Witches Apothecary

I am getting ready for the bewitching season because it will be upon us sooner than we think. I wanted to make something for All Hallows Eve but not make it too obvious Halloweeny, all orange and black etc. I wanted it to evoke a witches lair equipped with all the potions necessary to really do someone damage. I can 't wait to finish it and show the entire quilt.  Its all put together and in the quilting stage now. It is appliqued, pieced, hand dyed, and stenciled.

 

I am back at school so my time (and energy) is limited, but I really like the look of it.  My husband said it will scare the **** out of a kid after I said it was for a future grandchild. (wishful thinking)

I will enjoy it in the meantime. BOO!



Bicycle Wheels

 New quilt, wall hanging size 55" x 74", called Bicycle Wheels. It came out very cool, so I hung it above our bed. It really brightens up our room which is kind of dark most of time. No free motion quilting this time, only long tedious straight rows. Hey, its a modern thing.

This quilt is a free tutorial at http://elsiesgirl.blogspot.com/ only she does not call it Bicycle Wheels. Her name is Sunburst. I come from a family of bike riders so I had to rename it.

 

This is the newest lesson in my painting class. It is called a prismatic painting. I learned how to paint daisies! It just rained here is southern California, amazing.

More Twinkling

More pears. I think I am getting tired of painting pears.I just couldn't paint green ones anymore.  Next weeks lesson looks really cool something that is way more in my style, more doodley and abstract.



Twinkling H2O's

I am taking a painting class using these special paints called Twinkling H20's that have mica in them and make them variously degrees of iridescence. They are very beautiful and come in 200 plus colors. I only have 38. These are some samples for the first weeks lessons, mandalas and fruit.

 These are half mandalas because I turned them into postcards to send to my kids. These are totally  addicting to make I have actually painted about 8 full round mandalas so far.

Bicycle

I started a new project I saw a tutorial for on http://elsiesgirl.blogspot.com/ . She calls it Sunburst but I am going to call it Bicycle. The fabric is called bicycle path and I used a fat quarter pack. Because I made a mistake in calculations I have enough of these wedges to create a whole other quilt. Who wants two quilts that are exactly the same? Not me. So I am thinking about what I can do with all the other wedges. That will be for the future.

This is the first time I have made something like this, a circle with wedges, but they get corners so eventually they will be squares.

Sanbar

 Something new I've been working on. I did the quilt but thought it was too plain and boring. So I added some appliques that sort of swirl in a circle in the middle, using my hand dyed fabric. I got the pattern from a note card that I have had for a long time.

It's a good thing I brought my document reader home from school for the summer, it is very handy for resizing designs. The card was about 4 inches tall, these pieces are about 30 inches long.

 There is not a lot of contrast between the appliques and the background but I am thing of highlighting them more with thread. We'll see.  I used free motion EKG embroidery that I saw on http://marvelesartstudios.blogspot.com/.  That is a wonderful site that is loaded with information. Thank you very much!

Sanbar is Indian soup. That's the name of this quilt as of now.

More washi tape business

 I noticed the acrylic paint left a sloppy edge on the tape, so I wound up trimming it down the sides. I left it on the parchment paper and just trimmed it. It came out perfect.

 Here are all the tapes. They are much brighter in person than shows up in this picture.

To make some of the tapes skinnier I actually cut some of them up the middle to make them about a half inch wide. This was kind of addicting. I even made another batch that are a little plainer because I thought I was getting carried away with all the patterns. Now what to do with them?

And one more little bee on a little t shirt. I can't stop.