Birthday quilt

In contrast to the phoenix quilt is my birthday quilt.  The squares were all made by Stitch n Bitch group in honour of my 60th birthday.  I finally finished assembling and quilting it and am totally pleased with the look.  I machine quilted in the multi coloured batik and hand quilted around the beautiful appliqued squares.   I can't quite remember the name of the book that this is from, but I will add it to this post later.   A lovely souvenir of a wonderful group of women.  

phoenix Feathers are finished

This is it.  It has now been dyed twice, bleached once, painted, and had markels (paint stix) applied.  Lots of lessons were learned including making sure that the right post goes to the right blog.  All the details ended up in the blog 12bythedozen.blogspot.com/ !

Snow, eh!

Just thought I would put up a picture of what it looks like around here.  Taken in the local park on a walk with my husband and the dog.   He's a rescue dog that we've had for about a year now.  He's 8, and a lovely people dog, but really can't abide other dogs, so we have to keep him full time on a leash.  

Snow Good!

In other words, not so good!  Here's a quick look at some of the pieces.   I've learned that dry (but pre-soda ashed) fabric takes the colour better.   Delphina which is tightly woven mecerized cotton from Whaley's gives much better definition.  And silk velvet, as usual looks the best which you can see in the picture of the scarf.  

 

I didn't use the urea or salt.  Hmm, guess that's an experiment for next time.  Fingers crossed for more snow!  

And since I was playing with dyes, and can't stand to waste anything

I threw some socks into plastic bags and mixed up some old made up dye and dye paint and voilà!  More socks for a charity for street kids.  

Snow Dyeing

We finally got some snow and not only were we able to go x-country skiing at the Arboretum,  but I was able to get some fresh stuff and try out some snow dyeing.  Last year's efforts were quite pathetic.  Barely pinky green.  So hopefully I've used a strong enough concentration this time to create some interest.  It's only 1C out there, so this is really wet snow.  And with a very large labrador, it was important not too find the yellow snow underneath!  Who knows, maybe that would have helped!

The bottom left contains fabric that has a spiral twist, and the bottom right is a silk velvet scarf.   Stay tuned!

bracelet

A group of us got together to experiment and play and this is the result.  It's a bracelet based on an article last year in Quilting Arts magazine.  Sometimes it's nice not to have an agenda and just go where the fabric and "junk" takes you.   This was cut off a larger piece that I made that is now awaiting lots more embellishing.  But with the Olympics on, all I can do is knit scarves as my fingers can do the work while I'm watching TV!  

It's made with pellon that had been coloured with transfer inks, covered with steam a seam, threads and glitz added, then a layer of purple shear ironed on.  Stitching was added along with beads, and the back is purple dupion silk crossed with orange which provides the fringe.  

The Bag collection

Here in Montreal we are just aching for more snow so we can go out x-country skiing and do some more snow dyeing.  It's just not fair that Washington and Virginia are getting such good storms!!

So I have been finishing some bags that I started at a retreat.  And I think that will do me for a while.  

Next step on Suns and Phoenixes

Here is the result of some bleaching - very timidly at first, and perhaps not enough.  And some over-dyeing.  The circles have popped a little more, but it still needs more attention.  Stay tuned!