Halloween?

I just heard from Carmen that my Traveling Page for October has arrived.  Her theme was "Castles".

Can you tell I was influenced by the Halloween hooplah?  LOL!

I did not start out to do anything dark . . . my usual color selections are bright and clear!   But during my research I saw some castle pictures with a full moon and I kind of liked that idea.  As I worked with ideas the moon grew larger, and the castle got darker!

I started with a photo of the Castle Neuschwanstein. Using my photo software, I darkened the photo and printed it onto printable fabric. After fusing the castle cut-out to the background (already prepared with a nice bright moon) I used free motion embroidery to enhance highlights and shadows.

Here's what the back side looked like after the stitching.

But the piece needed something more. I tried various bat silhouettes, but that seemed too conventional. Never let anyone call me conventional!

Finally, I settled on a dragon shape, which I fused and then stitched over.

For the back side, I had some fairy tale fabric in my stash. I thought the Sleeping Beauty castle would add the right touch.

I enjoyed working with this piece.  It is full of my favorite things!  Free motion stitching, dragons, and a touch of beadwork (for stars)!  I hope Carmen enjoys it, too.

Now to get to work on another September page - the first one appears to have gone walk-about.  Sigh.

Wednesday WOW - October 27

I did a little playing in my journal today.  Not much else happening right now.  Maybe next time.

Wednesday WOW - October 20

We've had some very nice weather around here lately.  So, today I took my workroom outside.

And the worktable was my lap!  I'm learning to carve wood - or trying to anyway - and it gets pretty messy.  Time will tell if I get anything finished that is worth sharing.  LOL!

Wednesday WOW - October 13

As I gathered threads in preparation for some free motion stitching, I noticed that the spools made a nice little composition.

By the way, it doesn't look nearly as neat now!  I have got to take some time to clean things up!!

Wednesday WOW - October 6

There are all kinds of messes - creative messes, fun messes, busy messes, etc.  And then there's this.  Just plain awful mess!

Catching Up

As I started to prepare a post about my latest Traveling Page, I realized I did not post about July OR August!  We have to fix that!  So here they are.

In July, my page went to Kath in Greece whose theme is Flowers.  I built a "trellis" of bias strips and meandered green yarn through to represent the vine. 

I found these cool flower collections in the scrapbooking section of the local hobby store.  There are lots of paper and fabric flowers all in the same color range in each container.  The blue caught my eye and that's what I went with!  I attached one to three flowers together and added a beaded center.  Some were fringe beads and some simply circles.  Some green wired ribbon made nice leaves.

I had this cool floral print in my stash for the backing.

My August page was for Maya in India, and her theme is Leaves.

Sometime last year I took a class on free motion embroidery.  In one of the lessons we made leaves and I attempted to repeat those lessons in this page.  I should have gone back to re-read the lesson!  But the page turned out fine - if not exactly what I had in my head!

I used a water soluble stabilizer while stitching and then just dunked it into water (seen here) to remove it. 

Once the piece had air dried and been pressed, I layered it on top of a light fabric and added the individual leaves along with a few beads.

I happened across this quote from Tagore which seemed to fit this page exactly!  I used a graphic frame from the Graphics Fairy and printed it onto cotton fabric, which was then fused to the  same yellow as I placed behind the leaves.

The September page is making its way to the next recipient as I type this.  Once I hear it has arrived, I'll share it with you as well.