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

Design Wall Monday

Wow, the weekend has gone by fast and I didn't get much sewing done. Mom, however, was a machine. She quilted 3 quilts and made 2 more quilt backs. I spent a lot of my time here:

I know it's a small garden but it's the first time in over 20 years that I ahve been able to be outside and I am really enjoying my daily time fiddling around in the garden. It's not on the scale of Judy's garden but it's enough for me. Chris planted tomatoes and lettuce for himself because I can't eat either of those things and because I can't eat green things we are limited to the vegetables we can plant. I've planted lots of parsnips and carrots along with yellow squash, potatoes, red and yellow bell peppers, corn and cantaloupe. I'll be thrilled if any of it produces!

Inside the house this is my design wall for the day. I have yards and yards of newly dyed fabric to iron and list in the shop. I'd better get to it. I hope you enjoy your Memorial Day holiday and if you get a few minutes be sure to check out what everyone else has going on today.

Monarch Fabric Palette Projects

Wow, what a busy weekend this has been! Mom has quilted 3 quilts on Willie and I've done lots of garden maintenance, lots of chores and bound 2 small quilts. Then I needed a rest and decided to sit down and play with EQ.  I recently bought Volume 5 of Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks.

There are a lot of cool blocks in it and I decided to start with Four Gables by Susan Knapp and Mary Jane Mattingly.

All of these designs use the  Monarch Fabric Palette, of course!  Click on the link if you are interested in ordering any of the Monarch palette fabrics.

The first design is a straight set with 4" border blocks made from bits of the main block.

The second layout is on point with partial blocks for the side and corner triangles.

May Color Palette Project

If you live in the US I hope you are having a wonderful Memorial Day weekend. Coincidentally I am readign a story about life in post-WWII Russia and it makes me even more grateful for those who serve to protect our freedoms.

While Mom is here quilting I enjoyed a morning in my garden and even enjoyed being outside and clean the back porch furniture. The spiders sure do take over quickly but I should be able to enjoy some iced tea in the rockers for a couple of days before they move back in.

Today I want to share my May color palette project. I finished it last night.

Earlier this week I saw a link to this tutorial. It's a combo pin cushion and caddy. I love pincushions and thought I needed one of these.

Made in the challenge palette and hand dyed fabric it looks like a giant blossom and I love it! I thought it would be great for my armchair sewing caddy since it will hold scissors and thread. But it turned out bigger than I expected.

It's nice and deep so I decided that it could reside in the middle of my cutting table and hold my rotary cutters.  I like it a lot and the tutorial is really well written and illustrated so give it a try!

Nest Box Watch

I checked in on our little families last night.

The Tree Swallows in box 1 have hatched!  When I enlarged the original photo I think I can see 6 babies but I am not sure. There could be 7. We'll just have to see over the next few weeks.

Here's box 2. The last time I showed this 3 of the eggs were gone and there were 2 left. You can't tell in this photo but this is actually a brand new nest that was quickly built on top of the old nest. The 2 original eggs are under this nest.  I guess the Bluebirds determined that the last one wasn't viable and started over.

I can't confirm the number of eggs yet. She is on the nest every time we check. After I took the photo she shifted a bit and I could see 6 eggs. I don't know if I saw all fo them or not.

Monoprinting again

I'm sorry about the lack of posting yesterday. That book review was supposed to post yesterday but I have been calendar deficient lately and scheduled it for today instead.

Oh well.

I didn't notice it yesterday because Estelle and I were in the basement all day for one of our TED (technique exploration) days. Yes, we did monoprinting last month but I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to do it again and make more bases for postcards.

Monoprinting, as we did it, is printed on a glass surface. I have some old window sashes that I use. They are big and give me a huge area for a work surface which makes cleaning up a breeze. I intended to take some process photos but completely forgot. I promise to do it in the future but the basic process is to paint on the glass, create some texture in the paint, possibly add a mask and then lay the fabric face down on the paint to get the print. I use a brayer to roll the fabric to the glass surface

Now these are the starts of postcards. They will get lots of stitching and embellishment to spice them up. I used hand dyed fabric for the backgrounds on all of them. The stars were printed twice. I printed the red waves first and then printed the light blue. I got the stripes by scraping the edge of corrugated cardboard through the paint. I free form cut stars for the masked shape.

The hearts were done by laying down the pink paint and stamping in it to remove some paint. Then I used hearts cut from paper for the mask. I used the same process for the group of trees that will become a Christmas postcard.

The flower was done by using  a foam stamp to remove some of the paint.

Now I need to start stitching!