card

card, originally uploaded by wordnerd411.

Did I write about this before?

Butterfly WIP

Butterfly WIP, originally uploaded by wordnerd411.

This is a sunprint made using my antique Indian giant paisley stamp, which I stamped onto the fabric four times, and then left it on the fabric at the top as a mask to block out the sun.

April fabric post card

card, originally uploaded by wordnerd411.

Mixed media, machine embroidery using commercial and hand-dyed fabrics, mulberry paper and snipped up pieces of recycled foil packaging.

Don't worry, I carefully only used foil that had not been in contact with the contents of the packet! The brown-looking strips are really orange but the scan made them look much darker than I see them.

On flickr the image is rotated to the left and makes me think of a comet -- at least a bigger piece with a less rectangular 'tail' could be a comet. And who is to say that somewhere in space the sky doesn't look orange?

Batik

blackbird 2, originally uploaded by robotika.

Robotika's blackbird is a fabulous translation of northwestern native american indian carvings into batik.

Looking at this I want to take up batik again. I did it for a couple of months but being caught up in the great ice storm of '98 somehow put me off continuing, although that sounds so feeble. There are people who are still displaced by Katrina.

Anyhoo I have numerous other projects on the go, including doing something with the Shiva paintsticks I bought on Saturday, the wedding quilt, and other concepts.

Kitty Spa

Kitty Spa, originally uploaded by wordnerd411.

No home is complete without one!

Lurking

Lurking, originally uploaded by wordnerd411.

I was pleasantly pleased with the spots of brilliant green in this photo.

When she is in the tree, you can always tell because the whole tree trembles as she wobbles around!

Freddy Moran meets Hermes meets me!

Freddy Moran quilt detail, originally uploaded by wordnerd411.

Freddy's take on the classic Hermes bag, which they have never been able to take out of production! The fabric I used for the bag is from Dakkar, Senegal, West Africa.

Freddy Moran quilt detail 2

Freddy Moran quilt detail 2, originally uploaded by wordnerd411.

Here you can see that the pink basket handle is frilled (in a primitive post-modern way!) and does not lie flat on the surface.

The heart that Freddy made to demonstrate how to do it with strata is just to the right.

quilt top from Freddy Moran workshop

quilt top from Freddy Moran workshop, originally uploaded by wordnerd411.

This is the finished top from the Freddy Moran workshop I took in January. Freddy believes that red is a neutral, and her signature palette is all bright colors with no tones, tints, or shades. My stash doesn't conform.

(Even in the 64 crayon jumbo set I will always want a color that isn't there.)

Freddy is big on black and white fabs, and so am I. I intentionally left the bottom left fairly predominantly black and white.

Freddy also believes in pieced borders as opposed to cutting lengths of fabric to go round the perimeter of the piece.

Her other thing that you see in here is the fillers, aka the parts department, which can also be defined as any two pieces of fabric sewn together. She will be teaching parts department soon I believe.

The heart block in the middle to the right of the big basket with the pink handle was actually made by Freddy using strata I had pieced together!

Warm Berry Pie

Warm Berry Pie

This is a quick and easy desert invented on the fly.

Take a prepared graham cracker crust, fill with frozen berries, slice a few fresh strawberries on top and scatter about half a cup of chocolate chips over.

Put in a warm oven for about 20 minutes. This can also go into the oven as you take the main course out and the oven is cooling down.

You can either serve to loved ones and wait for the compliments or scarf it yourself keeping a watch for sneak attacks by others!

Secular Fundamentalists

Our book club met later than usual today because the bookstore opened late to mark Easter.

We became engrossed in The Kite Runner and finally the next group coming in tapped on the window to tell us our time was up. Turned out to be a Humanist (a.k.a atheist, they said it themselves!) book club. Had a very brief discussion with a couple of the gentlemen -- they struck me as a group of sterile, dessicated, lost souls!

We can lament the loss of civil discourse as everything seems to splinter into a fragmented mosaic of 500 TV channels, I-Pods, single serving prepackaged industrial meals, personalized everything, so no one has to share anything. But at the same time I have to recognize that I want my zazzle postage stamps and to listen to Rai music, flamenco, the oldies that the oldies station won't play, the earnest discussions on c-Span 2 and the movies that Blockbuster can't be bothered with.

But we have lost the camaraderie of a shared culture, even if the sharing was to laugh at how stupid it was. When there were only 2 TV channels everyone had something to talk about. Today if you want to talk about TV most of the time you first have to tell the other person what the show was about before you can cut to the chase of what you thought about it!

yellow patchwork 4

yellow patchwork 4, originally uploaded by morningk.

The woman who made this, morningk, obviously never read the 7 percent rule!

Freddy Moran workshop WIP

P1240015, originally uploaded by wordnerd411.

After two days of Freddy Moran's baskets workshop I came home and tried to figure out how to fit everything together.

This is courtesy of our good friend masking tape.

Top is pieced now and waiting to be layered and quilted. Will post the top so can compare how it finally turned out.

Freddy is a big believer in:
red is a neutral!
no tones or shades, just pure colors
(mine does not follow that because that's not how my stash is!)
borders to be pieced -- mine is

much decorated

much decorated, originally uploaded by wordnerd411.

jsix's reptilian skin inspired me to do this, on a much smaller scale using scraps and avoiding some of the technical challenges that she encountered.

Casablanca detail

Casablanca detail, originally uploaded by wordnerd411.

detail from center of quilt.

Casablanca

Casablanca, originally uploaded by wordnerd411.

The only yardage on this is the retro celadon print.

The Casablanca fabric is from a thrift store shirt that I bought because I love the fabric but it never fit right.

The tan and blue tile print is an offcut of shower curtain fabric bought from a decorating shop at a sidewalk sale, and the blue and white friendship stars and binding came from the same store.

This was almost a UFO, because originally I wanted to use up every last scrap of the Casablanca fabric and made elaborate measurements and calculations and auditioned other fabrics to make it 5 x 5 instead of 3 by 3. Now I'm glad I didn't drive myself crazy and I'm also happier with the restricted and unusual palette.

I love zebra prints and also map prints!

P3270057

P3270057, originally uploaded by wordnerd411.

This is my favorite creation of mine!

I made it at a John Willis workshop in Kingston.

The black and white fabric is running horses. It is fun to see people suddenly notice them.

The shape which doesn't have a name is a lifelong favorite shape that resonates back to my childhood and is also found on Islamic tiles and Moroccan zellig mosaics.

When John was showing slides of his work before we started the workshop, he several times showed rectangular quilts and said "I shouldn't have cut off the corners."

That encouraged me to let it be the shape it wanted to be, even though I had to make a small sample to make sure I could work with bias binding and then the bias binding instructions I followed led to a lifetime supply of pink and lilac binding!

Freddy Moran showed a way to make realistic quantities of bias binding in a workshop I took with her in January.

swerve

swerve, originally uploaded by wordnerd411.

Made in Mesa.

Inspired by the John Willis workshop I took in Kingston in 1999.

And that I had read a rule about how no more than 7% of a quilt should be yellow.

Hello! Rules were made to be broken and I hope I stomped on that one.

If you look at some of my other quilts they have no yellow at all, so my overall percentage of yellow is probably below 7 percent.

The black and white fabric in the middle 4 patch has black cats on it.

Must-have link for scattered family + friends!

This is a government weather watch site that is constantly updated and shows where all different weather advisories are in effect for the whole country!

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/climo/

Have not fully explored all the links and features yet but was intrigued that the tornadoes that grounded flights from Chicago last night have killed nine already across the midwest.

Pray for those people and their communities.