RAFA May Meeting

The snowbirds including me were almost all back from our warmer climes!  Sarah T is our incredible needlepoint artist and did this as part of a class out west where she spent the winter.  She said she learned a lot which is hard to believe as her needlepoint is always beyond stunning!!  This was done on screen instead of cloth which I thought was very interesting!!

Another needlepoint piece from Sarah.

Sarah also did this quilt which was a result of a class that fellow RAFA member Janet R teaches.  All the blocks use the same components.  I did one like this many years ago when Janet taught it as part of our Fall Migration.

Sarah also modeled a jacket she had made.

Here is the back.

Donna showed two flowers that she made from the silk paper that the group made in the last two meetings.  I was very sorry I wasn't there for that!!

 Donna also showed this jacket that she made out of a very tattered and worn quilt that she bought.  She covered the whole thing with organza to protect the fibers.  It was absolutely stunning.

Here is the front.

Elaine showed the piece that she made with the silk paper!

Joyce M shared this piece made with her hand painted fabric.  She also showed several other pieces fabrics with various surface design techniques.

Deb R shared this piece which I really liked!

Val S did this piece while recovering from two broken wrists!

This is my first showing of what I think I am going to do with some of these smaller mandalas.  Here I have used black as the shadow but will probably choose a grey or maybe even a blue instead.  Yet to be determined.

The blogs have been sparse as I have returned north and set myself some goals for the summer.  One of those goals is to work at least two hours every day getting rid of "stuff".  In my first week, I have managed to get rid of 18 very large boxes of yarn as well as a knitting machine -- all to good homes.  Unfortunately I discovered even more hand dyed fabric that I had forgotten as well as two more boxes of black and white fabric.  I am starting to go through fabric as well and already have six large boxes which I will first try to sell at our quilt club "garage sale" and then will donate the remainder to various organizations.  I am also getting rid of a lot of my cookbooks and all my paperbacks as I really only read on a Kindle these days (and have two of those as I filled up one!!).  

I also have to finish putting sleeves on some of the ten quilts for our quilt show at the end of May as well as prepare for a talk and demo I am giving to a local quilt club on stack and whack quilts.  I am hoping to get back to regular blogging soon!

Great Egret Top is Done

Making progress and finally getting some color into the piece!  It was good to work with something other than gray.

Getting to do the Egret at last!  For some reason, I always do the background first.

Finally the top is all sewn together.  I am liking it!!  Still in a bit of a quandary about how to machine quilt the rocks (all the gray in the background).  I am not going to hurry the process so it will probably wait until I get back to Rochester.

Progress on the Great Egret

This is  one of my favorite pictures of a Great Egret taken at Carolina Beach Lake.

I have struggled with what to do about the rocks and finally just went with some random piecing and will try to suggest stones with the machine quilting.

This is the copy that sits next to me where I place each piece in a section before sewing together and pinning on the design wall.  I have noted colors and the numbers that appear on the freezer paper copy.

This is just the beginning of getting my feet wet!  One foot down.    As I finish a section, I pin it to the copy on the design wall.   It looks more complicated than it is.  It is a cinch to sew together after putting all the markings on the freezer paper templates -- a very necessary step in the process!  Getting the fabrics right is a little trickier, especially when you only have a limited selection down in this sewing room -- the bulk of my fabric is still in the north!  It has worked better than I thought it would thanks to some fabrics my sister gave me from her Hoffman stash (mostly black with some brown mixed in).

This was at the end of day 1 of piecing.  This is one of the outlines pinned on my design wall.  

This was at the end of day 2.  I am going to undo a little of this one as I don't like the emphasis of the grey strip going diagonally so will break it up.

My husband has left to go back north so no excuses for not getting it done (except for a guest this weekend) and my packing to get ready to head north as well in a couple of weeks.

Progress continues but I am removing the darkish piece on the left hand side as it sticks out too much.  Will replace it with something a little more subtle with just a touch of the darker color in a corner.

Evolution of the Little Green Heron

This is the photograph that was used to develop the small wall hanging..  The first time I did it, it was just the photo printed on fabric and then I quilted it.  I donated this to an auction supporting local nature efforts here in NC and was determined to do a more abstract version.. 

This is the image which is abstracted  a bit.  My first step had been to create a tracing of the original image and then to break it down.

I pin one of the images of which I had made 2 copies.  The other copy is colored and is numbered so I know which pieces go where.  I also have all the numbers on the freezer paper copy which I traced from my copies from Staples.

I have started sewing the pieces together.

Background is mostly done.

Lots of individual sections pinned up on the design wall.  All done except those most difficult part.

All sewn together but need a little bit of change so the bird shape is better.

Here I colored in the eye and appliqued a lighter green background piece near the tail.

It's all basted and ready to quilt.

All quilted.  I actually was doing some stippling in the background and undid the whole lot and went for the straightish lines in the background.

All bound and the sleeve added to the back.  I went with binding instead of facing as I felt that it needed to be pulled together a bit.  I used the same fabric that I used in the breast of the bird.

I am relatively pleased.  It was difficult as the backgrounds for these birds in the wild are so complex and the birds fade into the background.

Dyeing Day Reveal - You Win Some, You Lose Some!

This is one of the more successful pieces I thought.  It is from the second batch.
























Some were more of a success than others!!  The highly concentrated dyes do work pretty well though as I got some very very dark pieces.  This is from bin 1 which was the mixing red, sun yellow and intense blue.  Hardly any of the blue took and the yellow mingled far to much with the mixing red.  Definitely meh...

This and the next three pictures are of the batches before I washed them.

Some of these worked better than others.  I used strongest red, navy blue and lemon yellow I believe in this one.  My drop cloths were great from here.

These were the very poorest of the group.  I think I used intense blue, strong red and lemon yellow in this one.  Very pale.  Blues didn't take well at all.

This was again the navy, mixing red (I think) and sun yellow.

 This and the next three pieces are my "drop cloths" which I thought were the most successful pieces of the bunch!  Lots of color even on the ones were the Intense Blue failed.  I think this one was from batch 2.

I think this was from batch 4.  Up close they are even nicer I think!

This is from the first batch and you can see the intense blue didn't take at all.

 I think this is either batch 2 or 4.

I am pretty sure this is from batch 4.

This was one from probably batch 4 that was all curled up on its side.  That is why it is slightly uneven at the top.

This is either from batch 1 or 4.  Also one that was rolled up fat quarter.

This was again either 1 or 4.

This was a fat  half definitely from the first batch.

Also a fat half in batch 1.

This and the other striped piece were in the second batch and used navy which took well.

 This was from the second batch and I think it may not be a pfd fabric.  I had some random fabric that I folded and this may have been a high thread count muslin which dyes pretty well.

At least I think I have figured out how to fold to get the complex mandalas.

This and the previous one were definitely in that second batch.

I think this was my favorite of the bunch also from the second batch.

Last but not least, not sure which batch this one was in.

This was quite a large piece in the 4th batch.  I think again that this was not pfd fabric.

This is the only one of the smaller mandalas that I cared for.

This is one of the poor ones -- again non-pfd compounded by the poor combination of colors in batch 3.  You will notice I haven't showed much from batch 3!!  Figured I had to show one of the failures!