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...

Zig-Zagging Through PIQF

Last month I met up with Jaye and her mom, Mary to see the PIQF show in Santa Clara.  It was a great show this year, and it was really fun to see it together with them. We each notice really different things about quilts, so it's fun to talk about them all at once.  And it was really great to see Jaye's quilt Zig Zaggy hanging in the special exhibit New Quilts of Northern California (yay Jaye!).

 Jaye and I both bought this template from Come Quilt With Me for our next hey-cut-me-one-of-those-out-of-your-fabrics-when-you-feel-like-it quilts.  We did that using their templates (which are great, very well-made) for the Tumbler quilt I'm still working on and her Eye-Spy quilt.
We're both going to do our own background fabrics and cut out the windmill shapes for each other.  I haven't tried to make a block yet, hope it isn't too hard.

I had to buy these lovely soft fall colors, dyed in Kenya along with some very cool rolled paper beads.  Oh man the guy running this booth, Akonye Kena was a hoot, I could have chatted with him all day.
I also bought a new ironing board cover but I haven't put it on yet, so I'll tell you about it after I've managed it (wish me luck, it's a little involved).

I noticed in the quilts that I took pictures of  that I was focused on noticing many things like:

• interesting stitching, both machine and hand-embroidery 
• use of other pre-quilted/embroidered/embellished/exotic textiles 
• unusually shaped quilts (hooray! finally!)
• circles
• leaves 
• interesting found objects as embellishments
• dimensional shapes as part of the quilt
• text/fonts on the quilt surface

Beading Basics

I'm a wanna-be beader,  mostly I buy beads, and use them by sewing them onto my quilts. I finally read the magazines and books I've been collecting and actually bought some of the tools I needed to make some jewelry for myself.  Boy do these ever make a big difference.  Wish I had bought them back when I first started trying to make stuff.  Yes, the right tools really do make the job easier. 

Buying all the components from Fire Mountain Gems and Beads big selection, and then putting them together is pretty easy for a beginner like me.  I liked the expressions on these probably supposed to be Buddha faces.

Two pairs of moonstone earrings, haven't decided which are my favorite, but I'm enjoying wearing them and nothing has fallen apart yet.

The Final Corpse

A fifth and final Exquisite Corpse has arrived home out of our group, so here is the story of how I finished this one off. Here is what the piece looked like when it arrived, almost a cool look just like that, based on the interesting covering-up fabrics the other artists had used. The background fabric is a Crate&Barrel table runner out of a heavy cotton toweling. I was last up, so I got to do legs and feet.

There was a border of a fancy kind of sheer/silky fabric and vertical beading as my clue at the uncovered edge. Obviously the bottom of a skirt right? I placed two pieces of lace to bring the kind of harsh stripes to the background and then some satin for legs and metallic shot cotton for shoes. I thought that fancy fabrics were warranted based on the clue I had going, this figure was obviously "dressed up".

I used Steam a Seam to fuse the shapes down then did a satin stitch around the shapes. I was going for a " kicking up her heels and dancing" kind of look to what the legs and feet were doing.

I thought the shoes needed a bit more of something, so I used a couple of heart charms anchored down with some white glass beads.
The green looked good with the green of the background.

Here's a closer look at one of the feet.

And then I added the word "heart" as the final step.

For more on the Exquisite Corpse project be sure and check out our group blog where more of these great projects can be seen.

Tango Lady

Yet another of the Exquisite Corpse projects has arrived home. This time it is Linda's, you can see the whole figure over at her blog TangoMusings. So this first picture shows my original fabric choices.

I first started in with some heavy satin stitching on the edges of each piece.
But that purple triangle wanted to stay, but it just didn't look right after the stitching. So it was jettisoned in favor of....

Beads! Of course beads, always with the beads. A strange necklace of beads stitched along the neckline.A closeup shot so you can see the bone beads a little better, along with the supporting cast of round glass beads.

Oh, and don't forget to add the words: BELL SWEETLY, this time embroidered on. Made me think of Laverne and her script "L".

For even more Exquisite Corpse action, be sure and check out our group blog.

A Corpse Exquisitely Revealed

I'm happy to finally get to share one of the exquisite corpse pieces I've been working on for the last few months. This one has reached its owner, so I can now reveal what I did.
This round we were actually doing figures, each artist starting with a "head" on a long skinny rectangle divided into squares. We are also adding words depending on which section we are working on.
In this picture you can see the 1/2" that I got to go on as my clues. I figured that the yellow bit on the left was the bottom of the arm, and the stripes were the bodice of a garment. So I got this far with a torso/hip section, and thought I was done, but then realized, no, it needed more.
First of all the hand needed to be holding something, and the "belt" needed a bit more oomph. I also had to add the words that are part of the game this time.

I found this turquoise bead in my collection that I thought looked like an egg, I wanted an egg shape to go with the skirt material nesting egg print. The bead is quite flat too, so it fit on the quilt very nicely. I stamped the words with one of my favorite alphabet stamps on some of my hand-dyed cotton, this was then hand-stitched on with orange perle cotton.

I did a lot of decorative stitching on the skirt to add more texture. I think I would wear a skirt that looked like this. I probably wouldn't walk around holding a blue egg. but that's another thing.

I really like this photo a lot, showing all the special bits that I added to the belt, like the Chinese coin and glass beads.

And here is how the whole thing looks. I think this was my very favorite of the pieces I contributed during this round. I'm glad that Joanie likes the finished piece!

Final Exquisite Corpse of Round One

This is the final blank square available on Susan's "Flower Power" exquisite corpse, the final Corpse I got to work on for Round One. I had the edge of Nellie's and Carolyn's work peeking out to give me clues, as well as the corner of the adjacent square (forgot who the artist was). The colors and patterns showing gave a little clue about where to take my work on this piece.
Also, Carolyn wisely included a small amount of dark red seed beads that she had used on her piece, I went ahead and incorporated them into my bead work and they really help to pull our two sections together.
Under the needle. Applying some tulle net to cover up the Angelina fibers.
Free motion quilting around the flowers.
The flat work done, now it was time to add some beading, which I took a lot of pictures of!
Do you recognize the fabric from my recently created skirt?
I happened to have the exact same fabric as Carolyn used, so I made sure to put some in the design, right up against the edge that adjoined her square. Out of all the fabrics in the world, it was a nice coincidence, eh?


You can see the dark red seed beads here, on the left is Carolyn's bead work that was showing, and then mine towards the right.
I also re-used some of the fabric I had turned into fusible fabric for leaves for Vero's Exquisite Corpse, there was lots available in my fusible box.
This is how the whole piece looked after I was done with it. My square is uncovered since it was getting sent right back to the originating artist, Susan.
A good shot of my piece overall, showing the edges of the other squares and how I overlapped/abutted.
I tried to tuck the fabric I was using under the edge of Nellie's work to have it leave no trace of the background, almost successful!

I felt I was fairly successful in integrating my final square into the existing work.

Showing the four corners where four artists' work meets.
And then finally, major fun bonus!! Susan sent a lovely thank-you box of goodies, papers, fibers, beads, all appreciated greatly, and which will be guaranteed to be put to good use. Maybe on Round Two of Exquisite Corpse.

Another Exquisite Corpse

This is how Vero's Exquisite Corpse looked when it arrived. So, as you can see, I had my choice of the two remaining squares. The four other completed ones were pretty thick and interesting feeling.
Her theme was fairies, so I started pulling some materials to use for a fairy to be hiding in. Some lace, wool, flowers and sequin waste were the first things that fell out into my hands.

I drew/inked a fairy face with Tsunienko and then played around with placement of the supporting pieces.
The colors on my fairy were too intense and not blending enough with the rest of the piece, so I got some green tuelle net out.
The leaf shapes were freehand cut out of several steam-a-seamed fabrics. The trick was heating them up without destroying the other materials.

I played around with several silk flowers I had on hand and the sunflower-ish one worked out best, plus it had some great green leaves. I free motion quilted all over and then beaded the center of the flower.

This photo shows the small hints of hand stich outlines of leaves on the un-hidden margin of Vero's square, so I tried to echo those with my machine quilting right next to and overlapping.
Here's a no flash version which shows more of the detail, just in a very strange color scheme.
You can go see more pictures on the whole exquisite corpse thing.