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!!

August Abstract Lesson One - Finished

I t's done .. Not sure if I like it .. well I do like it, but it's not quite what it's supposed to be .. if that makes any sense .. I like what I've done with it .. but as for the 'assignment' it's not right .. but like i said in my previous post - I do have an idea and this one will be more abstract :).

This picture was taken after it was quilted - I decided to toss it into the washer to fray up those 'leaves' a bit to make them more realistic .. i think that this one was more a lesson in texture play .. but it was fun. I likely should have used another colour to quilt the moon and the reflection to play up the texture - maybe a nice light gray? I didn't do anything fancy with the quilting at all .. Just did illusions (I hope) of rippling water, leaves, bark texture, dock texture and the moon craters - not that you can see them .. I was going to try and get some better pics, but the batteries died in my camera and my other set wtih the charger has vanished .. I'll give you ONE guess where they went .. and if he's powering his Nintendo DS with my camera batteries, I'll rip a strip off him for that crime! Brat already lost like 4 sets of rechargeables .. he's NOT going to lose mine! Or if he does, he'll be using his bday money to replace them! PFFT .. KIDS - Mumfit over .. moving right along now ...

This one shows you the actual 'leaf' affect - that turned out so well!! You can also see the quilting that I did in the moon and the reflection here as well .. Also with this angle and lighting, you can see the tree trunk for the first time and the material i used for the dock .. One thing that disappointed me a bit with this is that i lost my 'wrinkles' in the trunk that I left (or tried to leave) to create bark .. it was there before it went into the washer. I guess not only is my washer a sock thief .. it's a wrinkle thief too .. nasty kenmore LOL

This one really shows how the hand-dyed fabric curled around the quilting to give me the colouring effect that I wanted for the tree .. you can't see the quilting in the moon or the reflection, but you can see al the rest of it .. I changed my lighting and level values to highlight those.


This does look good .. I do like it .. it's loaded with texture and depth - heh .. it's just not abstract .. but I AM learning and that's the whole purpose .. All in all, for my first attempt and having such a broad concept, I think I did okay .. I was having a hard time getting my head around impressionist abstract :\ .. no clue why that was so .. but it was ..

I found some beach dune images that are pretty close to the memory in my head .. Beach Dunes 1 and Beach Dunes 2. I can see this as an abstract (impressionist) very easily - I guess I just jumped before I looked - like this is new???? LOL yeah right ..

Well I'm doing the mystery and hopefully having fun with it .. gotta love how you can set up your posts to be published at a later time .. Okay it's like 5am and the first clue gets posted in 3 hours .. EKKKKKKKKKKKK

Chasing my tail .. what to do???

W ell I wanted fru fru .. I got fru fru :D :D .. I hopped on my bike (almost 6 miles one way :O) and rode to Walmart to take advantage of the 50% off sale. I went by myself so I wouldn't feel pressured about keeping ppl waiting .. I ended up leaving around 1:15pm or so and got home at 4pm .. just like I told Kyle .. hehe .. I locked him out of the house so he would be OUTSIDE .. what is it with kids nowadays .. they allergic to fresh air??!?!! esh!!

I ended up getting 13.84 yards of various ribbon, sequins, beads, shiny stuff, (fru fru) for $13.61 - not to bad me thinks .. granted some of the pieces are just ¼ yard cuts, but those were also regular $5 or so .. I also grabbed another 3 yards of tulle ... granted this is red, but at 89¢ how can you beat that?? I also picked up a yard of this fabric too .. Judi had asked if they had purple and a few other things - well they did have this one purple, so I grabbed it on the off chance she would want some .. this purple almost was the background on my kitty quilt . but I wanted a softer more muted purple as the kitties are the stars of that quilt.

While there I also grabbed 2 boxes of 24 count Crayola crayons .. I got 2 boxes because they were 82¢ a box .. that's $1.00 off .. you can't beat that! I checked out their craft section and there wasn't any really neat sales going on .. altho they did have embroidery floss on sale there.. but it wasn't much off .. hind-sight says I should have grabbed some metallic ones .. oh well .. next time if there is any left.

Today was wayyy cool for me .. my dad went to the PO Box and there was a package from Mary containing 10 pieces of pre-cut 4x6" peltex for fabric postcards! Thank you Mary! I've not found it yet here, so that would be a Detroit trip for me.

I've another idea for my impressionist abstract .. Near here we have Point Pelee National park and the southwest beach has little dunes with long grass growing on it .. I'm thinking of taking that image in my head and seeing what I can do with it .. I didn't see any green lame today (and i was looking for just this reason) for the grass blades, but I can use some green fabric or even do some crayon work .. and do the beach (I have some brown that would be really perfect for this) and maybe the same blue that I used for the sky for the water .. we'll have to see .. as it's really blue and it's more blue green on Lake Erie here ..

So I chasing my tail here .. I want to do a postcard, I want to do some crayon work, I want to finish the first abstract, I want to get started on the second abstract .. EEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKKK oh and tomorrow AM the Nickel Mystery starts .. Good thing my fabric was cut last week! :)

Okay .. I'm off to chase my tail some more and see what I decide to do ... prolly some crayon work .. that would be the quickest I think .. heh .. famous last words LMAO!!!!!!