Week #6

Two pieces of felt, gold and grey, needle punched together. For some reason I couldn't needle punch swirls with the embellisher so I rubber stamped a few onto tissue paper and pined them in place onto the grey side to use as a guide. After they were punched and the tissue fell apart other shapes were lightly drawn in with a blue-green pen. Some of the ink lines came through on the gold side looking green, interesting. And the the dark gold tissue paper came through in the lower left area looking a little rusty. Couldn't have planned any of this if I tried!

Back side. Very bland, but when needle punched from both sides exciting things happen, in this case I thought that the grey side was going to be the front. The gold side ended up being the winner.

Another rough patch hit this week. My rock, the man in my life, was diagnosed with Melanoma and will have surgery next Friday. The oncologist wanted to know why I thought the spot looked suspicious. What can I say, I just knew.

Quote: When a bad patch shows up, patch it up with a smile. Sally Huss

Week #5

I'm quite pleased with this one. I found a light-weight textured fabric in the remnant bin that is mostly black with a little grey streaked through it. By experimenting with needle punching I discovered that lines and shapes could be randomly punched leaving a raised surface. Exciting! In the manner of Jeanne Williamson, "The Uncommon Quilter," I once again punched on some netting. The texture of the black fabric wasn't evident enough so out came the Shiva metallic paint-stiks. This piece doesn't seem to need edge stitching, but the edges frayed which I stopped by dabbing on Fray Check. The backing is black felt.

Quote: One of my favs by Henry David Thoreau. It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.

Email!!!

For some reason the dslextreme.com account I had used for 5 years thought it was time for a change, one that has caused me much grief! I haven't received most of my emails for the last 3 days due to the fact that I have no idea how to "update" the info in order to receive it in Outlook Express. I do, however, receive lots of interesting spams, you know the kind. So, I'm in the process of changing my dslextreme account to my yahoo one. If you've emailed me during the last few days please resend to: mizriley2003@yahoo.com. Thanks!!!

52 projects. Week #4

52 projects, what was I thinking? My state-of-mind was at an all time low this past week and everything seemed tedious, unsatisfactory or just plain lame. Staying in bed wasn't an option so I forged ahead in the only way I know how which is to pretend that everything is okay until it is.
This morning I was finally able to turn off the AC that has been running non-stop since the end of May. Amazing how nice it is to feel a breeze coming through the open windows!

This piece started out by simply tossing some yellow netting onto a reddish painted dye-na-flow painted piece of canvas fabric and trying to figure out how to attach it without the embellisher. All of the black lines are machine stitching, some straight stitches while others are layered with at least two stitches overlapping creating a new stitch. All of the yellow is netting. Once the stitching was done the piece was cut to fit onto a 5x7 inch piece of light-weight denim that had been edge stitched using the new foot attachment Bah! Just bloody awful! More stitching with black thread to incorporate the netting piece with the blue denim. A little better. Out to the garage to throw some paint on; my motto is if all else fails grab paint! After adding black dots and lines of red, both of which greatly improved the piece, I deemed it fini!

Quote:It's not so important who starts the game but who finishes it. John Wooden

Joseph Joubert. Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.

Second award!!

Thanks Marilyn for this award! I'm truly honored!

The rules are:

In accepting this award, I agree to:
1. Display the logo and link to the one who award it.
2. Nominate at least 7 blogs to receive the award.
3. Add links to those 7 blogs to my blog.
4. Leave the nominees a message that they have been nominated to receive the award

There are more 7 blogs that are noteworthy, in my opinion, so it's difficult to narrow down the list, but below are some of the ones that inspire me and perhaps this will encourage a few to update their blogs more often. :-> They're listed in no particular order!

http://postcards-and-stuff.blogspot.com/
http://texturedturtle.blogspot.com/
http://jeannewilliamson.blogspot.com/
http://www.whatanexpression.blogspot.com/
http://artandfiber.blogspot.com/
http://artticulation.blogspot.com/
http://purplemissus.blogspot.com/
http://studio78notes.blogspot.com/
http://intotheblystic.blogspot.com/
http://www.alisaburke.blogspot.com/
http://jswb.blogspot.com/

And while Raewyn's blog isn't always full of creative endeavors it nourishes me in an unexplained way, maybe it's because I met her and two of her kids a couple of years ago, but I feel very close to her. I always applaud the Shand family!
http://www.xanga.com/Rabbits_Nest

I'll do my best to follow #7 above, but hopefully most of the recipients will discover the award when they check in here on my blog! Actually, all of the blogs listed to the right deserve this award, but some of them already have received numerous ones!!

Quote: I don't deserve this award, but I have arthritis and I don't deserve that either.
Jack Benny (1894 - 1974)

Week #3 and a Bonus

In Jeanne Williamson's book "The Uncommon Quilter" one of the things she explored was netting. I often save the netting bags from lemons, onions, avocados etc, but had never used them. I nearly tossed this piece when I became disgruntled with it, but one of my "rules" for the 52 projects is that I can't toss anything out. What a dilemma! Netting to the rescue, not that I think this piece is award winning, but at least it's more interesting. What started off as a piece of rust dyed fabric with machine stitching in the lighter areas went awry; I had to remind myself that each project is an experiment and not a perfect piece. I couldn't figure out how to get the netting to stay in place but after going around the edges with black thread I discovered a close match of red thread and was able to zigzag some of the areas down. Probably the best thing about this piece is the lumpy area of netting near the right bottom where the bag comes together and left an open area where it frayed.

I never use napkins in my work, I have no idea why not, but one from the Montecito Inn with Charlie Chaplin's image on it worked quite well on a rust dyed piece of canvas fabric. Two more Chaplin images taken from a note pad along with postal-type rubber stamps and viola, an antique looking postcard. The reddish fabric is dye-na-flow painted. The fabric has lighter and darker areas, just the distressed look I love.

Quotes: Laughter is the tonic, the relief, the surcease for pain.

Nothing is permanent in this wicked world - not even our troubles.

Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.

A day without laughter is a day wasted. Charlie Chaplin

Fall leaves

I vaguely remember when I bought this "blah" print years ago that it needed some punch to it. Along came rust dyeing and the punch. Amazing that a grey dull print could end up with so much zing. Now what to do with it?

Quote: Ahhhh, my ultimate barbershop ambition has now changed from winning a quartet gold medal to being stranded on a desert island with Zing! -- Tom Gentry