Diverted by Fun Fabric People

Thing #1 and Thing #2

Last weekend was my monthly class at the local needlework/quilt shop. It's called Art Journal and each class is a secret until we arrive. Every month we get to play with a different technique. So far this year we've done kool-aid dyeing. fusing, free-motion quilting, free-form embroidery, made fabric buttons, made layered fabric and others things I can't remember right now.

Many of the these techniques I've seen in books and magazines. They are the type of thing that I want to drop eveything and try but end up not doing. All year I've had a few hours every month to just play with these ideas.

Last Saturday the teacher brought in scraps of fabrics, beads, yarn, threads, batting and a few examples. We went crazy. Each of us picked different fabrics and beads and immediently went to work creating our people. No two ended up the same although many had really wild hair.

On many classs days I've been busy and tired and wondered why I had signed up for the class. But once I'm there I pick up energy from the the other ladies. I've found that time in this class sparks my creativity. I come home with so many ideas for new projects or new ways of doing old projects. I used to be afraid of the fusible webbing and now I'm making frames using it - more on that later. I don't know if the class will continue into the new year. What I do know is that if it doesn't I'm going to have to reserve one day a month to be my "creativity" day and try something new.

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It's about time - the big reveal

My bright quilt was finished in June but I wanted to wait until both were done before sharing the pictures. Quilting the blue quilt didn't take long but finishing the binding sure did. I did procrastinate a bit as it was too warm to have a huge quilt on my lap for most of the summer. After this, I'll probably do all the binding on my sewing machine (and stick to smaller quilts). Notice the cut-out corners? That was a challenge. I found instructions here and it looked easy enough but I wished I had practiced some. After a lot of finessing I finally got good miters but I could have done much better. The cut-out corners allow the quilt to hang nicely over the edges of the mattress and it's a perfect match for a full sized mattress. But, the top edge isn't even close to the pillows. I wonder how the quilt fit on the bed it was made for. Here, at last, is the original quilt that I was copying. I just noticed - all of the baskets are

More Wildflowers of America

Since I have framed the stitched Bleeding Heart from Curtis Boehringer's Wildflowers of America I decided to track down the other 3 wildflowers that had I stiched earlier. I chose these flowers because they reminded me of the forests of Ohio where I grew up - Jack-in-the-Pulpit, Wake Robin and Bloodroot. The Jack-in-the-Pulpit and Wake Robin where both finished with fabric frames. This was a favorite finishing technique of mine for a long time. On the back they are dated 1999 - that was a while ago. I remember the quilt store where I purchased the fabric, but not its name. It's gone now but it was in an old Victorian house in Old Colorado City. The turrets where lined with bolts of fabric and hey had a great selection of plaids. I had never heard name Wake Robin before and it means nothing to me, but the flower is definitely a Trillium. Back then, I dutifully followed the pattern. Now I would have used the name Trillium or omitted the letters altogether. I do miss

Diverted by Dorset Buttons

I learned how to make Dorset Buttons yesterday at our monthly EGA meeting . These little buttons are so much fun to make! We only got three rings so that's how many I made. If I would have gotten more I'd probably be still making them. One nice thing is that they are very forgiving. I made countless mistakes on my first one and you can't tell. A quick google revealed lots of websites with historical information and tutorials on how to make them so I'm not even going to try to describe the process. Some people made their buttons with yarn, others used perle cotton. One of the examples had beads on it, so once I got home I had to find some beads to sew on. That's it for now. I'm going to be keeping my eye's open rings to use. I'm also going to have to go through my yarn stash. Using yarn gives a totally different result and I want to try some yarn ones too.

Erica's Stitches

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