She Dreams

 This little girl is having some happy dreams.  Even in her sleep she is smiling.

A Shady Path, second try

A Shady Path, second try. As usual, I am down to the finish line with this challenge. I begin by collecting images on Pinterest of what I had in mind. I spent many years in the San Francisco area and loved nothing better than walking through the redwood forests. So after discarding the idea of a flower garden, I decided to try a walk through the redwoods. There were many excellent photographs and I loved the ones with the sunshine backlighting the trees. I narrowed known my choices to two or three and finally settled on just one picture. That was as far as I got a week or so ago. I gathered a lot of batiks and decided to work with them.

Three days ago I came upon a beautiful printed forest in my stash. It was not redwood trees, but was really alive with color. I don't know where it came from, but I know it is a Northcott fabric.

For batting I found instead a double sided fusible foam stabilizer. It is In-R-Form Plus by Bosal. One quarter of it was 8-1/2 x 11 inches, so I was ready to go. This type of fusing was new to me so that was a challenge. I was able to fold over the front fabric to the back and fuse it therec as well, not needing any binding. For additional texture I used glue basting to attach the path and its borders.

About six weeks ago I bought a new Pfaff machine and am thrilled with it. However learning all the bells and whistles means I am constantly referring back to the manual. After an aborted attempt at trying some free motion quilting, I gave that up. I chose a varigated olive green thread which blends in very well.

On the backside I fused a piece of peach colored batik and my bobbin thread is my usual beige. The quilting shows up better there.

I managed to get to get my finished project photographed before sunset.

The other challenge I set for myself was to get good areas of contrast with these subdued prints. One was the addition of a scrap of batik with black branches. The other one is the light colored edging along the path and the bit of orange highlight on the path itself.

Once again this Endeavourers challenge has really broadened my quilting experience.

Texture Challenge

This is my second Endeavourers challenge. I really look forward each time to pushing myself out of my comfort zone with improv quilting. The wallhanging size works very well for me.I decided to emphasize texture by avoiding color contrast and prints which would compete for attention.

Then for inspiration I went first to Pinterest. There were many examples of shadowboxes, book covers, prayer flags and wallhangings embellished with a vast variety of fabric collages. Many contain other elements such as paper, postage stamps, photos, medals and embroidery.

I have many pieces of old lace, crochet, and other fabric with texture. After searching through all the nooks and crannies, I collected quite a few samples that would be useful. Most of them are off white so that’s the color that I worked with.

The fabric I chose for the front and the back was a reproduction of old handwriting. I fused both front and back to the batting then did straight line quilting in a grid. Then I pressed a very very long strip of machine crocheted open work. This was stitched down to make a nice frame for the piece.

At that point I decided to add pink accents to give a little color and liveliness. This was my first rough placement of the pieces.

Once I had the edge pieces stitched down, I picked out a fragile hankie with some holes in it. I gathered it at the center, tied it with a piece of pink lace and stitched it down to the top border. The rest of the pieces were laid out in a gentle curve.

I decided to fill in the remainder of the circle with buttons chosen from my old Mason jar. Most of them are mother of pearl and a few pink ones. I like the way the pearly ones add a little glimmer.

Here is my texture challenge.

Thanks, Janine, for coordinating the challenge. I can’t wait to the other entries.

Window

This challenge has really been exciting for me, giving me a chance to be creative with what I have on hand. I’ve used fusing for the first time rather than appliqué. All the components are from former projects. The result is Shining Vista.

The first part was an 8-inch block I made for a monthly color series done in 2016.

I never did use these blocks for a quilt, one of many UFOs. The second piece was from a set of practice blocks for fusing.

These were just bits of batik strips fused to these crazy blocks with pinked edges. The one with the yellow and purple reminded me of a sunset, but I had no plans for it. I happened to set it down on top of the purple block and…that was exciting!

So when I was looking through my UFOs I knew this was the focal point I needed. The cream fabric was handy and I had enough to use for the top and backing. By the way, I’m on a year of no fabric buying and sticking to it.

For the side strips I used a reject from a project that I abandoned. It had the gradation from dark to light, but was much wider. So I cut two strips from that and used 2-1/2 inch strips for the top and bottom borders.

I fused the top and batting, which made it nice and firm. I used HeatnBond Light fusible.

I began by quilting the purple areas and added the directional lines, then used a tight zigzag to emphasize them. Today I finished the quilting. Deadlines really help.

Improv Challenge

Hi, this is Janine, posting on behalf of Paula for technical reasons. Please visit Paula B Quilts to see more of this lovely quilt and to read Paula's Endeavourers reveal post for this quarter :)