Wednesday WOW – June 27

These blocks are becoming very familiar.

But I’ve started on the last block and should be putting the blocks together at the next session.  Not next week, though.  With the holiday there will be less time in the studio, but I’m sure I’ll be able to manage something fun!

Viola Mae

She’s finally finished!  And she has a name and a story of sorts.

She chose the wild purple hair . . . no surprise there!

And I nearly went blind making her bouquet of violets!  I hand stitched a blanket stitch around each petal to attach wire so they could be combined and shaped.  I did get a bit smarter with the leaves – zigzag on the machine to attach wire just down the center of each one.  Oh wow – much easier!!

And a tiny “1st Place” ribbon in hopes the Challenge judges will take the hint.  LOL!

Here’s the whole picture.  Viola Mae takes first prize at the Garden Show for her flourishing English Violets.

In the side shot you can see the overstuffed chair she is sitting in.  That was fun to make.  I’ll  be shipping her off to the Hoffman Challenge soon and crossing my fingers. 

Now I just need to get my second project done before July 20.  Piece of cake!  Here’s a sneak preview

Wednesday WOW – June 20

Happy First Day of Summer – to everyone in the northern hemisphere, anyway.  Since it’s summer and I am in Kansas, we are watching the storms headed this direction!  Ah well.

In the meantime, I was making flowers:

Violets, specifically. 

Earlier in the week, I stitched a gazillion little petals onto water soluble film.  Today, after dissolving the film, I started hand-stitching each one to florist’s wire and bundling them into flowers.

The plan is to have this lady holding a whole bouquet of them.  If they don’t drive me crazy in the process, that is!  It took all afternoon to make three flowers and long before the end of the day I was wondering what possessed me to hand stitch the wires??!!

Looks like it’s going to be a loooong week!

Wednesday WOW – June 13

If it’s Wednesday, I must have been at the quilt shop!

And I’m STILL working on the “tail” blocks.  But we reached a milestone today . . .

Nine finished blocks!!  I laid them out on the table to get a feel for the size.  I think I need another row, so next week I’ll be cutting and stitching again.  Then it will be ready for assembly.  Yay!

In other news, the doll I showed in the previous post has talked over her options with me.  We girls do love to discuss hair and clothes!  I believe we have reached an agreement.  It won’t be long before she is done, too.  I’ve be sooo productive lately.  Maybe I should go lay down!

It’s a Question of Hair

Since I’ve finished going through the Fabric Embellishing book, I have a lot of straightening and cleaning to do in the workroom.  In fact, yesterday was spent on hands and knees!  Well, some of the time anyway.

Today, I cleared a space and hauled out the collection of mohair and lamb’s wool.  You see, I have a little lady who is ready for her coiffure.

Here she is in all her baldness.  Don’t you love those sultry eyes?  But, bald just isn’t quite the look we’re going for.

Perhaps she will be a brunette,

or a blonde,

or even a fiery redhead?

  Pure white might work,

or something to match her outfit like this lavendar

or this wild woman look with brown and fuscia!

I’m going to let her think about it for a few days.  At this point, I don’t know what she will choose.  What do you think?

Wednesday WOW – June 6

Oh my, June already?  Time seems to go faster and faster!  Sort of like this quilt.

The triangles in the foreground are the last round before the blocks are done.

This has been an easy block so far.  Soon I’ll be ready to put all the blocks together.  I may need to make another one of these some day!

Silky Sunday

Here I am with the promised missing chapter . . . finally!  You might remember I had to skip ahead because I couldn’t find where I stashed the silk cocoons and rods.  I found the rods, but only one color of cocoons.  Hmmm.  I thought I ordered more, but perhaps not.  (They say the mind is the first to go!)  No matter, I got some more.  You want to see what I did?

The cocoons need to be soaked for a couple of hours so you can pull them apart.  I was able to get three layers on most of them.  They are drying out in the picture above.

While waiting for the cocoons to dry, I tackled one of the silk rods.  I separated layers by flexing and manipulating a rod until I could see multiple layers.  I found it interesting to see that the inner layers did not get very much color from the dying process.

By gathering one edge of a layer, I made these little rosettes.  There are some nice color variations here, I think. 

I kept one of the outer layers in its original form and stitched it down over some bunched fabric with beads.  A little free-form interest there!

Then I stacked cocoon “flowers” and stitched them down with beads as well.  This method has many variations and one could have an abundant garden just with cocoons!

And here is the full piece.  I’m sure you remember the infamous burning from a couple of weeks ago.  I think the silk flowers improved it at least a little!

And guess what?  This is the LAST technique in the book!!  It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since I started working my way through this book (see the first post here).  Maybe the hard-to-believe part is that I’ve stuck with it.  LOL!

So what happens next?  I still have a dozen or so pieces that need to be finished up.  I think I’ll take a short break from the Sunday Shenanigans to do that, and to contemplate what my next Sunday project will be.  Folded flowers?  Machine work?  Painting or dyeing fabric?  I’ve got a ton of books to choose from!

I’ll be back, though.  You can count on it!