Not completely by the book

It's Workbook Wednesday again, and I must admit I have been slacking off a bit here. There has just been so much going on, and then the next chapter in the book was all about fabric painting, stamping and so on. And I just didn't feel like it, you know. Sometimes that's just the way it is.  Messing about with paints is not where I'm at right now. And there was this bit of playing with metal foil, but no matter how much I tidied up, I just couldn't find that packet of foil I know I have somewhere. - Actually I just realized: it's probably in the box with the fabric paint, that I haven't looked at for ages, duh!
So, what's a girl to do? I've been dragging my feet a bit, but today I just skipped a few chapters, and got on with it - thread painting seemed so much more interesting at the moment. So that's what I did.
My twitter-friend in the margin here was happy to model for me, I hooped my fabric and started playing. And you know what? It was fun! Not the most perfect of little birds, I know, but I bet you could see that it was meant to be a bird, anyway...
I have done a bit of thread painting before, and the funny thing is that this time, when I was following instructions, I did what I normally wouldn't have done: I hooped the fabric without using tear-away or water soluble foundation. And you know what happens, right? There was a little voice telling me in the back of my head - "the fabric will pucker, the fabric will pucker..." and it did. But not too much, though - I will probably be able to straighten it out a bit when I quilt it. Never mind, this is supposed to be a learning experience, right?
Next I'll be trying bobbin drawing, something I've been wanting to try out for a while - I've even bought that extra bobbin case so I can fiddle with the bobbin tension to my heart's content, so it's about time I got round to it.
But not tonight - I have the two final episodes of Lost to watch, so I'm taking the phone off the hook and settling down in front of the TV. Completely Lost ;-)

Random

My sister's lilac tree tells me that it really is summer, though the temperature doesn't seem to agree...

Lot's of things to do indoors, though:

-Like hand quilting between these lines...

... binding to stitch, books to study...

...and interesting yarn (or ribbon?) to play with.

Authentic 2x4 finished

I've been away for a few days, and managed to finish my Authentic 2x4 sampler just before I left, but had to wait until today to get a decent photo of it. I see now that I should have taken the time to prep it a bit more because the edges look all wobbly, but they are perfectly straight, actually (she says smugly ...). Never mind, here it is anyway.

I used linen for the binding to keep it simple, because it's the 2x4 patches from the Authentic fabric collection that are the stars here. I cut a 4 1/2" piece of each strip from the Jelly Roll, 40 pieces in all, and used 1" sashing and borders, resulting in a 25 x 26" wall quilt. The quilting is done in straight(ish) horizontal lines. I just let the presser foot follow the seams, and added a parallel line the same width away from that. I chose not to stitch in the ditch, because I never seem to be able to make that look very good, and so to create some sort of rhythm, I decided against stitching a line through the middle of the patches. So I ended up with a pattern of two close lines, a wider space, two close lines and so on. (Very interesting I'm sure...).

I've had this piece of curtain fabric in my stash for ages. When it arrived I realized that the writing was too big for it to work in a quilt and the weave was too loose for a bag. It proved to be just the right thing for the back of this quilt, though, which just goes to show that I've been right to build a large stash, and that no purchases are mistakes, they are just waiting for the right opportunity to make themselves useful ;-) Will that explanation hold up in court, I wonder? Can I go shop for more fabric now? :-D
I will try to find some more of that fine linen, at least, because that had just the right weight to complement the cotton fabrics. Linen I have come across locally has just been too coarse and slippery, I think. Now, if only I could remember where I bought it...

Wednesday again

collage
Originally uploaded by crafty mathea

Just enough time before I rush off to blog about this: it's Workbook Wednesday again, and I managed to get round to creating a collage using a focus fabric. I chose the goldfish one (Heather Ross, I believe), and started playing with pieces of it on a suitably watery background and was thinking of adding more marine life when I remembered that my theme for this series is supposed to be "windows". Now I might stray from this from time to time (I tend not to follow rules for very long, even if they are my own...), but I chose to add one here, a round one, so I suppose it is a porthole really. I used some suitably seaweedy yarn around the edges, and there you have it - a fishy collage :-)