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| He Makes Beautiful Things (so far) |
As winter drones on and on here I'm increasingly happy about the colors and joyful expression in my quilt. This wouldn't be a good time of year for me to make a gloomy cloudy day landscape that's for sure. You can see from the above pic that I've made some progress creating things for the tree.
Before I get into what I've done since the last blog I'm going to mention that my online store has a sale on fabrics going on now - 30% off in fact! Hubby is going to be retiring and we are going to sell the house... I don't want to move all the bolts that I have and I'm not sure how fast I'll be able to fill orders once this whole thing starts. As a consequence I thought I'd better reduce my inventory. Here is a link to my fabric store in case you have some shopping to do. I have some really good deals going now since I don't mark up my fabrics as much as other online retailers. The link -
If you remember my last blog you'll know I hinted about creating a special bird for the tree. Well, here she is!
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| My phoenix bird |
She was put together on Pellon EK130 and then I used Liquid Stitch and fused her to the quilt top. She's somewhat stitched down but I'm not sure I liked seeing the thread so I might rip that part out and use monofilament thread.
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| Fruit and blue birds |
I made some blue birds for the tree and I was going to put them in the big empty space above my joyful female but I couldn't get past birdie doo doo. Yep, that's what I said.
When I was young our school went on an overnight camping trip in some forest around here and within a couple of hours of getting there a bird pooed on my head. There was no way to shampoo my hair and it was gross. I finally found a stream and was able to dunk my head and rinse the worst of it out but YUCK.
Anyway, I tried several different arrangements of blue birds. I tried putting leaves under the birds to catch the poo, I tried angling their butts so the poo wouldn't fall on me. None of my arrangements worked. All I could think about was splat, bird poop in the face! Even when hubby suggested that they were nice holy birds and imaginary birds who would never ever poo on me I just couldn't leave those birds over my head. (I said last blog that the woman is supposed to be me before I discovered peanut butter snickers.)
So the birdies did not fill that empty space and when I put them farther in on that branch the emptiness in the tree was even more well, empty. Hence the fruit.
I tried different fruit colors and this burgundy/plumy red batik worked the best given all the background colors in the sky. These are imaginary fruits, I know they sort of look like apples but they are really more red oranges or nice fat red plums - which I like so much better than apples.
When I was young our school went on an overnight camping trip in some forest around here and within a couple of hours of getting there a bird pooed on my head. There was no way to shampoo my hair and it was gross. I finally found a stream and was able to dunk my head and rinse the worst of it out but YUCK.
Anyway, I tried several different arrangements of blue birds. I tried putting leaves under the birds to catch the poo, I tried angling their butts so the poo wouldn't fall on me. None of my arrangements worked. All I could think about was splat, bird poop in the face! Even when hubby suggested that they were nice holy birds and imaginary birds who would never ever poo on me I just couldn't leave those birds over my head. (I said last blog that the woman is supposed to be me before I discovered peanut butter snickers.)
So the birdies did not fill that empty space and when I put them farther in on that branch the emptiness in the tree was even more well, empty. Hence the fruit.
I tried different fruit colors and this burgundy/plumy red batik worked the best given all the background colors in the sky. These are imaginary fruits, I know they sort of look like apples but they are really more red oranges or nice fat red plums - which I like so much better than apples.
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| Fruit |
You'll see the 2 plums? The lower right one has been pressed with paper towel and hot iron to absorb the melted wax from the crayon. I used white crayon on one side, dark red on the other. The plum on the upper left has not been pressed. You can see how much white crayon you really have to color on before it shows up on dark fabric.
I used used a brown fabric dye marker to make the stems brown and a dark green marker to draw a big center vein down each leaf.
I used used a brown fabric dye marker to make the stems brown and a dark green marker to draw a big center vein down each leaf.
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| Detail of fruit and birdie |
Today I'll start stitching down these appliques and then I'm going to start making dust. In case you don't remember or know, this quilt was inspired by a song we used to sing in church. I'll just copy/paste the lyrics here from my last blog -
"Beautiful Things" by the Gungors
All this pain
I wonder if I’ll ever find my way
I wonder if my life could really change at all
All this earth
Could all that is lost ever be found
Could a garden come up from this ground at all?
(Chorus)
You make beautiful things
(Chorus)
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us
All around
Hope is springing up from this old ground
Out of chaos life is being found in You.
You make me new, You are making me new
You make me new, You are making me new
They have a video on YouTube in case you want to hear it -
Beautiful Things on YouTube
As to making dust. If you can believe it I've actually googled the molecular shape of dust looking for inspiration. No such luck. Dust is everything from particles of dirt to pollen so there isn't a shape to it. It's pretty much a glob of messy looking glop when you look at it up close.
I'm thinking about making something like tiny rings of circles in different colors and they would spiral around each other or something and every few circles one would have a tiny leaf or flower coming out of it. I bought a lace trim yesterday with tiny woven flowers on it, I'm hoping to use it instead of trying to cut out tiny flowers. The flowers are white though which means I get to color them. Inktense color blocks - here I come! I hope they work on polyester.
Well, that's it for me today. It's been a smaller blog, but I don't have that much to report. As always, comments are welcome.
(And if you need any fabrics, please check out my store! Thanks!)
Beautiful Things on YouTube
As to making dust. If you can believe it I've actually googled the molecular shape of dust looking for inspiration. No such luck. Dust is everything from particles of dirt to pollen so there isn't a shape to it. It's pretty much a glob of messy looking glop when you look at it up close.
I'm thinking about making something like tiny rings of circles in different colors and they would spiral around each other or something and every few circles one would have a tiny leaf or flower coming out of it. I bought a lace trim yesterday with tiny woven flowers on it, I'm hoping to use it instead of trying to cut out tiny flowers. The flowers are white though which means I get to color them. Inktense color blocks - here I come! I hope they work on polyester.
Well, that's it for me today. It's been a smaller blog, but I don't have that much to report. As always, comments are welcome.
(And if you need any fabrics, please check out my store! Thanks!)
Beautiful work, as always. Hope this one will become a pattern for purchase down the road. Thanks for the fun eye candy!
ReplyDeleteIs that a bird-of-paradise? Your birds are all so beautiful!
ReplyDeleteBirdie doo-doo - so funny! There would have been more cause for concern had 'you' been beneath the phoenix bird (just sayin'). Like the fruit solution though! And the wonderful colours are happy-making (as I know it's snowing outside here and we're supposed to be getting a lot of it overnight).
ReplyDelete