Take It Further, March...Finished

Finishing is not my favorite part....but everything is done, down to the binding.

The lettering took about a day...the space in the center of my felted background was always intended for a greeting, or message...and at this beautiful season of Easter, and soon, Passover, this is the phrase that came to mind...

The little things in nature that we notice are indeed blessings as well!

"Blessings to You"

16 1/2" X 20 1/2"

Thank you all for your very kind comments about this piece as it went along. It was really a joy to make!

Take It Further, March...Critters

The little guys we notice in nature...some of my favorites are now represented on my Take It Further challenge piece for March, which most readers know is being hosted by our most gracious leader, Sharon Boggon.

Is that froggies bead the cutest thing EVER? My friend Kate Richbourg, owner of the wonderful store Beadissimo in the Mission District of San Francisco, sent it to me over a year ago and I have been waiting for the perfect place to use it. This is it! They remind me of the Pacific Chorus Frogs that live in the pond below us and are currently providing beautiful music in the middle of the night. They are loud!
Also there are some ants (dressed in white for this piece), representing the anthill in my perennial garden whose members have been keeping me company for 15 years now....and there is a snail too.

More ants and a bee....we love the bees, get scads of bumblebees in the lavender every year.

Here is an overall view. I did add a couple more lace and button flowers...and thanks to Pam Kellogg for those little doilies, too!
All that is left to be done is the "saying", or message, that will go in the center...like the old-fashioned greeting postcards of old.
I could do a whole series based on those lovely postcards....
Anyway, this piece requires a binding to frame it all in, so that will be last. Should be done in a couple days....

Take It Further, March...Embellishing

The main challenge in this piece is how to integrate all the different elements in it.
The collaged and buttonholed leaves did help...and I decided to keep most of the embellishment along the seams simple and consistent throughout the piece to mimic the "all-overness' of the buttonhole stitch. (The thread I used for the buttonholing is called "Isis" by Wonderfil).

I added a few other goodies in there, though!

Here is my progress as of this morning...

Blogger is being MOST recalcitrant about loading pictures (and has been for a couple of weeks) so this detail is all I can post for now.
Next I will have a go at developing the laces and also adding my little bugs and critters here and there...

March TIF..Machine Buttonhole Applique Completed

My, that was tedious!

Buttonholing along the curves was not a problem...but negotiating all those pointy edges in the leaves took awhile!

I used some of the same lace in the frame as I had used in the photograph, and remembered to put it in place right before I started sewing down the leaves in my buttonholing marathon..

Now for "desert"...adding all my little embellishments...

Take It Further, March...Piecing and Collage

Kathy over at Out of the Basement commented that she thought the little ants that you see on the title bar of my blog would be good on this quilt. How right she was...as the subject of this piece is the little things in nature that delight us so when we take the time to look for them. So there will be ants!

I had a great time piecing the frame that surrounds my flower picture. I seem to be working in this format a lot with my inkjet printed imagery (the "N is for Nora" and the "K is for Kreinik" pieces come to mind).

May and I had a very pleasant morning getting the piecing underway.

This measures 16 1/2 " X 22".
I realized quickly that I wanted to keep the values in the frame lighter than the colors in the photo image. I just like the contrast this sets up,and the way it keeps the attention on the flowers.
Also I cut up and used a little of the felted background fabric from the photo in the piecing, which was something I had wanted to try.
But the frame itself is intended to serve as a background of sorts...

I wanted to add some collaged elements on top of the crazy piecing...I haven't tried that before, either.
This 505 Spray and Fix is just great stuff for collaging fabric. I spray the back of my cut out leaves (on newspaper to protect my table) and then am able to smooth them into place on my crazy quilt, moving and rearranging them as I need to.

Which brings me to here.
I toyed with the idea of felt-appliqueing these on with the embellisher...but decided I didn't want that frayed edge look here. I don't want to use my usual clear thread in a free-motion zigzag either. So I am going to try machine buttonhole stitching these leaves into place. I want to see how well that will work with the hand-done seam treatments that will go between the patches.
So tomorrow is for machine applique....

Embellisher Experiment #7, Felted Background...and Take it Further, March

This is also going to count as my Take it Further challenge for March. Noticing the little things...

I love to make fresh flower collages and then photograph them...old time blog readers remember this from last year I am sure. Well, yesterday marked the beginning of the flower season for 2008!
I thought it would be fun to use the Embellisher to help create the background fabric that I would lay my flowers out on. The printed fabric image from the resultant photograph will in turn become the center of a small crazy quilt. (I can't stay away from CQing for very long.)

The TIF concept came into play yesterday as I hunted the yard for blooms, and noticed the tiniest signs of growth everywhere. From the delicate fronding on the moss to some wee spider egg cocoons at the base of a forsythia flower...there were tiny miracles everywhere that gave me big thrills!

I started with some plain muslin, painting it with Tsukineko inks.

Then I started laying down some silk and merino fibers with the embellisher.

After all the fibers were swirled on there (also a few shreds of sheer silk), I laid out the lace I wanted to include. I just pinned that in place, though, as I will want to reuse it elsewhere.

Then I went out into the cool gray morning and found riches in the tiniest details!

So here we have hellebore, primula, forsythia, miniature and large sized daffodils, violets, grape hyacinth, some tiny pink flowers I don't know the name of, and the humble vinca...with two kinds of moss tucked in the corners. The spider egg cocoons are the three little white dots you see along the left edge, right in the center.
There is going to be lettering applied in the central blue space...

This was printed on cotton sateen from Dharma....and is for Easter, of course.... ;-)

Now to get piecing!