Now to our regular scheduled program

We now return to our regularly schedule program .. no the word verification isn't off, but the way I look at it, they didn't disable me, and I was missed in the "Spam Friday" where so many other bloggers got disabled for a few days - so I guess I'm 'lucky' (PFFT) and besides Tracy's comment for my post just about sent me of my chair giggling .. heh .. 'terrorist list' - LMAO - Thank You Tracy for the giggle and reality check - ahem .. at any rate .. Yesterday's post .. Today ..

R emember this??? Well I found a use for it, rather unexpectedly .. and it rather jumped out at me too! I had a vision for redoing my August abstract piece as sand dunes with grass and water in the background .. I have some awesome fabric that would be perfect for the sand, but it wasn't wide enough and the idea of piecing them didn't appeal to me at the time at all .. so I opened up my web album (why? I have no clue) and then I saw the small thumbnail of my discharge dyeing :D :D :D .. wheels started to turn, smoke came out my ears ... my brain super nova'd ;) and I was off and running ..

I grabbed two greens (dark and light) and some really neat light blue and started to lay them out on my fabric - i rearranged here and there and come up with an idea and then fused it down .. I put it up on my 'design wall' (flannel tacked to the wall) and walked out for a few . when I came back in I saw it and then saw that I had 'dunes' going all around in a horseshoe shape .. not just at the bottom ... so I cut a few more pieces of greens and fused them down too.

Now while this isn't totally abstract - it is minimalist which I can live with. It did match my vision and I am quite pleased with this one .. I opted to do a border on this one as I did a hanging sleeve for it and the border was rather necessary to hide the stitching for the sleeve :). And the green really does make the grass stand out more ..

For the quilting, I just did an outline around part of the blades and then 'zig zagged' my way back down .. waved thru the waves and did 'wind' blowing across the sand .. not sure if you can pick it up, but i added some depth with crayons by adding brown to the sand it's very understated. I was going to do the satin stitch around the border but then remembered that my zig zag machine is still not working and none of my other machines have zig zag (FW, 15, 99) I do have mum's touch n swear er I mean sew ... but it's a slant shank machine and while i have every foot known to man for mine, I only have the feet she had .. and she didn't quilt .. pfft .. I am glad that I remembered this BEFORE I dug out her machine from underneath current projects pile ..

Before I did the abstract, I also did a quick test with colouring on fabric with crayons .. while my drawing and shading leave a lot to be desired, I did get the gist of the test and learned what I needed to know ... I used freezer paper on the back to give it firmness while I coloured and used batting underneath to give it softness where needed .. I really used the wrong colour / angle for the dark part / shadow of the leaf .. but like i said .. I learned what I needed to know - Not sure I'll ever do a whole project with this, but for small bits here and there ... sure why not!

Oh and btw .. guess what Kyle found today .. you got it . crayons :S .. ESH!!