Field Trips in Fiber - Adventures in quilting, hand dyed fabric and fiber art.

Field Tripping the Web - Issue 85

Eye Candy – Projects people have recently completed

• Quayquilter's Cherrywood quilt
• Helen-Mary's star quilt
• Kay's Crazy For Christmas quilt
• Brenda's Desire Lines #3 art quilt
• Liz's folded fabric pillow
• Kit's Winter Moon art quilt
• Jacquie's Burning Embers wall hanging
• Rian's Poppies wall hanging
• Connie's Morning Prayer collage quilt
• Kim's Gingersnaps quilt
• Sharon's his and hers 9-patch quilts
• Helen-Mary's Dog and Cats quilt
• Anya's twin sampler quilts
• Cheri's Cards vs Socks wedding quilt
• Fannie's Blessed small art quilt
• Julia's Apple Core table runner
• Fannie's Joyful art quilt
• Kheli's wall quilt

  Longarm –specific Eye Candy

•  Kathy's quilting on a customer quilt
• Supermom's quilting on a table runner and a star quilt
• Helen'Mary's quilting on a Broken Star quilt
• Judy's background fills
• Judy's quilting on several quilts
• Dagmar's Treasures of the Southwest quilt
• Shannon's quilting on a blue and brown sampler
• Deb's quilting on her Mother's quilt
• Bobby's potholder faces
• Comicbooklady's Christmas placemat
• Bunk's Christmas Tree skirt

  Fiber and Other Art

• Abby's ram
• Sandy's altered family book
• Barbara's remodeled doll house
• Libby's embroidered and painted Morris wall hanging
• Judy's fiber pins
• Sue's Arboreal textile round robin book
• Gina's fiber and clay wall hanging
• Ruth's felted Christmas ornaments
• Susan's painted shoes
• Terri's tote bags and mini-padfolios
• Gina's impractical bracelet
• Kayjay's Hands of Friendship bag
• Gina's tea bag postcards
• Jo's tiny Christmas stockings

  Surfaces

• Connie's rust dyeing on silk
• Sandy's painted papers

  Garment Sewing

• Mandi's Holiday embellished dress
• Lindsay's BurdaStyle retro coat
• Pam's new Hot Patterns knit tops
• Audrey's "strong shouldered" Burda blouse
• Sharon's M5984 jacket
• Erica's V1087 dress
• Sharon's S2501knit top
• Sharon's M5987 coat

   Tutorials and On-line Projects

•  Char's Peace sign Christmas ornament tutorial
• Candy's photography light box tutorial on Craft Nouveau
• Dawn's tutorial for making a rosette badge
• Jaybird's Sweet Sugar Swirl table topper
• Caroline's Christmas pudding pincushion tutorial
• Dawn's tutorial for making fringe
• Geta's tutorial on using stripes
• LuAnn's tutorial for fabric paper
• Passionate Quilter's holiday placemat tote tutorial
• Jeanne's Christmas Treats placemat tutorial
• Candy's clever packaging tutorial

 Other Interesting Things

• Judy L shared photos of her fabulous sewing space

 Found on Etsy

• I didn't have a ton of time to go through Etsy this week but, since mine is still packed away, I thought I'd see what I could find when searching "Christmas Tree"
• Artistic Accents has this dichroic glass tree pendant  and lots of other great glass accessories
• My Angel Shop had a variety of these fairy lights made with rubber tree leaves
• Day Dreem Designs carries etched glass items, like these tree etched old fashioned glasses
• I hate to admit it but Simple Shapes has my perfect idea of decorating the tree, a wall sticker Christmas tree

Weekly List

What an incredibly productive week. It would be amazing what I could get done if I had 4-day weekends every week!

I finished:
1. quilting Mom's super secret quilt
2. the Christmas table runner and the tutorial for the table runner that will be published at Two Cretive Studios December 15
3. One set of Christmas postcards
4. Some hand dyed scarves for Christmas gifts - plus some other dyeing for the shop

Now this coming week will be very short of accomplishments. Anne and I are leaving Wednesday for a long weekend in Asheville, NC. We have been talking about going to see Biltmore at Christmas for a long time and we are finally doing it! So I'll leave this list as a reminder for when I return.

1. More Christmas postcards
2. Some Christmas gift tie dyes
3. Finalize the design for my Fiberactions January entry
4. Work on: the kaleidoscope block, the Teal Tomorrow quilt blocks and the mini log cabin
5. write a photo tutorial

I have a few posts lined up for while I am away so that you will not forget me!

Snowflake Holiday Postcards

I have been making my Christmas postcards for several years now. I make between 60 and 80 of them which means that they can't be too involved! I usually have 3 designs and make multiples of each. My first set of cards for this season are snowflake cards and they were fast and easy to make!

I have been pondering ideas to use my sunprinted snowflake fabric for a couple of months. But when I saw these Cedar Canyon snowflake stencils at Sew Thankful, I immediately knew what to do! 

I made 15 cards and I think the total time was about 3 hours.

I started last night with by stenciling snowflakes all over the sunprinted fabric (you could use any wintry looking fabric). I used a foam brush and Jacquard Metallic Silver paint, undiluted. I wanted to place my snowflakes between the sunprinted images. For a similar effect your could paint in 2 or three layers, starting with a medium blue metallic, then a light blue metallic and then the silver. That will give you a similar depth.

 

Here's what the fat quarter of fabric looks like painted. Next fuse this to a layer of Timtex, fast2fuse or other stiff interfacing. Fuse another fat quarter on the back for the address side of the postcard. I used a pale purple for mine.

 

Cut the fabric into 4 x 6 postcards. If your fabric was a full fat quarter (18 x 20) you can get 15 cards.

 

Finish the edges. You can zig-zag stitch the edges, straight stitch them or, like I did, serge them. I like the serger because it's a very clean edge and it's fast! I used Superior Razzle Dazzle thread in the upper looper. The color is Frosty Morning. It has just a bit of blue and purple wound with the silver. Razzle Dazzle is a great thread to use in the serger but you could also wind it on a bobbin and finish the cards on the sewing machine with the cards facing right side down.

You can call the cards done or...

...add a little more bling! I added some hot fix crystals to each card. On cards where the snowflake designs were well balanced on the card, I used the crystals to highlight one of the snowflakes Like in this card. If the snowflakes were not so well placed on the card, I used the crystals to make a new snowflake, like in the first photo of the post.

15 down, 50 or so to go!

Don't forget, there's only 1 day left to enter the November postcard challenge!

A Christmas table runner

Today has been a dyeing day. I'll be able to share some of the results with you tomorrow. This afternoon I'm relaxing watching the Commonwealth Cup. But today I can share with you the table runner that I made yesterday.

 

I made this using the Two Creative Studios first 3 blocks of their Block of the Month and my Red Rose fabric palette. You can download the PDF tutorial here.

A day without internet access

It's been a very traumatic day around here. We haven't had internet access since this morning! We had to talk to each other and I actually had to get out of my chair and DO something. Thank goodness it came back around 9:30.

I hope my American friends had a great Thanksgiving. Ours was very nice, especially since all I had to do was eat! Chris did the cooking. Then today my nephew and his girlfriend stopped by for a visit.

I've gotten lots of sewing done too. Yesterday I finished quilting Mom's secret project. Today I made a table runner but I can't share that for a couple of weeks. I also completed my Two Creative Studios BOM for December. These bright fabrics that I chose are starting to grow on me!

I'm working on my Thankful postcard too. You have 3 days left to enter! Please go and enter the challenge so that you will have a chance to win a package of goodies from my studio! Remember, you don't have to actually make a postcard, you only have to describe it.

My other big news is that I got myself a Droid! Now I can take the internet with me everywhere I go. 

Tomorrow is dyeing day!