October Started

Well here it is the end of September! I can hardly believe how fast the days go. My daughter was here for 10 days visiting from her home in Costa Rica. She and her boyfriend have an eco-tour business there, so she comes to visit in their off-season. Boyerotours.com
I have finished the remainder of my August page, and added a really neat little dragonfly! I love it! It is attached by a loop at her head, so can spin around on top of the center stacks. It's a really fun piece!
I have also taken the opportunity of being ahead to work on my October page. I had thought I would use an orange or at least a peach colored flower to represent autumn, but the busy bee in this photo of my geranium just grabbed my imagination! He was so busy and stayed for a long photo shoot of that flower.... I probably have 10 shots of her on various flowers from that day!
I have begun to make ruffles on the edges of the petals, and am working out how to bead the bee herself.... stay tuned!

I have also made some little fairy faces to add to my flowers...... I remember the fairies in my childhood gardens. We used to have great discussions and they played so nicely with me! (last child and 4 years younger than my next sibling!)

I am so psyched! I am finished with my September Rose BJP page! I kept working away a little at a time, and pretty soon, it was time to sew the petals on, and then it was finished! It almost surprised me.... I had been focusing on the individual petals so much that it actually was startling to discover that when I sewed the final center piece onto the backing, it was DONE!

September Rose

I have begun working on my September page. I decided that I want the petals of my September rose to be three dimensional. I printed out the whole picture as I have for the others, then printed four more of the rose itself so I can cut those up and use them as the petals coming forward. I chose a compatible piece of fabric for the back of the petals, and used Steam a Seam 2 to put them both together. Then I cut out the petals one by one, and pinned them onto their twin on the whole piece. As you can see in the photo, I have three more roses to cut up for further dimension.



One thing I have learned is that you should not pin through this kind of fabric sandwich. It leaves holes..... I guess that means I just have to bead in those places. LOL! As you can see in the photo of the picot edged pieces, I am now pinning them in the already beaded area.

Even with the handling of the fabric, I am pleased that the edges remain nicely firm and un-frayed.
I am planning to do stacks for the stamens in center of the rose. I will do more edge stitching around the flat rose.... need to decide which beads... just got in two orders of beads -- one from Shipwreck Beads, the other from Fire Mountain! Can't wait to play!

Quilts

In July, I was lucky enough to spend time at the Sisters Quilt Show, and took classes in the preceeding week at THE QUILTERS AFFAIR. It's the one week retreat at the high school in Sisters in the week preceeding the annual quilt show.
This year, my sister Carolyn and I took the Sew Easy Circles class from Judy Johnson. I LOVE this technique! It's so fabulous!!!!
I am busy making everything using circles these days! I managed to finish my class sample to enter into our county fair this year. It's called "Earth's Orbs" as I think it looks like the earth from space. The technique is incredible, and easier than you might think.
At our fair, I began playing with an old piece of fabric that I had been saving because I didn't know how to use it.... it's been in my stash for over 6 years, I think. I cut 18 circles from it and put them into some background pieces, and am pleased with this top as well.

I don't know how I will quilt this one.... maybe around the wisteria blossoms.
Currently, I am needing to work on some paying quilting jobs. I am replacing some pieces on an antique quilt for a friend. It's a wool log cabin quilt that was made by his grand mother, he thinks. He is over 70 himself, so we figure it's nearly 80 years old. He wants to leave this quilt for his children, and knows that they won't put any money or time into it, so wants it done in his lifetime.

End of August

Well, it's been a while. I just can't seem to get into this blog thing. I have been working on my July page, and finished it. It was really intense. I started out thinking that I would only bead part of the purple on the page, but as I did more, it became obvious that I had to fill in all the purple. That little 6x6 is really heavy!!! A little more "literal" than I had wanted, but I am pleased with it. I have been listening to "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" on tape while I've been beading..... really helps my concentration, and I find that I tune in and catch things I didn't get when I read it the first time.


In the month of August, we also had our county fair. It was a fabulous experience as usual. It's an old-timey little fair, and we get to visit with friends, acquaintances and neighbors that we don't usually get to spend time with. This is a picture of my friend Megan showing her mother, Betty, the quilts and other displays in our department. They were so sweet together. This photo represents to me the best of our little town and fair.

I am co-superintendent with my friend, Christy, of the Textile Department. This department includes all quilts and anything sewn or made that STARTS with fabric. I have been a superintendent for over 25 years, and it's almost second nature now. I am blessed to have a great group of friends and fellow-quilters who help with the logisitics of the department. We are so thankful to have them! The weather was cool, but only rained one evening during the fair. We had a wonderful five days!

So since the fair, I have begun my August page for the Bead Journal Project. I started out with the center of my sunflower. I wanted to do something three dimensional, so chose some little gold colored washers and made stacks of brown beads with a gold bead on the top of the stack. I really like the way it looks, but as most of you have already learned, if you do the stacks first, you get tangled in them for all the rest of the beading you do! LOL! Well, I am still glad I did them, because I like them soooo much that it keeps me working on it. I am enjoying the process with this one more than the previous two. I think I am also growing in terms of my beading technique.

So, since then I have outlined each petal, and filled in part of them with a variety of fan-like beading images. These were tricky to do since the petals are a variety of widths, and the square beads I was using for the "center" of the fan are a variety of sizes and shapes. So I decided to have the fans stack in a random kind of way. I also realized that I might not have enough of the SAME beads to use in all of the petals, so decided to do 9 of the petals intensely and figure out what to do in the alternate petals later. Maybe something a little different.... maybe nothing at all. I will be glad to take suggestions! ;-)

So that's where it stands as of this moment, until I get to a big bead supply. I live out in the boondocks..... literally at least 2 hours from anything! We do have a bead store in town, but it's limited, and when you know what's out 'there", it makes it hard to settle for something just because it's here. I did find some little metallic stars to use around the edge of the center of the sunflower. I am playing with how to mount them..... the hole goes in one side of the star between points and OUT the other side on the point, so it's hard to get them to sit any particular way. I may have to touch them with a dot of nail polish to get them to stay!

LATE JULY ALREADY????

Well, it's been a while since I've written, and much else has happened. I am nearly finished with my June page..... it still needs some yellow beads in the center, but the white daisy is done... it was fun to create textures on each petal. I spent much of the month working on the photos from my friend's wedding, so it is appropriate that it is a white wedding flower!

I decided to use photos of flowers that I had printed on fabric run through my own ink jet printer. The fabric that I buy is already adhered to a piece of paper which I leave on as stabilizer. I am really pleased with the process. Since I'm working so large, it's harder to get my hand around the paper, but it smooshes up pretty well.
The center of a daisy already looks like it's beaded, so that has me somewhat stumped. I think I am going to use beads in a star shape and then fill in, using graduated sizes. We'll see what the beads tell me to do!
And my July page is more than half done..... it's also a flower, but this time it's an iris. The center was pretty difficult and I used 15's so it went pretty slowly. But now I am doing the petals and using 10's and 8's so it is filling in faster. I am really pleased with the look so far.
My idea for the "finished product" is to make a wall quilt of these flowers. We'll see.... they may need to be in an album for a while, but eventually, they will probably be in a wall quilt.
Can't figure out how to move photos around in this blog, so they are all at the top.... sorry.
K

To Decide

So now I really have to decide.... I have been toying with many ideas for about three weeks now. I don't know which to do. Since I am a quilter first, I had thought I would do a crazy quilt kind of thing, but then I felt that was too ordinary. Next I thought I would use some of my favorite fabrics and bead solidly on them, but that's not exactly my style either. Than I considered using my sunprints to bead around. Those would be unique, but LARGE if I used my current collection of prints. Now I am looking at using my photos of flowers printed onto fabric through my inkjet printer. I would bead them to enhance certain portions of the flower. Since the paper comes pre-stuck to paper, I could use it as is as my stabilizer. I'm thinking of using close-ups of my flowers.... this blurs them a bit, but as long as I define the lines with beads, it will be ok......
SO, my format size will need to be a little larger than most I've been hearing about in this project. I am thinking in the range of 6"x6" or even larger..... some of the photos are vertical, some horizontal.... that would be interesting to have a combination, but the same measurement! Once I commit, I think that I will enjoy the process. AND I can move on to other floral designs if I want to and not stick exclusively to my own photos, although I like that idea.

Working on Projects

In my first blog, I added two photos, but didn't fully describe them, so I am going to describe them in this blog. The first photo is a photo quilt of the bed and breakfast where we stayed in Scotland. The name of the B&B is Barrachandronan. It was a fabulous old farmhouse and dairy farm that had been converted to a Bed and Breakfast. There was a beautiful dry stone wall in front of the house where they had parked a white and turquoise fiberglass boat on a trailer. Thanks to the magic of digital photos, I was able to clone the stones and grass to remove it. I was also able to delete the electic lines that came across the whole scene. That allowed the photo to look at least a decade older than it is.
When I had printed the photo onto fabric, my quilting project began. I placed it onto my design wall, and began adding elements that extended the landscape into a larger picture. It was really fun and challenging to continue the driveway, the fence and the mountains. Finding just the right fabrics was a challenge, and when the RIGHT fabric wasn't available, I used something close and added elements using my colored pencils. After turning the edges and sewing down all the elements, I was able to begin the quilting and embroidery. It was an interesting process to quilt in a way that enhanced and even drew attention to itself. Usually the quilting is meant to just enhance but not draw attention to itself, but in this situation, I felt that sometimes it was appropriate to over-quilt in an embroidery-type way. I really enjoyed enhancing this piece.

My first Blog!

Good morning! I am just experimenting with this process. I am a little intimited by writing out my thoughts for lots of folks to read. I am a quilter first, and have loved to bead for many years. My quilts are done in a variety of styles. Mostly I have used traditional patterns and worked with color and combinations to make them more original. More recently, I have been working with photos on fabric. I have been using photos printed on fabric as a focal point, then creating the "rest" of the scene using fabric, painting, embroidery, and quilting.

I have yet to add beads to any of these pieces, but I see that in my future.
I am also involved with dyeing and sunprinting. I have used beads to embellish and accentuate those pieces.
I am just beginning my first bead journal piece. I have yet to put needle to cloth, but I have been rolling ideas around in my head, and am thinking I am just about there. I am really liking what I am thinking about... but won't share just yet. Not until I actually commit!