again

I started to piece again. Nothing complicated, I just grab strips and scraps from my pile and piece them together randomly until the fabric looks right to me. Then I cut blocks. So far I have one 16 1/2" block and four 8 1/2" blocks. I might cut those up diagonally and then join those triangles to make new blocks. We'll see. In the photos you can also see some of the strata I made to cut my blocks from. Can you tell I'm having fun? :)