Eaglets / Elvis / Chenille

Working up a design for a friend - I call it a first draft but I am actually approaching it as a 'study' for the final piece. I am 'painting' it with pigment inks, colored pencils and fused cloth on cloth.

Here it is ready to be quilted.

Still incomplete in this picture - more quilting to be done and it is only pinned to the stretched canvas - but complete enough to analyze. This picture was taken with the flash and doesn't look as dark overall as the piece actually seems. I overinked I think - I must take care on the final piece. Also, trying to make the eagle and eaglets 'pop', I used wool batting under them on top of the cotton batting. Mistake = as I am doing such heavy quilting, it is just more for my needle to stitch through and flatten. I would truly appreciate comments!!

We visited the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in Tuscumbia, AL last week - very interesting museum. Just had to take a picture of this picture of an impromptu 'jam session' with Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins. Wouldn't you have loved to be the proverbial 'fly on the wall' for that 4-some!!

A chenille bedspread - very, very lightweight (I started calling it cheesecloth - it was so lightweight) but now layered with batting, a backing then quilted. It worked up beautifully I think AND the bedspread now has a wonderful soft thick weight to it.

Word #1 #26 #22 #20 #19

This is Word #1. It is a painted wholecloth with some piecing added to the right side. I shared a detail of it in an earlier post. It measures 14x16. I am displaying it pinned to a scrumptously beautiful scarf that my sister knit for me, thrown over my sewing room door. This door is never closed - so the scarf is safely on display also this way! as it is definitely NOT being used in our 100+ degree weather here in southwest Tennessee!

This is Word #26. Only 26 more to go for 2009. Actually, thats not quite true as I have missed a few weeks - so I am playing catchup. This one is made using cutoffs from a block I made for my sister in our May 4sister blockswap, inspired by Joen Wolfram work - I arranged my blues in order by value. For this piece, I had to add a beautiful dark purple and an almost orange batik to the turquoise blues. This piece measures 8-1/2x9.

This is Word #22. The pears are painted with inks - then I played some with the quilting. It measures 15x11 and has become my placemat.

This is Word # 20. It measures 7x10. The verse A merry heart does good like a medicine. Proverbs 17:22 had two weeks of pondering to it - so it was used on #19 below also.

This is Word #19 - size 7x13. The little yellow 'things' attached to the orange strip are the plastic centers from the white silk flowers used in Word #26 above.

Backyard Wildlife

Mama spiders with their brood on their back. And - these are two different spiders! Found one floating in the pool - took some pictures, then removed her from the pool. Thirty minutes later, there was another one in the water. We think they are wolf spiders - but not sure. Fascinating and gruesome at the same time. One more picture below with a floating cricket next to the spiders - to share with you how BIG these mama spiders are!! Ugh!

Now for some cute wildlife!!!

Two tiny frogs on our pool deck this week. From a distance, they looked like pea-gravel - til they hopped. Two more pictures below with my thumbnail in the shot - for scale.

Time Out for a Swim

The Rock, a Logcabin Plus a little more

This is a small artquilt The Rock. I used techniques in it inspired from 3 different quilt artists. It was my 3rd attempt to make the rock of Jesus' tomb in fabric. The hand is a miniquilt - with batting and quilted separate then appliqued onto the piece. I debated how to duplicate the drape of the fabric on the angel's arm in fabric - DUH!! = till I thought - just use a single piece of fabric and fold and drape it!!!

One more piece to mystory behind this piece: Growing up - school pictures would often get stuck into the corner of other photos already hanging on the wall. I always thought if it was important enough to hang on the wall - then it was important enough to have its own frame. So - adding God's word to this piece - I wanted to create a strong contrast between the ultimate importance of His word and the unimportant way it was added. Not having a frame I could stick it in - I added it with a piece of torn masking tape. BTW, the tape and the 'paper' with the bible verses on it are all fabric.

I have just finished taking a class at Quilt University with Carol Miller. I made enough blocks from the class to make this quilt top. There are 5 different logcabin blocks in it - so it is my logcabin sampler. I will add plain borders to finish it as a kingsized quilt. I learned some great tips in the class and highly recommend it!!

A painted slate from several years ago. I was so pleased to discover a technique to 'paint' the shadows of quilting.

Picture take from our front porch in West Virgina. I learned to LOOK UP while living there - watching the sky and storms moving across the valley. That low cloud was boiling up from or reaching down to the Potomac and Cacapon Rivers.

Just a funny picture of our 3 jack russells. Our 'unfaithful dog Muttli' (remember the cartoon Penelope Pittstop?) - is in the middle - My Dad has commented when seeing her lay like this - that her back end looks like a turkey needing to be trussed.

Gotta Go Gammill

Quilting for a friend. Just wanted to share some details of some of the quilting, above and below. I really enjoyed working on the pink quilt above - I have some pink in my stash - I have got to get it out and make a pink quilt now, too!!

More Work from Word Series

This piece started on a sketch pad - which doesn't happen very often in my sewing room - and the verse....If ye abide in me and my words abide in you ye shall ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you....John 15:7. I chose a two color pallette - the complements yellow and purple.
I have been trying to lose weight - dieting for two months I have lost 4 pounds....whooppeee - so I am throwing in 3 mile power walks. While on a power walk last week with my jr Feerless we walked thru a cemetary. At one end is a small wire fence with older silk flowers piled inside. I chose to recycle 2 purple sprigs. My husband now teases me about stealing flowers from the graves. Some of those flowers along with glass beads embellish this piece.

This is Word #12. A very good friend has a birthday this month and I have made this piece for her. But I haven't sent it to her yet - so taking a chance that she won't see it here first! It is stitched with beads and weird things stuck in under the binding that I hope will make her laugh and the verse .... A friend loves at all times.....Proverbs 17:17

This is Word #11...Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee. Isa 26:3

I started thinking what am I going to do with 52 'coasters' my table tops will be covered 3 deep by the end of the year. After a visit to my father in Texas and seeing the cute appliance covers he had made for his kitchen - I added additional fabric to the back of this one to make it long enough to drape over that ugly toaster oven in the corner. This piece is not quilted yet - but it already cheers me in the morning.

This is Word #2 made the 2nd week this year - but just now being posted. It is a wholecloth, measures about 14x24 and to make the words I AM the background is filled in using a pigment pen writing many of Jesus' words that told who HE is.... I AM the way the truth and the life - no man comes to the Father but by me. John 14:6

In the old testament, God told Moses...I AM THAT I AM; and He said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM had sent me unto you. Exodus 3:14. Throughout the bible, God reveals his character by further stating......I AM...