Heart Throb

No on can accuse me of having something done ahead of time for my own challenge!  If I'm lucky, I'll be late to my own funeral!  I was thinking about several different possibilities.  Right across from my sewing machine was a box with this red roping peeking out.

It is tubular and made of some synthetic material.  I purchased it several years ago on Christmas clearance  because I thought it had some quilt possibilities.  Since it is Valentines month, and the awareness month for women's heart health, I thought I'd be a little graphic and use this roping.

Here's my unfinished piece.  I had it together and ready to quilt on Saturday....and went to bed.  Sunday, we went to visit my daughter at Ohio University for her birthday....and when I went to finish it today, I broke three needles.  I think my timing on my sewing machine is off kilter, and since I spent the whole day on Wednesday of last week trying to drop my other  machine off to get the tension fixed...well...I'm without a sewing machine right now.

The blue line shows the sinus rhythm of a an ekg done in perle cotton by bobbin work.  The  roping you can see is used for the veins and arteries.  I hand embroidered the veins on the heart, and machine appliqued and then stuffed the various parts of the heart.  The sad thing is that the background is drapery fabric which needed stabilizing,.  So...before I appliqued it, I ironed decor bond on the back of it...bad decision.  My hands being not  normal  (meaning, affected by some drugs I'm on) ,  I couldn't needle the applique...so I ended up doing it by machine.

Not quite how I envisioned it...but..almost done.  The tape around the edges is to tell me when I have to stop quilting as enveloped this.  

Trout Rising

 I know...this is a really bad thing to do...I think. Back a million years ago, in October 2010, the challenge was to use metallic stuff, and or unusual items in our quilts.  I started this...actually working on it during my chemo treatments and Just didn't finish it in time.  I swore I would get it done and I've been catching up on UFOs and I wanted to share this with you.

This is my piece "Trout Rising", showing a trout after it has jumped to catch a caddis fly for dinner.

I machine quilted it with sliver thread, then put layers of over-laid sheers, some with metallic flecks. I gathered the sheers manipulating them by hand.

The trout is painted cotton (painted with Lumiere fabric paints) the dots are washers I've stained with Adirondack Alcohol inks, with a black sequin and a black bead on top.
After assembling it, I then machine quilted once again using a funny bluey-silvery-greyey metallic thread.

Size is 15.5" x 12.5"

The Power of One

I have a hard time with these challenges...not thinking too much.   I did a lot of research into Auspicious numbers....and I knew my numerology number from a long time ago, although I haven't checked it recently...I'm pretty sure it was 1.

The number one doesn't really thrill me until I started thinking about the  power of one....then I thought back to my high school days when I sang in a quartet and one of the pieces we used to sing had a line " It only takes a spark, to get a fire going.
And soon all those around, can warm up it it's glowing."  Of course, in my feeble 50 year old brain, I turned it into a candle...not a candle in the wind, but one lighting the darkness. 

So then I thought about how to show a candle burning in the darkness in a quilt...

So....I got a piece of cotton velveteen because I wanted the background to be deep and luscious  Using a bleach solution,  I discharged the area where I was going to have the flame because the light around the flame makes a kind of a glow.  I then layered some sheers over a white satin flame, and layered more sheers around the white satin candle  to try to show how candle stick changes color as you get farther away from the flame.  Because I was fusing it, it is a little too stark, the change should be a bit more gradual and get deeper as you get farther down the candlestick...I also intended to make some drips out of heat distressed Tyvek...but I couldn't find my heat gun.  

Then....I started wondering about doing it again trying several different types of materials to represent the candle and flame, only using discharged Kona cotton....So...I got sucked into this...and it wasn't until Tobi emailed me today that I realized....I had to get off my duff and post this one. 

I outline quilted the flame and the candlestick....and then put some more echo into the discharged part...but no more quilting as I didn't want to disrupt the smooth black of the velveteen.

I am afraid I constantly get sucked into these challenges and often don't post because I haven't finished them....Fast? Hmmmm....Friday? Definitely not!  However, I am working on finishing the pile of challenges I have partially done...I have to get over that and stop thinking...Anyone else have this problem???? 

A Leap of Leaping Leopards

I'm late....as usual...but at least I've finally been able to complete one! YAY!  I originally intended to do a school of fish with a design that I developed during Elizabeth Barton's Quilt University class, "Inspired to Design."  Although it wasn't terribly original in the first place, when Ann Ruthsdottir posted hers, I decided to scrap it.

Instead, I chose to do this Leap of Leopards....and of course they had to be leaping!  It measures 9 1/4" square.  The sun or moon.....I can't decide which I want it to be, is stitched around with a spiral in yellow pearl cotton.  Machine quilted with a yellow/green rayon in the body, and the sky is a blue done in a swirl pattern.

Solitary Canoe

I actually had a good start on this and thought I'd get it done before the deadline...I always fool myself that way.  I decided that for this one, I would employ what Pamela Allen has been teaching in the online class I'm taking with her "Think Like and Artist" which has taken me a lot of thinking since her style and mine are so different.

For this challenge, I thought of doing a number of things, my daughter running and a couple of others, but decided that I wanted to do one of my niece's fiance.  I had hoped to do him fly fishing since I intend to do a series along that line, but she only had a picture of him launching his canoe in a river near Arden, North Carolina.

To do this one, I free-cut all the pieces, none of them were drawn ahead of time. I hope that this creates sort of an abstract, although I admit it isn't what I usually do when I abstract things...  The yellowish blob is actually iridescent lame (imagine the accent there, although I admit this does look a little lame) which caught the light badly for the photo...it actually just gives a shimmer to that part of the water. 

I don't think this is a particularly good composition.  I am hoping that when I put more thread painted leaves and limbs in the background and the water, then it will be more interesting, at least texturally.

I thought of cropping it to this, however I don't feel that it gives the feeling of solitude that the larger view does.  The extra water makes it look more....lonely in a way.

Any suggestions on improving this would be greatly appreciated.

Reliquary Box or the Slow Friday Fabric Challenge

In 2009, the Miami Valley Art Quilt Network of greater Dayton hosted a challenge to design quilts based on Celtic works, particularly the Book of Kells. The Centerville/Washington library owns a facsimile copy of the Book of Kells and as a part of the celebration of the donation of the book, we did pieces either drawn from the Book of Kells or Celtic imagery.

At the time, I did quite a bit of research and found that the Book of Kells had been carried into battle, a monk carrying it, holding it high in a special box which had been made for it.

During the middle ages, boxes which held sacred artifacts, such as bits of the true cross, saint's bones, or sacred texts were kept in special boxes called reliquaries. I pictured some of on display at the Cloisters in New York on my blog,

When this challenge came up, I decided now was the time to give this concept of making a reliquary box to hold a fiber version of the Magnificat. How hard could it be? I was particularly interested as I wanted to make a fully three dimensional piece of work. (the first two pictures here are of enameled reliquaries of the type I was interested in.)

Monymusk Reliquary

I was particularly taken by the Monymusk Reliquary which you see here. Although fairly simple, I loved the shape. You can read more about the Monymusk reliquary here.

I have to say, that although my idea didn't work very well..I learned a lot. It did require me to do some thinking as to how to accomplish this and in some cases my way was the hard way.

You can see that my general shape is ok..but the "flappy" parts just below the handles are too small.

I created this by taking a piece of Peltex, laying a piece of batting over the top of it and then a piece of fabric. Since I didn't have the gold I wanted, I just took a piece of fabric I had and didn't like and used that. I quilted the general shapes, then painted the whole thing with Jaquard metallic paints.

On the two side panels, I painted the images, sort of icons, directly on the sides of the box. I then quilted around the rough shapes so that they would look a little like enameled images. Within the circles I glued pendants and buttons with the shanks cut off to look like the embossed bits on the Monymusk reliquary.

Each of the pieces were done free hand and individually. Life was made more interesting because my Bernina 440 decided that the upper tension was going to be TIGHT and even though I had it set at the lowest tension, it was still pulling the bobbin thread up to the top when I was doing satin stitching. Shredding the metallic thread was also an issue (shredding was happening in the upper tension discs).

The images of Mary are mine but I developed them from medieval examples. These were painted with Jaquard paints as well.

On the bottom edge, I used a piece of Tyvek which I had painted gold, stitched over, melted, then ironed it. I was trying to go for some of the wonderful work that Jan Beaney and others do which look like antiqued and distressed pieces. I love the richness and the texture. Only...it's as lot harder to do than they make it sound...I'm going to have to play with this more to get the look I intended. I thought that the stitching would help guide the melting...NOT.

The ends (here you see the annunciation) were quilted first, then painted, then I painted the images on pieces of Cindy Walter's stabilized fabrics. I then quilted them over batting and then satin stitched them to the ends.

This one, I goofed on. My hands are so numb from the chemo that I couldn't feel that I was painting on the paper side, NOT the fabric side. I discovered this when I soaked the piece in order to remove the paper and started to remove the image. Ooops...so I quickly dried it off, cut the image into an oval, quilted it and stitched it on.

I then used a very wide zigzag stitch to connect all my bits and pieces together. I'm not sure I'd do it this way again....in fact, I'm not sure I'd do this again. At least I tried it. The only other thing I was thinking about was rendering one of my niece's photos of Iona...only Iona is a Scottish Island, Not an Irish one. :(

Sorry guys...hopefully the next one will be done much more quickly than this one...believe me...I had NOOOOOOO idea.

Big Blue Stem

Very late, but completed.  :)  When I looked at Andy Goldsworthy's works, one of the things which struck me is that while he used natural items, he usually had a focal point which was maybe related to a natural color, but kicked up several notches.  Gold boulders, outsized natural elements, REALLY red leaves, REALLY green leaves...

So, I decided to do a native prairie grass I grow in my yard which is called "Big Bluestem"  (Andropogon gerardii) and make it really blue.  I assure you, mine is a blue colored stem..but this is more blue than in nature!. 

I think I hit the rhythm requirement pretty well, both in the seed heads and in the leaves.  the other requirement was "to create an exciting background".  For this, I painted the background cloth ins shades of green.  I took some deli papers I bought and wanted to try and painted them with a thin coat of Quinacridone / Nickel Azo Gold mixed with Hansa yellow and transparent yellow oxide.   I tore the pieces into strips once they were dry and attached them to the fabric using Matte medium.  I felt that the back ground should probably have been lighter as once the yarns were added for the seed heads, I didn't think that they contrasted enough with the back ground.  You can see an OK shot of it just on the background on Maria Elkin's blog here.

In order to brighten it and make it pop, I added the orangy-gold border.  I then took some King Tut variagated thread and did a wiggly line first one direction and then another over the background to give it more interest and hopefully lighten it a bit.

I then quilted the border in triangles which were quilted in first one direction, then the opposite.  Overall, the piece is equally quilted.  I'm not really pleased with the wavy border...but then I didn't have time to block it either...The background is backed with Decor Bond which makes it lay nice and flat and is great for stabilizing the yarns I couched down as well as the thread painting I did on the stems and leaves of the plant.  I don't like, however, how it doesn't seem possible to get any loft in the piece once you use the Decor bond.   I would have liked to have had the plants stand out a bit more from the background.  As I did the threadwork before I quilted and only outlined quilted those parts, it should have stood out a little...(I used warm and natural for a batting).

My blurry vision and lack of feeling in my hands made the execution of this piece much more lengthy as well as difficult.  I had to rip out the quilting along the border a couple of times...the fact that my Bernina is having tension issues didn't help.  Off it goes to the shop (AGAIN!) I can't figure out how even when the upper tension is set at "0" it is still tight enough to pop the bobbin thread up. My picutres aren't the sharpest in the world either because again of my vision.  Profuse apologies!

I had intended to enter this in the Marianist Environmental Education Center's show in Dayton which is closing this weekend, but I finished one of my entries, just not this one in time.  So, I took it down to the Dayton Visual Art Center member's show (Dayton, OH), today...at least it is going somewhere!

This was one of those times when I said to myself "Boy, life would sure be easier if you'd stick to painting....you'd be done by now and you'd have more of a choice to lighten the background!!!."  Sigh.  I do like the texture though!

Finished size:  20 1/4" h x 24" wide.

As always, comments/suggestions / thoughts are greatly appreciated.

Leaves Dancing in Water

I usually really spend too much time thinking about our challenges. This time, I thought "Wow! Now I can make that quilt I did the drawing for in 2004 and never got around to making it...but with moving half of my stuff out of my sewing room....with the "help" of my sister-in-law getting ready to paint and refloor the room, I couldn't find it.

I've also been having horrible problems with my hands (newly diagnosed lymphedema--that is swelling, an infection in my fingernails and my fingernails getting loose from the finger, I'm having trouble doing hand sewing. So...while this one has a binding on the front, I haven't whipped it to the back yet. This is a tiny piece, only 8 1/2" x 6 1/4"...but I knew I'd be able to complete it...quickly for once! Usually with a small piece, I'd face it and not have a binding, but I wanted to frame this one.


My idea was inspired by running across these lovely iridescent sequin leaves. I used a bluish sparkly sheer for the eddy in the water and machine quilted it with a YLI holographic thread. The background fabric is a sort of imitation shibori print. I had to rip out the quilting on one side because it didn't follow the eddy well enough and if I hadn't had to do that, then I would have made the deadline! YAY!

Now the extra good news is that I'm almost done with two examples for challenge 54 and I have the "metallic" one from last year just about done as well. :) I'm making progress!

As usual critiques and comments are always welcome.

Lisa Quintana (Michigoose)

Color Field Your Guess is as Good as Mine

When this challenge was posted, I thought I understood what the pieces were...and I started working on two pieces. However, when some of the FFFC'ers started saying that they were confused...I started looking a little further and decided that I wasn't doing it properly.

The definition I took was one put out in Art History Basics, stating that color field paintings were abstract, not based on nature, treat the canvas or paper as a "field" of vision without a central focus; emphasize the flatness of the surface, and reveal the artists emotional state of mine or his or her expression.

One of the things I found interesting is that it could be "amorphous or clearly geometric, but is about the tension created by overlapping and interacting areas of flat color."



This sort of bothered me....How can one show have the overlapping and softness without using brushwork? And that then became my challenge. How to translate this into quilting. Obviously, I couldn't piece as it would create the sharp edge.

That's when I hit upon using Angelina and foils. The coppery/gold area you see in the center "stripe" and the white-ish stripe are both areas which have been foiled, one with copper foil and the other with a opalescent one I think of as being gasoline on water. I then put pieces of Angelina down (the pink and the sort of reddish on the far left. The red is much redder in this light that it is in reality as I mixed a bright plum with "rusty nail."

The next problem was how to quilt it....If color field painting were all about flatness, then I didn't really want to have any texture, but quilting is ALL about texture. Even when we are quilting a piece and trying to make it flat, there is texture. So, I used a copper metallic thread and a pearl Sliver thread by Sulky for the quilting in the colored areas. The blue, I just quilted in long wavy lines in a blue rayon.

This is WAY out of the box for me as I don't usually do abstracts. I liked how the angelina and the foil gave the colors and soft edges similar to brushwork.

The piece measures 33 1/4" high x 19" wide. I don't have a name for it and would be happy to take suggestions as well as critiques.

Lisa Quintana aka Michigoose

Rectangles

I apologize for these being so late, but I thought I had better get them up. I actually finished the bigger one at left (as far as the quilting and the stitching goes) in time...but I found myself playing that "what if" game. I seem to think that I am wonder woman and can do it all.

My choice of shapes was rectangles. I randomly cut them from quilter's lame and either layered them on top of or underneath florist's organdy ribbon in gold. I left the edges raw because I wanted to add in the texture of the fraying edges. I'm not convinced that that was a good idea and I might try to upload a photo tomorrow that shows that better.

The entire piece measures 29" (w) x 26 1/2" (h).

I wondered how beads would look in it...and I laid these rectangular pieces of imitation tiger's eye on top. I think I like it, but I'm not convinced.

I made this smaller version, 13" w x 12" tall to make sure that my tension and choice of quilting elements were what I wanted. I quilted it by coming down in two lines in the center of the rectangle then splitting out and outlining it....sort of like a paddle, and coming back in again at the bottom of the rectangle. I quilted it using Valdani hand dyed thread in a variegated color called "Volcano" which is cherry red, gold and a lighter shade of gold.

After quilting it, I wondered again about beads. I started beading around the edge of the smaller one to see how I liked it. I like it a lot on the small one, but I think it wouldn't look as well on the larger piece. The smaller beads work well on the smaller piece to give it extra interest and texture, but I think they would be distracting on the larger piece.

This is way out of the box for me as I usually do realistic images and I rarely bead. I took a class with Mary Stori and liked it, but I haven't done much with it.
Critques are always welcome. And next time, when I'm working with 100% silk, I'll zigzag the edges before I start working on it!

Lisa Broberg Quintana (Michigoose)

Monkey Puzzle Tree

Very late...but here's my work for Challenge #47 a quarter section of the tip end of a Monkey Puzzle Tree branch. This little monster is 20" x 20" and when the challenge came up, I thought that hand stitching this would be a breeze because it was so small...WHAT was I thinking! Actually, I don't often use a lot of hand stitching as embellishment so I had no idea how long it would take me.

I hand appliqued a vintage linen like cloth to a batik ground. I back stitched around all the leaves in purple perle cotton, doing a threaded back stitch around the core of the leaves in the center. I used a variagated perle cotton to stitch the long lines on the leaves in a running stitch (plodding stitch might have been more like it as long as it took me), then I shaded the leaves with a long-short stitch combo in variagated darker green DMC embroidery cotton.
You can see the real deal of the Monkey Puzzle Tree here. The Monkey Puzzle Tree (Auraucaria auraucana) is native Chile and Argentina, but is grown as an ornamental in more temperate areas of the US. This one is in Olympia, WA.

Here you can see my stitching a bit more. I did machine trapunto to give the leaves a bit more loft. The background was echo quilted around the leaves in a variegated red/navy/purple thread 1/4" apart.

I like the increased texture from the hand stitching, but I must admit, I wish it were faster! As usual, comments and critiques are always appreciated.

Meg

I thought this photo of my daughter at prom this spring would be a really good one for the chiaroscuro, albeit that I also am working on two others for this same challenge which are larger. The photo has the dramatic lighting, and I thought it would be sort of fun.

I worked with my paints (both Lumiere and Dynaflow, as well as regular acrylics with fabric medium) and Prismacolor, Inktense and Mondial pencils. The metalic of her earring and the sparkles on her dress were done with glitter gel pens. After I quilt it, I intend to add some itty bitty crystals. The piece measure 8 1/2" x 11" .

I'm not too happy with this at present, albeit the real thing is slightly darker than the image you see here as I had to use the flash on it in order to get it to come out since it's dark out (but hey, I still made the deadline!!!!). Trying to get the darks dark enough without it just looking like a dirty smudge is difficult. I was also struggling with getting her mouth right, and while it doesn't look like her, at least it is a reasonable drawing of a person!

Another challenge I faced with it was to get the eyes correct. Her eyes are actually green, and it doesn't come out well in the quilted image. I need to work a little more on it, especially on the side in shadow. they need to be darkened a bit more and highlights put in. The skin tone (the ruddiness of her cheeks) need to be worked on as well. The mouth shape could stand some improvement, but unfortunately I can't change that much anymore.

I also intend to work on her hands...she really doesn't have flippers. Perhaps using net over her hair would darken that and give the shadow I need....But I could really stand some suggestions on the face so that it doesn't look like she's growing a beard.

Primary Fractured Waco Biplane

Well...I finished it and that's about all I can say. Doing the fractured part was very difficult for me and I'm still not sure I got it right. Yellow, Red and Blue were the three colors I chose.

I originally tried sewing pieces of the blue fabrics together for the background, but that looked icky. I then laid out bits and pieces, tacked them down then trapped them under a layer of black tule. The glittery stuff is supposed to be the propeller and is one of the iridescent tissue lames. The piece measure 13 3/4" high x 17 1/2" wide.

The image is of a Waco biplane. Waco (rhymes with taco) aircraft were made here in Troy, OH and were famous for being used as trainers and making HUGE gliders for WWII and the Korean wars. I had a little difficulty as I did it from a photo I took of a tied-down Waco at the annual Waco Fly-in....and it had a cover
over the cockpit, so I had to engineer a pilot and the cockpit. By the way....Waco stands for Weaver Aircraft Company.

I'd really like some suggestions on what to do when you are doing the 1/8" stitch line in facing when you have a variety of colors. I picked the thread for the majority, but I don't like the blue on the yellow. Any other comments, suggestions etc. are greatly appreciated.

Sweet Honesty -- Packaging

Once again, I'm late. Just after the challenge came out, I got the flu. My niece suggested several different perfume packages. After looking at several of them, I realized that for the most part, fragrance packaging uses a limited number of colors, usually with black and gold.

With the exception of fragrances which are designated "sporty" or exciting (viz Red Door and a few others) most of them are suggesting elegance and beauty and therefore have these restricted color palettes.

I went to my pantry cupboard and the only thing I could find which really said "BUY ME!" was a can of "fire roasted tomatoes" which were all natural. Therefore it was in tones of reds, with gold, black and green. I thought about doing this, but kept on going back to the image at left--an advertisement for Annick Goutal's Eau de Parfum "Eau de Hadrian" which is advertised here on Anthropologie's website.


I had been thinking about doing something with the shape of a green vase I had and this sort of just sent me right into that. The piece measures 24 5/8" high x 11" wide. I used gray Kona cotton with an overlay of a chain-stitch embroidered polyester sheer. The "tablecloth" is a piece of polyester lace in a light ecru.

The plant for the still life requirement is supposed to be a branch of
Lunaria annua which is commonly known as "honesty", "money plant," "Silver dollar plant", "Bolbonac", and "moonwort." The seed pods on this plant are transluscent silver once they have slipped their husks. I have represented them with fused layers of irredescent polyester sheer lame with the whiter ones being a piece of the lame fused to a piece of white satin before fusing it to the background. I satin stitched the stems in gold metallic thread.

The vase is a polyester damask.

I quilted the background "swirls" following right along the edge. However, I originally thought I would outline the swirls in gold. I did the interior of the piece and wasn't sure I liked it so I switched to grey for the rest of it. The seedpods of the luminaria are loosely outlined in gold mettalic thread as well.

I had originally intended a larger amount of open area (blank space) at the top of the piece...but I am afraid that the flu I was struck with on Dec. 27 made me really dopey as to what I was doing. Once I started it, I realized that I didn't cut a large enough piece to accomodate the hand basted vase and the plant....ooops!

I faced the quilt rather than using a traditional binding in gray (which I considered)....and I'm still not good at it. Critiques are gladly welcomed.

Lisa Broberg Quintana (Michigoose)

Diatom and cells

True to form, I was a little late getting started on this, although it is a subject I was interested in pursuing prior to getting the challenge. The odd thing is that over two years ago, I had the idea and started collecting images to do a series on wood....but I didn't do it for this challenge.
This piece is based on a photomicrograph of a fossil marine diatom Actinoptychus heliopelta found in diatomaceous earth, Dunkirk, Maryland, by Stephen S. Nagy.". I intend to put some beads on the center of it and also on the orange bits which go into the center. It measures about 17" in diameter.
You can see Dr. Nagy's original image here
I have never done a circular (or roughly circular) piece before. I also did a lot of multiple layer machine quilting in order to make the veining in the middle (the part that looks roughly like aligator skin). While I have had Shiva paintstiks for about 4 years, I've never used them until now.
I must admit, the quilting, and the fact that I fused all those little yellow triangles down, then satin stitched around each and every one, as well as satin stitched the area on the inside of the tooth, took me far longer than I had ever anticipated.
While waiting for the Shiva to dry, I quickly did this piece since the first one was being a "slow Friday Fabric Challenge". This is a rendition of a tight Cellular Junction. A cellular junction is the structure in a multi-celled organism.
I saw the matte acrylic beads and wanted to use them. The body of the piece is made from two different colors of polar fleece with a "pillow" in between to give it depth.

Because I didn't think it looked finished, I added this fringe on the bottom. The piece measures 10" x 14 1/2"

Lisa Broberg Quintana (aka Michigoose)

Moonlight on the Goldfish Pond

I joined this group hoping that I would teach myself just to jump right in and quickly do a small project. I'm afraid this one took me a while longer because I had to figure out how to accomplish it....and I had so many ideas, it was very hard to pick just one.

Quite some time ago, I was a Chinese watercolor painting showing the moon reflecting on a goldfish pond. When I lived in Connecticut, I saw the moon reflected perfectly on our swimming pool. I thought I'd try to recreate this in a small quilt, using the shots I took of my goldfish prior to May 13 of this year.

At first, I thought I'd use the metallic lame sheer, the one which reflects irridescent. That didn't really work very well, so I tried a number of things and finally chose the sheet form of Angelina (the name for this product escapes me at the moment). I discovered that if I did it completely round, it really didn't give the feeling, so I added some Angelina fibers sticking out around it.

I originally was going to use a piece of blue organza over the top to darken it to make it look like night on the water. However, the organza and other dress sheers were too opaque. I finally settled on two layers of navy tulle. That alone seemed a little flat, so I ripped up pieces of sparkle illusion in a turquoise color and layered these underneath.

The water plants are made from eyelash yarn. The goldfish are fused and painted with Dyna-flo paints and their fins are a silk organza which I stitched over.

One of the fun things about this piece is that I realized that it can be viewed from any direction, so I am going to put hanging pockets on all sides.

I can't decide how I'm going to bind this. I usually like to use a traditional binding. I have only done one facing, and I wasn't pleased how it looked on the back of the quilt. Any suggestions or discussion of which would be better (faced, bound, or even satin stitched) is especially welcome. The measurement of this piece is 18 3/4" H x 13 5/8".

Thanks! Lisa Broberg Quintana