Look Hoo-Hoo's 10!

This is the fiber art quilted postcard titled "Look Hoo-Hoo's Ten!" that I created for Quilting Arts Magazine's 10th anniversary celebration. I am so honored and excited that it was chosen to be published with the first grouping of postcards in their 10th anniversary issue! (Dec 2010/Jan 2011, pg. 7)

Three of the fabrics, the green for the owl face, the red background and the numeral ten, were ones that I won from a fabric scrap give away on Pokey Bolton's blog. Pokey is the editor and founder of the magazine so I thought it was fitting to use some of her very own fabric scraps for the anniversary postcard. I free motion machine stitched the designs and used layers of decorated netting and velvet to add texture. For the eyes I used parts of a snap and glass beads. I just love the way he turned out!

I have several larger sized owl pieces in my etsy shop www.bybethstudio.etsy.com and I'm always creating more.
Happy Birthday Quilting Arts Magazine!

Charity Auction Quilt

I made an art quilt for a charity auction this week. The auction is for the National Speleological Society (NSS) http://www.caves.org/ of which my husband is a member. In the past I have made quilts for the state organization;but, the national convention is in Texas this year and they are also having a fund-raising auction. This auction is part of the International Congress of Speleology (ICS) which is being held at the same time as the NSS thingy in Kerrville. It's unusual to have the ICS in the USA as it's only every 4 years and last time in was in Greece. Too bad old Uncle Sam couldn't send Charles to that one! Seeing that Kerrville is just 2 hours from our house;it's more affordable and he was accepted to present about bats, so he's very excited. I'm very excited that baby Charlie is still hanging out in my belly so we can enjoy a family time of no pets, hot breakfasts, no dishes, no housekeeping and a swimming pool before he arrives.

At dinner the other night Charles commented about how it was too bad I didn't make anything for the auction. Of course, SOMEONE had neglected to tell me that there was an auction...HMMM wonder who?

So, in an end of pregnancy burst of energy (we're 2 weeks and couting here) I managed to create a piece to donate. I really like how it turned out and it's going to be hard to give it up;but, the money raised goes to a good cause. I wish I had gotten my act together sooner to enter a piece in the Salon competiton...but I was too distracted by all things baby to get it together by the deadline. I do think some of my best work is done under pressure so I'm pleased with what I have to give and it's always fun to see what the final selling price turns out to be.

I started out by painting/dying fabric with Dye-na-Flow paints.

Decided to go with a cave scene landscape inspired by a trip to Bracken Cave in Comal County.

This is one of the trips the convention goers will have an opportunity to see next week.

I free motion stiched a variety of threads to enhance the painting for the sky
and I used my needle felting machine along with free motion stitching and a variety of fabrics for the land and caves.
For the bats I used some tiny bat brads that I got at a scrapbooking store. It turned out that they were just the right size.

For the backing I used a bluebonnet batik fabric that I got a few years back in Kerrville, which is where the conference is being held this time. It is made especailly for the Creations Quilt Store in Kerrville so I thought that would be a good choice for the back.

http://www.creations-online.com/

I decided not to frame it as the conference is an international one so being unframed it will be easier to pack. It measures a little bigger than a size of regular paper.

I have enough dyed material to make a similar smaller one for my etsy shop www.bybethstudio.etsy.com

and I want to make a whole cloth quilt for my shop of the Blanket Flower that I painted as well; BUT...now I'm feeling tired again!

I titled it "Summer Flight". Sure hope it brings in a good amount and I sure hope little Charlie stays put for the week so I can chill out in Kerrville by the pool and enjoy a freshly made bed and warm breakfast each day...we'll see!

Enjoy the Journey- May Journal Quilt

Well, I'm getting a little more done lately. Must be that pre-baby burst of energy. Here is May's journal quilt and it's only July 3rd! I've had it done since June though, just now getting it posted while my husband shampoos our carpets...(great benefit of being pregnant).

I started with a base of commercial fabric that looks hand-dyed.

I used a bunch of green curly ribbons from the baby shower that I was given in May. I decided to try to melt and fuse them and it actually worked. I used bonash powder to hold it down and then layered netting on top to secure it in place with quilting to make it extra secure.

This is what it looked like after being melted, fused and layered with netting.

It started to look like a map to me with the ribbon like continents and the fabric like the ocean. I decided to echo free-motion quilt around the green ribbon parts. This reminded me of contour lines on a topographic map.

In the above picture you can also see the needle felted edge that I did with yarn and the Embellisher. I used black yarn to go with the black thread I used for quilting.

At this point I wasn't really sure where this was going as what was going to be a quilt about my baby shower in May had turned into a map quilt. I put it aside for a little bit waiting for an idea of what to do next. One day when I was putting away the gift bags from the shower that had piled up in my studio I came across this ribbon from one of the presents.

It has cars and trains on it and I thought that would kind of go with the map idea and it's from the shower too. I appliqued it down horizontally across the piece and then thought of the phrase "Enjoy the Journey". That fit in too as that's what I've been trying to do this whole pregnancy as I'm thinking this will most likely be my last journey into motherhood as I'm old and tired and our house and cars are now full. Plus, I'm already feeling like we are going to be out numbered with just two. Two is enough for this doubly blessed old lady.

So I machine embroidered the words "Enjoy the Journey".
I used water soluble stabilizer to write the words on so that I would have a guide to follow for my stitching. I stitched over it twice to make it stand out more.

So in the end it did all come together in a way that makes sense to me. YEA!

April Journal Quilt

OK, OK, I know it is May 28th and here I am blogging about April's journal quilt. Let's just say I've had a lot going on.

I've been working on gifts for my daughter's teachers and they have been turning out quite nicely. (I'll post them at a future date.) They are wonderful teachers and really deserve a special gift so that's no problem. I've enjoyed creating their gifts.

Oh, and I'm having my second child, a son (Charlie) in about 10 weeks. My scheduled day is Friday July 31st. So, I've been distracted by nesting and cute little baby things...and eating...and resting...and trying to relish in my big pregnant self as this is most likely the last time I'll be pregnant. (I'm old and we only have a 2 bedroom house and a 4 seater car...in other words...we're full.)

OK, so here's what I've done with April so far in between everything else....

I like this pink commercial fabric that has a hand dyed look and my daughter had this cool waste cardboard from a bingo game in a Kid's Meal that looked to me like a great stencil and I just got a bigger container of pearl Lumiere paint.SOOOO....


I laid the stencil on the fabric...

Used a sponge brush to paint on the pearl paint...

And kept repeating until the whole cloth was covered.... TA-DAH!

I have since rubber stamped the words "Mommy's Belly is Getting Bigger and Charlie is Getting Stronger!" (this is what my daughter said in April and what the teacher wrote down on the class notepad when it was her turn for sharing time in pre-school) in black ink to a section of the fabric and I have layered it and will quilt it soon. I will probably quilt free motion circles around the stenciled circled with black thread...not sure exactly when I'll do that;but, it's nice that I have a plan.

Now...need to start thinking of MAY!!!!

March Journal Quilt 2009

This is my first journal quilt. My quilting buddy, Cindy, and I have decided to do one journal quilt a month between now and next March. Our town, Lampasas, has a needle arts festival each March and we are going to have a display of our year of journal quilts at Cindy's quilt shop, Fatty Corner's Quilts. Her shop is located in Perk's Coffee Bar and is full of all kinds of unique fabrics and art quilting supplies. She also has an Etsy shop and the link is on my Etsy shop page.

http://www.bybethstudio.etsy.com/


So I started with a piece of muslin which I mono printed with acrylic paint a few months ago. It had mainly green and I wanted more blue so I over dyed it with Dye-Na-Flow blue paint and added more blue color with textile pastel sticks.


I wrote in some words with blue fabric pens that sum up this month...

Spring

Rain

RAIN!

Charlie kicks and kicks and kicks

Walks to school

Cool

Lucie escapes often

(Charlie is my baby in my belly due in August and Lucie is our very smart doggie)

I wrote the words on the part that is lighter that looks like a river or stream to me which kinda goes with our getting some much needed rain.


I layered the piece with white netting from the Easter eggs we filled with candy this month and also some blue tulle just cause I like the sparkles.

I free motion quilted different patterns and then machine needle felted the edges with blue and green fabric and yarn. I used torn strips of green cotton lame and torn strips of batik fabric in a bluebonnet wildflower pattern. I used green and blue twisted yarn. The green lame came from The City Quilter in New York City, the batik fabric came from Creations in Kerrville, TX and the yarn came from Quilttrends in Columbus, OH.


I layered it with Hobbs Thermore batting which I won at the quilt guild in Killeen. The backing fabric is a St. Patrick's Day print given to me by my friend and master seamstress, Monnie.

The edges seemed finished with the needle felting and I like the rough look so I just left them alone. It is a little bigger than our chosen size of 81/2" by 11" ;but, it's our challenge to ourselves and we make the rules so I think it's OK.

When I started it I wasn't really sure I'd like the outcome;but, now that it is done, I'm pleased with how it turned out. I think for my first journal quilt, it's a good one. I tried to make it have a Marchy feel and I had fun making it. I showed it to my husband and he said that he thinks part of it looks like a big tongue. Ha! That's funny and true. Can you see the tongue? Until he said that I never noticed it. Maybe it's subliminal because I'm in the "eat the house down" phase of my pregnancy! HMMM??

Valentine's Challenge Postcard

This is my fabric postcard entry for 2009. I used my Amethyst Dream woven fabric as my background. I really love making and using that stuff.

This is a close up view of the larger heart. The center is fabric paper I created, the middle one is sewn with RickyTims razzle Dazzle thread and the outer one in metallic elastic cording that I couched down.

This is the smaller heart on the right side. It is three hearts sewn using the Ricky Tims Razzle Dazzle thread. This thread on my machine has to be sewn from reverse by using the bobbin as it's so thick.

This is a detail shot of some of the decorative embroidery stitches that I used on the woven fabric background. I used a varigated purple thread for this stitching which gives it a neat effect.

Fiber Arts magazine invited people to send in a fabric postcard valentine. The Valentine was then mailed from their hometown post office in Loveland, Colorado. Loveland offers its own special postmark for the holiday each year, along with a poem, that is lovingly handstamped by local volunteers.
This was their third and most successful year yet. They received over 300 cards to pass along which came from across the United States and Canada and some from as far away as Australia, Italy, and the United Kingdom.

The link to the showcase of 2009 Valentines as an e-book is bleow. I'm on page 9 of the e-book as far as I can tell. It's printed on the bottom right corner of the page.

http://www.fiberarts.com/valentines/valentines-2009.asp

It was a fun challenge and although I didn't win any of the cool prizes, I did get printed in their magazine and on their website. I also got my postcard cancelled with an interesting postmark from Loveland, Colorado and it was also stamped with a short Valentine's poem. I plan to enter again next year.

Spinach Madeleine to Dye For!

Well today was the day for me to make the big triple batch of one of our family's favorite Thanksgiving dishes, Spinach Madeleine. Some of it is for my husband who is pet sitting and working this year instead of traveling north to Frisco, some of it is for the church pot-luck tomorrow and 85% of it is for my cousin Carmen's Thanksgiving feast.

I think the recipe orginally came from the famous River Road Recipes cookbook;but, my copy is from a list of family recipes my beloved Aunt Celeste typed up years ago and distributed to everyone.

For part of the recipe you have to drain the spinach and reserve the "liquor" (green spinach water) for adding to the recipe later. When I was doing that step it occured to me that I could probably dye fabric with the leftover spinach liquor that wasn't going into the dish!

Here's the spinach and the reserved liquor.

Here is the fabric added to the spinach liquor. I used plain muslin and PFD (prepared for dyeing) fabric to compare the results. PFD fabric is treated so that it takes up the dye more readily.
I added a lot of salt thinking it might help with the dyeing and I boiled it and then let it sit w/ the heat turned off for a few hours.

Here's how it turned out after washing out the spinach remnants and ironing it. The plain musling is on the left and the PFD is on the right. The top fabrics are what they looked like before dyeing. I had no idea PFD fabric would turn out so differently! I did this a while back with the blueberry juice that you are supposed to drain from the canned blueberries that come in the box of muffin mix. I didn't have any PFD fabric then so I just used muslin. It came out very light blue. I have a feeling that if I do it again w/ PFD fabric, I'd get much better results!

By the way, I did finish the triple batch, too. Spinach Madeleine to DYE for!

Owl Quilt

Here's my latest project. My daughter named it "Owl Night" and it is hanging in her room. That is what happens when you ask a 4 yr. old for advice on hanging Mommy's creations... they all end up in her room. :)

I mostly follwed the directons in the Aug/Sept 08 article "Being Pet-ty Quilted Pet Portraits" in Quilting Arts Magazine. I modified it a little;but, followed it for the most part.

Now of course this owl is not a pet. It is done from a picture of an owl statue that we have in a part of our garden we call "The Owl Nook". I have all kinds of little owl statues tucked away in that corner.

At night, when I'm lying awake unable to sleep for various reasons, I can hear the screech owls that live in our yard (these are real owls now, not the statues!). We have other owls that come through our yard on occaison;but, the little screechies have been around for years having fuzzy little owlets.

So here's my tribute to them, a fuzzy little purple owl that now watches over my daughter as she sleeps. :) Beth

Apple Printing-Back to School

My daughter and I tried our hands at apple printing the other day. Etsy Texas Crafters had a design challenge this past Monday and one of the themes was Back to School. Apples seemed to be a good fit. I did some printing along with my daughter and then even used my new embellisher to needle felt the finished quilted piece. I'm really quite pleased with the resulting mini-quilt. It is listed in my etsy shop, bybethstudio.

Here's my daughter's hands loading the apple with paint...

We just used regular acrylic panit on cotton fabric. Here's the printing in progress (this is my side of the fabric)...

Here's the free-style painting that my daughter did along with the apple printing...

She has titled her fabric "Butterfly Garden". I will soon quilt and embellish her piece as well and will post a picture of the finished piece. Claire LOVES my sewing machine and embellisher so I will have her help me with that part too.

We also saved the apple halves and are going to print with different colors on different fabrics later in the week. I'll post the results of that printing session, too.

Welcome Back to School!

Embellisher Practice Samples

Well with the encouragement of my quilting buddy, Cindy, I got over the fear of screwing up my new machine and dove right in. I have started practicing on fleece and have tried a variety of items as embellishment such as , fleece yarn, regular "fuzzy" yarn, metallic yarn, yarn woven with threads and just fleece pieces. We were both impressed by how well the 2 items are felted together into a very solid new creation.

Here is the front of my fleece sample strip....

And here is the back.....
Now that I've over come my initial trepidation, I'm really having fun.

I'll post more later as I continue to experiment with my new toy!!!

My Newest Toy

Well, there she is...my latest toy, a Baby Lock Embellisher. I got a steal on the EMB7 from a sweet lady in Minnesota.

It should arrive here this week.

After a long while of googling, searching blogs, calling local quilt stores and fantasizing, I'm eagerly anticipating its arrival.

After feeling like I was involved in new car-like negotiations with a local quilting store (amazing how a price can drop by $400 seemingly overnight???, good thing I didn't jump at the expensive-ass first price...who are they kidding here?) I found this brand new, never opened one on Craig's List and the seller is a fellow etsy person (etsian?). So it has 7 needles instead of the 12 of the new model...that's ok! I really don't even know what to do with the 7 needles it has. I'm sure I'll have fun learning!

So, I made a new etsy friend and got a cool new machine at a great price.

Keep checking back for pictures of my first attempts at creating things with my new baby. YEA!!!

Any input on good sites and blogs with project ideas and how-to's is appreciated. :)

ETSY front page! YEA!

On August 2nd I was featured on the front page of Etsy! YEA!!! My little green ATC/ACEO is in the top left-hand corner! Yea!

Beaded Tassel Inspiration

I scooped up this interesting tassel on a shopping trip with my daughter a few weeks ago.I have disassembled it into its components and I'm using the parts in different ATCs/ACEOs for my etsy shop bybethstudio. Here it is in parts....






Here are 2 ATCs/ACEOs that I have made so far using the parts...


They are both newly listed in my etsy shop http://bybethstudio.etsy.com/ .

I'll post the others as they are created from the parts of this one tassel...you just never know when inspiration will strike! Keep creating! :) Beth