Old and Worn, Still Beautiful

 Found some interesting old textiles at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles rummage sale back in May.  Not sure what I'll really do with them, but I liked the old worn fabrics and stitching and the worn or missing shisha mirrors and couldn't put them down once I'd picked them up.

 According the TribalSouk this is Sindhi embroidery, maybe from early mid 20th century in India/Pakistan (depending on whether before or after partition). Given the shape, these are possibly animal headdresses.  The little loops on the edges would likely have had brass bells.

Not sure if I'll end up using them in a piece, because I wouldn't want to cut them up, and I'm not sure how stable they'd be.  Maybe I should just frame them and hang them up so I can enjoy looking at their interesting colors and textures.  Or perhaps it is finally time to get that goat I've always wanted, and give them something cool to wear?

Details of Round Robin In A Day

 Just some detail pictures of this Round Robin In A Day quilt that resulted from the recent CQFA meeting.  I think I like it even better now that I've quilted it.  And I certainly like it better than what it started as before the four CQFA artists got ahold of it.

 One of the edges had this pink border, but I added all these details to tie it together with the rest of the piece.

An interesting mix of fabrics, embellishments, and quilting lines.
I'll post an overall finished picture of this when I get the binding done.  Hopefully it will have a name by then too, because Round Robin In A Day 2 is not doing it for me.

Rainbow Crow

 Posting my Bag O' Stuffquilt the other day reminded me that I'd never posted the incredible one I received in this round of Baggos.  This awesome piece was made out of my gallon zip-lock back of random stuff.  Pretty amazing huh?  The artist is Dolly Smith, who is a FiberPirate and a very talented artist and quilter.  The quilt measures 17"wide x 39"high and is entitled Rainbow Crow.  She also sent along the story that goes with it which you can read at the bottom of this post.  Little did she know how much I love mythology, Native American stories and crows.  I count myself very lucky to have received such a beautiful quilt.

 Beaded snowflakes

 The beaded gift of fire and one of the rainbow feathers.

 The rainbow crow in all his beaded glory.

 The layered details are so fun to discover, I swear I find new ones every time I look at this quilt which is hanging up in my studio.  Very inspiring!

This is the story of Rainbow Crow, a Lenape Indian legend.

When the earth was young, Rainbow Crow had the most beautiful plumage and sweetest song of all birds. The land was warm, but it began to snow and all animals did not know how to live in the snow. Rainbow Crow flew to Sky Spirit for help.

Sky Spirit gave Crow the gift of fire. Rainbow Crow flew to earth with a stick of fire. The smoke darkened his feathers and burned his throat. When he landed on earth, fire melted the snow and all animals were warmed.

Crow wept. His sweet song was now a rough "caw" and his beautiful feathers were black. Sky Spirit came to Crow and said, "For your selflessness and generosity I give you the gift of freedom. You will never be hunted, for your meat is burned and smoky, your feathers are black and will not be wanted, and your voice is not sweet and soothing. But when the sun shines, all will see the rainbow in your plumage."

Crow was content. 

Thanks again Dolly!

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...

Recent Additions

All of these were purchased back in January in Half Moon Bay while I was there for the CQFA retreat, at a little shop called Tokenz.
First is a big anti-evil-eye glass charm to hang over the front door.  This is about 3" wide.  One of my favorite symbols.  Never had seen one this large before!

T

 I'd never seen cone shells sliced like this before, thought the shapes were really intriguing.  Probably too delicate for quilt embellishing but maybe for printing or stamp carving?

Who doesn't need a lightweight bracelet of skulls?  Well not me really, not something I'd wear except maybe in October. I predict that these will end up on the next Dia de los Muertos quilt that I make.

Teeny tiny doodads for embellishments.  This store had a wall of big jars of this things, it was fun to go through and pick out a few I thought I might use at some point on a quilt.

 A right hand figure, to help me meditate on upcoming re-repair tendon pinky finger surgery.  But now that I look at it more closely, maybe not such a great model to use as I'm not planning to have the pinky finger removed. hmmm

A pony-tail holder of felted green woolen spikes.  Not so easy to spot against t

green background.  So here I am against the more neutral house.  Except for the purple window trim of course.  Are you surprised I insisted on purple trim when we repainted?

Heavy vs. Light

Dichroic glass=very heavy. Especially for quilt embellishments. To support a piece such as the large triangle on the left without distorting the quilt surface would take some engineering. Which is probably why these are unused as of now. Maybe they should just be jewelry instead, several of them look like they'd be great pins. I think Margaret Ball gave me these ages ago and I'm sorry I haven't ever used them, just taken them out every now and then and enjoyed looking at them. They have so much depth and you always find something new to see within the glass. They've been in a little box which just got discovered (during my recent embossing heat gun search) with these completely opposite embellishments-to-be-used:

These are metallic painted and heat treated Tyvek "jewels". That's how I always think of these, because of the shiny metallic paint that I used, they really glow and have a nice shine. In a different way than the dichroic glass above of course, but still shiny. I think they have a lot of presence because of their unusual and organic shapes, you're not sure what exactly they are, so they require more up close investigation.

The way that the Tyvek folds in on itself and bubbles up is so unpredictable which is a big part of the fun of making these. They are easy to use as an embellishment on a quilt, you can pierce them pretty easily with a needle and they are super lightweight and easy to bead upon.

Another reason that I need to find my embossing heat gun, so I can make some more of these!

I've used Tyvek embellishments on two quilts Meteor Meltdown and Open Book, Blue and I think I need to definitely use these in some upcoming quilts.