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

Quilting Gallery Weekly Contest

Quilting Gallery is a great web site with all kinds of resources for quilters. One of the most popular is the weekly quilt contest. This week the weekly contest theme is "Wind, Earth, Fire and Water" and I'm the contest sponsor. Be sure to go and enter your quilt for a chance to win some hand dyed fabric and a Goddess Pressing Sheet from Mistyfuse.

Field Tripping the Web....and other stuff

I try to post something to my blog every day but I avoid posting more than once a day. Since I left work last year and now work full time at my craft, my blog has gotten quite full. Because of all of the normal content I have been posting the Field Trip posts less often. I've considered discontinuing them but every time I mention that to someone they threaten to start a revolt!

In addition, I am spending a LOT of time reading blogs to find material for the Field Trip posts and I do need to cut that back a little.

So, I've made 2 decisions. The first is that I'm moving Field Tripping the Web to the 3 Creative Studios blog. We have more space there and I can post smaller and more frequent Field Trips. The first one is posted now!

To address the time investment issue, I've discontinued the garment sewing section.  I apologize to the garment sewists out there but the vast majority of my readers are not garment sewists and I had to cut down my 700+ blog subsctiption! If someone else wants to carry that feature, let me know and I'll tell everyone here where to find it.

You also might be interested in a weekly feature that I post at the MQResource site called I-Day on Friday. "I-Day" is "Inspiration Day" and the posts are brief and focus on inspiring things I find around the web. Sometimes it's a particular artist or it might be a gallery of inspiring photos. It's just a little something to get your creative jucies flowing for the weekend.

In other 3 Creative Studios news:

• Time is running out to enter the drawing for Adam Chenevert's feather DVD set!
• Our Guest Artist this month is Alycia Carmin, a wonderfully generous quilter who coordinates several Quilts of Valor projects. Read about Alycia and our community service project for this month. If you participate you could win some free batting!

I hope you will add the 3 Creative Studios blog to your reader so you don't miss a Field Trip!

2500 Feathers

Another thing that I've been doing lately is taking Adam Chenevert's DVD class, 2500 Feathers. It's great to take this class in DVD format because I could do each lesson when I had an hour to focus and I can take it over and over if I want! 

You can read all about it and have a chance to win a set of Adam's DVD over at the 3 Creative Studios blog.

(The photo at left is one of Adam's quilted samples. He's certainly mastered the feather motif!)

Field Tripping the Web - Issue 128

 Eye Candy – Projects people have recently completed

• I don’t want to call Shirley’s “She” a quilt so just go see it and be awestruck. Read back in her blog to see even more detail photos.
• Linda’s Gordian Knot quilt 
• Victoria’s reversible pojigi table runner
• Debra’s Lady Aria in her Garden art quilt
• Monika’s memory quilt
• Wanda’s Zig Zag quilt
• Anne Ida’s combo Dear Jane/Sampler quilt
• Judy’s landscape quilts
• Summerset’s applique bag
• Diane’s Stargazing quilt
• Leslie’s Sunshine and Satin table runner
• Wendy’s Quilt Scrabble quilt
• Joyce’s Mystic wall hanging
• Shirley’s Indigo wholecloth
• Helen’s Askew Squares quilt
• Jaye’s Fabric of 2010 quilt
• Sonya’s Friendship Strip quilt
• Karen’s Bits and Pieces:Spring wall quilt
• Myra’s Country Sampler quilt
• Karen’s Faerie Forest art quilt
• Sue’s Stuck in the Middle art quilt
• Sue’s Lilypads at Sunset quilt
• Sue’s Swinging and Dreaming art quilt
• Carie’s Native American inspired quilt

  Longarm –specific Eye Candy

• Desley’s quilting on an applique quilt 
• Jan’s quilting on two customer’s quilts
• Desley’s quilting on Abbeville County quilt
• Gretchen’s quilting on a Baltimore Album quilt
• Kim’s quilting on a sampler quilt
• Jenny’s quilting on an embroidered quilt
• Kathy’s quilting on a Promise Ring quilt
• Gina’s quilting on a New York Beauty

  Fiber and Other Art

• Elizabeth’s beaded Ocean Spirits cuff 
• Robbie’s beaded Cardinal
• Linda’s Cherry Bomb necklace

  Surfaces

• Deb’s straw dyeing 
• Wendy’s freezer dyeing
• Cobi’s shibori scarf and dyed baby clothes
• Windy Hill’s experiments with silk dyeing

  Garment Sewing

• Shannon’s V1250 dress 
• Amanda’s NL 6774 dress
• Carolyn’s B5620 dress
• Sham’s Burda 3531 tunic
• Cennetta’s M6078 top
• Sharon’s M6294 jacket
• Debbie’s S3874 dress
• Sham’s Loes Hinse cruise pants
• Cennetta’s V1100 dress
• Shannon’s B4914 knit dress
• Summerset’s Burda knit top

   Tutorials and On-line Projects

• Kathy’s tutorial for getting a smooth edge when using curved bias binding
• Kim shows how she quilted her Heavy Metal continuous border design  
• Robin’s tutorial for marking a wavy border on a quilt
• Kim’s video tutorial for quilting a swirl ribbon candy motif

 Other Interesting Things

• Ruth continues her design series with a post on harmony and unity 
• Karen shares a tour of her newly remodeled quilting studio
• Leslie talks about thread tension and the back side of quilting

 Found on Etsy
 Usually I do this feature by doing a random search on Etsy and then sharing whatever I find. Generally, the sellers aren’t ones I am familiar with. Today I thought I would share 5 vendors that I have done business with that I love. These are vendors and products that I love:

• I love Adam’s quilting tutorial DVDs and have bought all of them from his Pink Text shop.
• You know that I love screen printing and you can trace that directly to Lynn and her FibraArtysta shop. She will even make custom screens for you.
• Every product that I use has to be fragrance free. I make my own soap but not my shampoo. I used to use a commercial fragrance-free shampoo. It was expensive and to dried out my hair. I searched Etsy and found Toadstool Soaps. Their unscented shampoo is the best shampoo that I have ever used. It’s really thick and concentrated so it lasts a long time and I rarely use conditioner anymore. She has scented soaps and shampoos too.
• I collect glass Christmas ornaments and found Fireworx Glass last year. It’s not ornament time yet but they have beautiful glass pendants. Check back in the fall for their very unique Christmas ornaments like the one in the shop.
• Folded Pigs makes new dinnerware from plain restaurant dishes. I found some very cool skull plates here for a gift last year.

 

Field Tripping the Web - Issue 127

Lots of great links for you today. You will see that the garment makers have been particularly prolific lately! Enjoy the tour.  

The Twelve By Twelve challenge group has revealed the results of their Spice challenge

 Eye Candy – Projects people have recently completed

• Quilt Fever’s kaleidoscope quilt 
• Kathy’s Blue Towers art quilt
• Gail’s acorn needle wallet
• Kit’s Spring quilt
• Allie’s two Crazy Quilt projects
• Geta’s 3-D pinwheel quilt
• Robin’s School of Fishies baby quilt
• Terri’s Kitty Cat pouch
• Rose Marie’s Klosjes quilt
• Patti’s modern wedding quilt
• Terri’s handbags
• Karen’s Hearts and Butterflies quilt
• Jeanne’s Log Cabin quilt
• Gayle’s applique and pieced quilt
• Gina’s Games quilt
• Joyce’s appliqued patriotic quilt with exquisite quilting
• Kim’s Spinout quilt
• Deborah’s Green House Mantra triptych

  Longarm –specific Eye Candy

• Desley’s quilting on an embroidered quilt 
• Desley’s quilting on a round robin quilt
• Jeanne’s quilting on a sampler quilt
• Helen-Mary’s quilting on a customer quilt

  Fiber and Other Art

• Mary’s fabric postcards 
• Kathy’s machine embroidered sewing quilt
• Marty’s coneflower journal

  Surfaces

• Sue’s mixed media surfaces 
• Marlis’ soy wax batik
• Judy’s deconstructed screen printing
• Elizabeth’s fabric dyeing

  Garment Sewing

•  Shannon’s NL6723 dress
• Cennetta’s V1205 dress
• Carolyn’s B5600 dress
• Christina’s Burda wrap dress
• Audrey’s Carolina Herrera dress knock off
• Shannon’s BWOF denim skirt
• Sham’s V8741 Marcy Tilton hobo bag
• Debbie’s S3805 outfit
• Judy’s hand dyed silk blouse
• Sham’s V8726 dress
• Kim’s maxi skirt
• CraftApple’s summer linen coat
• Bunny’s Burda Style 7535 pants

   Tutorials and On-line Projects

• Lier’s tutorial for a winged wrap skirt for girls  
• Sharon’s strapless maxi dress tutorial
• Quilts and Pieces tutorial for a sewing caddy starts with this post
• Summerset has a very detailed tutorial for a bucket bag, the last post is here and then read backwards

 Other Interesting Things

•  Issue 19 of Wendy’s Thread Talk series

 Found on Etsy
 Just as I was about to wrap up this issue for posting and do the Etsy search, we got a heavy downpour of rain. Given my limited creativity sometimes, I decided to use that as my inspiration for my Etsy search today. Go ahead, try it. You will find over 17,000 items by searching “rain”! Here are only a few of them.

• You will find these sunshine through the rain earrings and lots of other beautiful handmade jewelry at NRjewellerydesign
• There’s a LOT of beautiful rain-themed art but I particularly liked The Road Home giclee print from watercolor artist Mary Ellen Golden
• Another beautiful jewelry design is this Orchid and Rain earring set from Mae Day Design
• If you are a fiber artist or knitter you will love this Summer Rain wool roving from Old Sheep
• Or maybe you would prefer Rain Forest hand dyed silk ribbon from Flame Kissed Art Glass
• I loved these cute umbrella shower invitations from Little Lady Company