Feather Your Nest

This is the revisit of this challenge. Finished quickly. this idea flashed through my mind exactly when
I saw the work of Mr. Goldsworthy. I had been playing around with the nest concept for years and have many "Nest" pieces. I love the space and the patterns of nests. Vessels to hold babes or ideas. This piece is random and planned at the same time. It was so much fun. Hopefully the three little ideas hatch with as much ease as their home was constructed. Thanks for the challenge.

Furrowed

The fields are being planted here in Nebraska where I live and this piece was inspired really by that. When I saw the challenge, I had just finished this piece the day before and felt it really did meet the challenge. Since I have been unable to participate in the last several challenges, I decided to post this.

This piece was formed fully in my head the night before and constructed from cast offs from my mom's weaving stash. Grey wool and wool blend strips were overlapped to create the ground and fibers and ribbons and synthetic strips were needle felted to the ground.

So after I had it all finished, I went back and looked at the research done for the challenge and really fell in love with Mr. Goldsworthy's work. I have begun another piece and will share it later this week.

Hazelnut Creme

Well, I finished one! This metals challenge has been fun, even though I didn't actually use metal. I had an empty coffee container on the counter that I had just emptied and thought it looked like a warm metal finish. I dug out the hand painted stash and found a couple that coordinated with the metal color.

After about an hour of playing around with the shapes, I settled on this arrangement. I had an old earring attached to the long rectangle on the left side but it broke during the final stitching. Seems like that was what happened to it's mate originally. There are a couple of paper fasteners along the bottom. They were the only other warm metals I could find for embellishment except for buttons which didn't seem to work. Still looking for the right thing but essentially finished.

Next time I try this I will try the soda can pieces instead of the coffee bag.

Standing Stones at the Summer Solstice

Finally got one in on time. This is a quick one hour project that used my embellisher for the base of the standing stones and some of my hand dyed backgrounds. Strange colors prevail. I threw caution to the wind and chose fleeces at random that went against my better judgement then placed them on the background that I wouldn't normally have chosen. Seeing the finished photo makes me think it might try working this way again. Thank you for the challenge and the stretch!

This was a piece that spoke to me after spending all last summer with Diana Gambalden's Outlander series following Claire Beecham Randal Fraiser and her escapes through the Standing Stones near Inverness in Scotland. If you haven't read it, do it. I am re-reading this summer.

Challenge #41- The Source

My little quilt this month is kind of a disappointment. I love the quilt, but don't feel I really got the fractured part. I tried for several hours to make the fractures make sense to me and could not produce a good result to my design sense. Gave up and went with the sheer bubbles to give a "kind of" fractured appearance.

My intension was to get the center portion to be a lighter value to depict light radiating from the "Source" I free cut the fabrics and auditioned onto different grounds but couldn't get the composition to make sense to me. I must be missing some element. I think next time I will use a black and white patterned design with no real subject with color in the fractures to see if I can get it to make sense to me.  Finished size is 11.5" x 17"

How's a Girl to Choose?

This was a fun challenge. Sorry the batteries were all gone and didn't get pics until today. Quilting will be done this week sometime. Didn't want to be too late again this month. The second photo shows the 3-D leaves that will be attached after quilting. They are now quilted onto fleece backing and really add some great dimension.

Started thinking about which animal print to use and wound up dipicting these tigers, each with different patterns. Hand dyed background and leaves. Commerical prints. Fused. Will post the finished quilt later.

Comments and critiques welcome and appreciated.

Challenge 37-Nebula

Challenge 37-Space has been designed in my head for weeks. Finally got time to get the work done and photos taken.

Hubble's photos have long been inspiration for me as a friend from high school was on the original Hubble design team, not to mention the fact that I'm a "Trekky" from way back.

My embellisher seemed the perfect tool to accomplish the task of building my own Nebula right in my studio. Quilting with metallic thread was new to me. Critiques welcomed.