Fourth Follies...

This is the front of the house with the gardens really in bloom with all the rain. If you double click, you will see the pepper plants, marigolds and lots of those wave petunias. Warren grew all the flowers from seed this year and they are soooo much better than what you get in the garden stores. The only plants I purchased with a few snapdragons and the red peppers. He also grew some GIANT poppies from seed which still look like huge cabbage plants but the flowers are beginning to finally bud and they are really nice. We have impatiens in every color they come in I think!

This is a perennial called an Evening Primrose which Warren also grew from seed a couple of years ago. It flowers in the evening and closes up in the heat of the day. It was cloudy and had been raining when I took this picture -- before it closed up. They are a low growing ground cover with these rather large flowers. They are not related to primroses at all. Go figure...

Yesterday was the meeting day for RAFA (Rochester Area Fiber Artists) and I managed to forget my camera so no pictures this month! However, in some conversation after the meeting, the beginning of an idea was forming in my head. Several people are beginning to think I need an intervention to stop my marbling! Well, my thoughts were to give people one of my marbled pieces with the rules of a quilt challenge around them. This was met with some positive reaction. However, it was suggested that I have people pay for the pieces. Well, combining the ideas, I think at some future date I will propose the challenge and will ask for the money, but will put it all into a pot and offer prizes in various categories!! Maybe have someone else gather the pieces when done, make sure I can't see the maker and let me vote on things like "most innovative use of fabric", "most decorative", "my personal favorite" etc. Or I could vote on digital pictures. Or someone else entirely could do the voting (then I could enter too). Hmmmmm... just some random thoughts....

Ah, a peaceful green swirl!

Mostly orange!

Fireworks and Flowers!

Canals

I did all of the above today on the 4th and reverted to those bright 4th of July colors but tried some new techniques which I quite liked. Instead of using my trusty whisks to lay down lots of color, I did a slightly (and I mean slightly) controlled laying down of color with these wonderful new droppers I have (thanks Margaret). It had been a struggle to get good drops as they always seemed to have bubbles but now I make sure I continuously squeeze the dropper, NEVER letting any air back in. So I have been laying down a lot of color with the droppers and THEN I use the whisks just to do some highlights with some non-agressive colors.

The night before last it was time to put some organization to all the pieces that are done and washed. I broke them down into pallettes primarily with special piles for the ebru ones and those that are multicolor and stand alone. This gave me an idea of where I have been spending most of my time and surprise, surprise, it was the same as when I started quilting and buying fabric randomly -- the blues predominated!!!! I probably didn't buy new blue fabric for five or six years after that realization! After I finish this next bunch, will move on to some dyeing. The big difference is that I can do 50 yards of dyed fabric in a day and it takes me almost a month to do that with marbling!