Scavenger hunt quilt

I have been following online as Heide Parkes gives and demonstrates the steps for making a very personal scavenger hunt quilt. Step one was tracing the side of my body , which is on the left of the piece. Step 2 is the long rectangle which is my birth month and date so 6x 21 inches. The third step is in the top right which is a tracing around items I touch everyday. So there is my hairbrush, keys, tea pot and headphones. The fourth step is the chronological square in bottom right. Starting from some silk my grandmother bought in Thailand in the 1970’s to a piece of a vintage embroidered doily tat was left over from a recent project. These are all stitched down now so I am ready to get onto the next step.

Postcards

i made a postcard from the heart from the screen printing I did last week with Rebecca @oceanviewtextiles . Very simple but so many layers of card, very thin interfacing, and vliesofix as I didn’t have any thicker interfacing which might have been enough. Added the blue which in a way takes away from the fact that the heart is screen printed.

Had to get out and actually use my sewing machine for the zigzag edge. Not something I do much of these days but easily recalled the technique and it went well. Maybe I should get back into more machine work ....maybe not. But I’d at least use up more of my fabric. 

I might hang onto this card until life gets back to normal and take it to the next 2QAQ meeting where the challenge for the month involved using two complementary colours . It was to be something small, I think up to 10x10 inches. But of course not everyone sticks to the directions. I know now sometimes it is more of a challenge to adhere to the ‘rules’ than it is to go off and do what you choose. 

Screen Printing play

During the week I visited my friend Rebecca @oceanbluetextiles at Forest Lake where we explored screen printing using a silk screen as well as some Thermofax screens she had. These are the results. Positive and negative . My free hand cut bird. Paper resists kept for some collage work later. For now I might make some postcards with a few of these.

Busy Bee

I have put together this canvas from bits and pieces. The bee cross stitch was acquired, cannot acknowledge who made it. The background is a sample from a discharge printing workshop I did years ago. A few embroidery stitches and attached to a canvas. This is for 2QAQ to sell at the SotA exhibitions. Love those oranges.

I enjoyed working on this and I am really pleased with the result.

Preparing cotton

While I sit at home quietly today trying not to think of the implications of this Pandemic of Coronavirus for myself, my family, my community and the world I have been preparing for a short presentation for Queensland Quilters Art group. It is on preparing plant based fabrics for ecodying. So here is a pot of cotton soaking in diluted soy milk as a pre mordant .

And two books I always use for reference.

An India Flint book on eco colour and an old book from the 70’s. Not much has changed. 

 

Fairy Tree House

Finally got needed equipment together to start the finishing off for my Fairy Tree House. If I located the wire ready to make the internal frame for free standing, I couldn’t find the wire cutters. But all came together and I sat outside to enjoy the cooler weather as I worked.  Very soon along came a helper, by this I mean hindrance as Pablo kept knocking it over with his tail or trying to rub his face either on my hard at work concentrating one or the wool house. But help or not I finally made the frame. Now to finish some details with more stitch , embellishing and attach the house to the structure.

It’s made of wool with paper fabric, lace,  silk cocoons and embroidery. The wool base was felted using my embellishing machine.