May Journal Quilt Reveal

It is quilt journal reveal time again and I’ve decided to stay with the nature theme for my May journal. I chose the Iris for my subject as that is what is blooming in proliferation in my gardens in the month of May.

I wasn’t sure how I was going to do this one when I first started thinking about it. I drew up my pattern and played around some with it. I debated between having three smaller flowers or one larger flower. As you can see I decided on having just the one larger Iris.






















I think this qualifies as trapunto. That is what I was going for. I have never really tried trapunto before and I thought, okay this will be my new technique that I learn from this piece. I used a piece of polyester batting, stitched the Iris and leaves on, then cut the excess batting away. Then I added a piece of thin cotton batting and continued as usual.

I had no idea how I was going to quilt the background when I started. When it came time to quilt I couldn’t see me trying to do any stipple quilting in the small spaces between the flower petals or the leaves, so I decided to do the garnet stitch. Once I started, I wasn’t really all that happy with it but there was no going back at that point. When I got up to the flower petals, I knew I had to do something else. All those little circles were making me crossed eyed. LOL!

It is hard to tell in this picture, but the Iris and leaves really do stand out from the background.
















The border was first fused on and then I stitched near the edge. The back is a piece of the same fabric I used for the border.

I am not totally pleased with this, but I am not displeased either. Any comments as to what I could have done to improve on this are welcome. I didn’t even name this one.

Here are a few pictures of some of the Irises that are/where in full bloom just a couple of weeks ago.
































































This is a close up of my Clematis on its small trellis.

My husband loves these little guys.

Eye Candy

Look what arrived in the mail Tuesday:

sorry for the poor picture quality, couldn’t avoid the glare from the baggies.

And more things to get the creative juices flowing.

The Beadwork book came Tuesday along with all of those beads. The latest issue of Quilting Arts came in the mail yesterday.

Oh happy day!

Another Rainy Day.....

and my mind has been going a hundred miles an hour while my body has been going only about ten miles an hour. There are so many things that I want/need to do, but I can’t seem to get into the “pedal to the metal” mode.

I am still working on my journal piece for May a little at a time, but yesterday I did work on something else. I still feel guilty from time to time about all of the UFO’s laying around and all of the art supplies I have accumulated over the past few years. I have been trying to work on some of them (or at least have been thinking about working on some of them).

Anyway, I remembered a small piece (standard paper size), that I had worked on last fall that was in the UFO pile. It started out looking pretty interesting with some nice texture to it, but then after I painted it I was not happy with it and laid it aside. Well I decided to cut it up and make some ATC’s from it. I was able to get 9 of them from it. Seeing the colors in smaller sections I decided that it wasn’t so bad after all. All I did was stitch some wild yarn around the edges and added some letters to spell out three words.

Here they are:































I could have added more to them such as beads or gold foil or what have you, but I want to save those things for other projects. And now I can feel a little less guilty knowing that this is one less UFO in the pile.

*note----I forgot to mention that I consider these as a series and that I gave them the name "Second Chance" #1-9 because of my taking the original work and cutting it up and giving it new life.

Recent Events...sort of

It’s been raining off and on the past several days and the temp has been just a little on the cool side staying in the mid to upper 60’s mostly. I have been contemplating on what to do for my May journal. I decided on a subject, but have been tossing around a few ideas as to how I will go about making it. I spent a couple of hours yesterday messing around with an image in Paint Shop Pro and even though it turned out okay, I decided against it as it would involve using a lot of ink to print it and I need to conserve my ink for other things. I am not going to say right now what I decided to do but I did work on it some today. I will wait for the reveal later this month.

Last weekend we had visitors. When I got back from the grocery store Saturday, DH told me that our son had called and said he was coming for a visit and planning on spending the night. Last Saturday happened to be the Kentucky Derby and the weather was gorgeous that day. Our son lives in an apartment and he said that everyone around there would be having derby parties and if he went home that night he would have no where to park, thus his reason for wanting to spend the night. I didn’t mind except that he has a dog and I knew there was no way he was going to spend the night and leave Sassy at home. It’s not that I don’t like dogs. I do, as I have mentioned that I have had dogs. It’s just that she is not always well behaved and I don’t like having her in the house. So DS said that he would bring his tent and pitch it in the yard and sleep there. Imagine my surprise when he got here and not only did he have Sassy with him but this little fellow as well:

















This is Brutus and just turned 7 weeks old.


This is Sassy, Brutus’ foster mom.

















Brutus stays with Sassy quite a bit, though he’s not afraid to go off and explore on his own, but Sassy keeps a pretty good eye on him.

We had a good day. We cooked out on the grill and played with the dogs and by evening Brutus was pretty much tuckered out.

















And so were we.

May 4, 2006

Even though this is posted as of May 4, I wrote this on May 3rd, blogger was acting up again. The only thing I’ve done that involves any kind of sewing since my last post, was to finish a UFO (except for the label). I spent some time in the morning reading the blogs and surfing the net gathering some ideas and info for possible future projects. The afternoon (3 hours) was spent mowing grass using both the push mower and the rider (we have one and a quarter acres to mow).

Tuesday I actually did some housework! I should be doing more gardening, but I’m using the rain (which has been an on and off thing) as an excuse of not doing much just yet.

I’ve got a couple of ideas for my May journal, but probably won’t start just quite yet. Even though I have a room full of all kinds of art supplies, fabrics and enough books and magazines to start a small library I still sometimes cannot get motivated to do any thing. I think deep down I feel a little guilty when it comes to wanting to start something new when there are more than a dozen UFO’s laying around needing to be worked on. I tell myself that I will get around to them sooner or later, but we all know how that goes. I get bored or tired or frustrated with a project and that’s when it gets put aside; then before I can make myself get back to it, I’ve gotten an idea for some new thing.

I’m not going to rattle on any more right now as it is getting very late, but I will give you something for your viewing pleasure before signing off.

I took these pictures about a week or so ago and never got around to posting them.

This is a small flower bed near the back of the property. This is probably the best it will look all summer. This bed sort of gets neglected some since it is at the back. The pink flowers are bleeding hearts and the tall green stalks will later die down and then the lovely pink (flowers on a stick; I forget their real name) will bloom.

click on any pic to see larger image















Here’s another view:















This is another picture of the Purple Smoke Tree that was in a picture that I previously posted. It is just starting to sprout branches that will eventually make the tree about 18 feet or so tall. Right now it is about 7 or 8 feet tall.





















I will post another picture of this in a few weeks to show the difference.