Friday, May 05, 2006

A "Fishy" quilt story...

When I was at that great quilt show in Sommers, I got a nice little fat-quarter pack with the brightest fish patterns I had ever seen. And I thought instantly of a great quilt for my son's wall. He is into aquariam fish, as well as liking to spend his vacation at the shore in Rhode Island.

So I put my thinking cap on and came up with a kinda porthole peeking pattern. I love the idea of 'stained glass' in quilting and I had gotten this roll of bias tape in black that has the fusing already on it. Super cool and easy to work with. So I incorporated that with the fish idea. Then I had a lot of other deep blues to go with the three in the FQ pack. Because water isn't smooth and still at sea, I cut the pieces without the ruler involved. So the blue squares are off tilt on purpose, til they were the right size to match the porthole squares.


Here is the finished wall hanging. It was and interesting one to work on with color combos that are unusual for me.

















Here is a close up to show more of the detail on the porthole with gold blanket stitch, and the grasses coming up from the bottom are reverse bobbin stitching along with regular free motion stitching.


One more shot of a different part to show the beautiful materials.

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

It's raining, so I can blog!

Been playin' in the dirt since it finally got warm and sunny here in New England. We had a new ceptic system put in last year that completely re-designed our yard. So I have been digging and adding and subtracting and moving plants, etc. But today and yesterday it finally rained soft and steady for all those plants to get a good drink and settle in their new spots.

But I did manage to finish this little wall hanging. It is using my own dyed background material and a whole bunch of fancy stitches from my machine, and some angelina fibers and beads for embellishments.
It was fun doing the 'swirls' for a first try. And the angelina stuff is soooooo pretty, that I was delighted to get it attached enough to show it off. I never knew what that fiber was til I read about it here on someone else's blog. She was sorry she couldn't seem to get any more locally. So I went to my favorite shopping mall -EBAY- and now I have five different colors to have fun with.