Sweet Citrus Bells

Holy Cow! I finally finished a quilt! It's been a while, so this is a big deal here in High-Fiber-Content-Land .  A long, long time ago, I received a gallon zip-lock bag filled with fabrics,trims, beads and other bits, also known as a "Baggo" (a bag-o-stuff).  And I was to make a quilt out of it for an unknown member of one of the online fiber groups I belong to (Hi FiberPirates).  I also sent in a bag of my own stuff and had already received an utterly fabulous quilt back.  So this quilt is long overdue.  I actually made most of it in January. As in January 2011. Ahem. But then it sat there for a long time, because it was done to a certain point, and it just wasn't working past that, and I was just plain stuck.  I hardly ever get stuck like that.  But there it was. For months.

As you can see, I got unstuck eventually and finished it.  I couldn't tell you how exactly.  Just the passage of time, or maybe the pressure I put on myself to actually do it, since I was enjoying the Baggo quilt I'd received months ago.  It got finished, all except hand-sewing the binding, label and sleeve.  That took me another two months to finally manage.  Not sure what the issue was there, but at last.  It's done, and I'm pleased with it, and I hope Dolly likes it too.
The whole quilt came about because of the Tangerine Sours Altoids tin she sent some of the embellishments in, it really got designed all around it.  And several times I almost pitched that idea, of having the lid be on the quilt, but as you can see it survived.  As an aside, boy was that ever fun when I was flattening it...My teenager came running, rather alarmed at all the racket, "Mom, what are you doing?"  I paused, with hammer raised, grinning "Making stuff."  heh.

The lovely heavy bells made a wonderful tinkling sound as I finished hand stitching everything.  Here you can see some of the leaf beads as well as the leafy ribbon that I used out of all the embellishments that came in the Baggo.  There were a lot in there to pick from which made it fun.
So now on to finishing more quilts...

Blow Me Away

 Watercolor crayon and pencil along with ink drawing for December 10th, words in the margin say:
Blow Me Away

For December 11th, A magazine picture collage, with pen marking, and printed and solid tissue paper. The words say:
Is Your Tank Half Empty or Half Full?

Washing To Do

A big stack of to-be-washed fabrics.  Monthly batik packs from eQuilter and random purchases over the last year.  I try to wash my fabrics as I buy them, just works better for me, knowing everything is already washed.  I think I've been putting this off because it will be a lot of ironing, but the stack is taunting me, I want to use this stuff!

I Find It Trying

This December 8th daily collage or sketch came about because I was playing with the Tangoes that were on my worktable for some unknown reason.  Have you ever played this game?  Really challenging! I traced each plastic shape in each color of fine tip Sharpie that I had (black, blue, green, red) then filled in with color pencil.  Wanted to see what the overlapping would look like.  The words say 

I Find It Trying Being A Square Among Triangles And Parallelograms

The December 9th daily collage, magazine pictures and words along with colored pencil.  Words say: Power Explodes When You Need It Most

Round Robin In A Day

First quilt finished of 2012! This is from a CQFA workshop called Round Robin In A Day.  We each started out with a small piece (the center windmill-ish square) and it gets added to and passed on several times.

 Quick, improvisational and no pressure, the whole room just explodes in creativity as everyone rises to the challenge.  Such a fun activity.  This is what the piece looked like before the quilting.

 Some closeups of the embroidery stitches I stitched on each seam, I used a lot of the ones on my machine, but not all.

We just did this activity again at our January CQFA meeting, so I'll post about that another time!

Imaginary Landscapes

 This time it was a pen and watercolor crayons in the daily practice journal.  The words in the binding say:  Imaginary Landscapes Draw Me In Every Time.

December 7th just magazine words this time and some pen marking.  Words in the binding are: 

You Know You Do.

Square Fabric Bowl

 A fabric bowl that I finished and gave away as a Christmas present this year.

 It was pretty easy to make and is a nice showcase for cool fabrics.  Timtex was used as the interfacing and the fabrics were fused to it before sewing it together.  This was started in a CQFA workshop a while ago.

 You can see how differently shaped it could be, depending on how high you sew up the seams.

I think I'd like to try to make another one in a different shape at some point.