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

Color Palette Challenge Project

I've finished my color palette project for the month! 

I took this palette

and pulled these fabrics. After staring at the fabrics for a while I decided that the multi-colored cloth reminded me of fish. That melded with the idea that I needed more fabric postcards.

Here's the result. I think they are quite cute.

First I fused the sea fabric to my postcard base and stitched some free motion waves with dark blue metallic thread.  Then I fused Mistyfuse to the backs of all of the fabrics, cut the shapes and fused them in place. A little top-stitching with another metallic thread and a serged edge and they were done! I played around with the outline color and I think I like this pink the best. They will be cute birthday and guest cards.

Are you working on a project for the challenge? Remember that you can enter your project into a drawing on the August 1st to win a set of hand dyed fat quarters from my shop. 

 

The Sketchbook Challenge

I think that most people who are regular readers of my blog know that I am not a person who keeps a regular sketchbook. Oh, I have all kinds of little notebooks around. One is for longarm quilting ideas, one is for placemat and other project ideas and several are spread around for lists, ideas and reminders. But I've never considered keeping a real grown-up sketchbook like an artist.

Then I started following The Sketchbook Challenge blog and seeing some of the pages created by participants. I was intrigued.

In the last few weeks along came more motivation with Sue Bleiweiss' new book The Sketchbook Challenge. The book opens with a chapter on getting started. She has addressed EVERYTHING you need to know to start your own sketchbook. She discusses types of books, types of paper and every imaginable way to make marks in your book.

Even if you (or I) never take up the practice of keeping a sketchbook, this book is full of inspirational pages from a variety of artists.

The remaining chapters are prompts and each chapter shows how different artists approached the topic. In the "rhythm" chapter artists Jackie Bowcutt and Laura Cater-Woods shared how they approached the theme of "rhythm".

Every chapter also has a technique page and the techniques range from thread sketching, painting collage paper to making your own stamps.

The book is chock full of information and inspiration and is a valuable artist tool even if you don't choose to keep a sketchbook.  Who knows, it might get some of us st start a sketchbook after all!

 

New in the shop

My recent Etsy sale was very successful and as a result I am working hard to restock the sold out gradient patterns. I've added a few back this week.

Rolling Fog

Twilight

Under the Sea

Summer Sunset

and

Red Dawn

You can also find new Fat Quarter Packs and a couple of new 2-yard pieces.

 

 

New tool for Etsy sellers

I know that many of my readers are also in the Etsy community with me.  I can't say enough positive things about having a tool like Etsy for a small business seller. It saves a lot of time maintaining an independent e-commerce site so that I have more time for dyeing and sewing.

Just in time for my gradient sale I discovered a new (to me) tool for Etsy sellers. It's called Etsy On Sale. Etsy is great but the features are sometimes less than I need. One example is managing sales. Within Etsy you have to apply sale terms to your whole shop or else go in and manually modify every sale item independently. When the sale is over you would have to go back and do it all in reverse. For my gradient sale of over 50 items that would be a nightmare.

I used Etsy On Sale and it worked brilliantly. It is an application that can modify your shop in one easy step. You enter the shop section, the sale terms, start and end dates and it magically works! It works on credits. You purchase credits for as little as $10. My sale cost 4 credits, or $4.....except that I was given 5 free credits when I opened and my first event was free!

If you own an Etsy shop you might want to try out this great tool too. Here's a link to get you started at Etsy On Sale and you start with 5 free credits.

Community Service Projects

I mentioned yesterday that we had the Country School Quilters Sewing Saturday this past weekend. I reserve that time to work on Quilts of Valor and Veteran's quilts. I'm trying to alternate between the two.

 

These green crumb blocks were the 4th (and last) set of crumb blocks that I made several years ago. I'm kind of sick of them and couldn't bear to make another gigantic quilt like this one. I decided to make 2 quilts instead. This one will be a QOV.

This smaller one that I completed last month will be a Veteran's quilt. I even got the backs made for both when I got home Saturday night. These will go into the to-be-quilted pile now and, hopefully, will not be there for long!

I like to have my Saturday Sewing project set up and ready to go so next I looked for some ideas to use up a basket of strings. One of the best sources for inspiration for service quilts is MaryQuilts. I decided on Half Square Strings as my next project. It will use up some strings and some fat quarters. I have the supplies all together to make one QOV and one Veteran's quilt. This should keep me occupied at Saturday Sewing for a few months.