Colour

GP105 Red Kaffe Fassett

I took my first ever trip to the Guildcrafters Quilt Shop in Berkley Mi, Not allowed to take photos inside but you can see some on their website. I was hoping to find some Anna Maria Horner Good Folks fabric, which I adore but I did not. They did have some of her other ranges though. It is a lovely shop and filled with the most glorious selection of fabrics unlike Joanne fabrics, also unlike Joanne fabrics, the price Yikes! I mean it is great fabric and you get what you pay for it is just that I am a cheapskate. Having said that I couldn't leave without buying something and I came home with a 1/4 yd of this lovely Kaffe Fassett fabric. They didn't use a ruler to cut and I was a little worried until I got home and realised that they are a little generous to compensate for the lack of a straight edge. In Joanne Fabrics they will trim off an uneven edge and throw it away rather than give that little extra bit to the quilter. That really offends my sensibilities.

Just as I sat down to write this post the most wonderful rainbow appeared across my studio, I took it as a sign that I should post more often. Or maybe that I should clean up as it came from a CD that was lying on my desk in the sun.

5 Years

5 Years ago Today I got married to my lovely Husband. Since I have never posted pictures of my wedding on this blog before today seems an appropriate day to do it. We had a handmade wedding, I made my wedding dress, very non-traditional as you can see.

My Dad drove us to the wedding in his vintage Hilman.

Here is a shot of me in my wedding dress, It is an off white dress, with cut work, hand painted roses and lilies in aquas and pinks over a fuschia silk underdress, which gives the whole dress a light pink feel.Detail of the shoulder piece, my alternative to a veil. You can see the hand painting and cut work.
The drop waist seam of the dress had tiny little cut work lilies and roses on it.

Here is the beaded hair clip I made to match my dress. I also carried Stargazer Lilies.

My Mum and I made the bridesmaid dresses and My Mum and helpers did the flowers on the wedding day!
My Nana baked the wedding cake and my fantastic Mum decorated it.

Everyone got a little package of sweet Pea seeds as a wedding favour.

Finally my lovely Hubby, It has been a very Happy 5 years!

Quick tour - London

Hello, I am back from my holidays, where I was mostly away from a computer for any length of time. Actually I have been back for over a week but it was kind of hard to get back into being connected all the time. My holiday comprised of three parts, first a quick weekend with my best mate Jenny in London. I love London and haven't been there in years so I really enjoyed spending time with Jen and soaking up the atmosphere of London Town . I love the tube and especially the old tile down in the tunnels.

Jenny although she lives there, being a tourist in Camden.

We stopped here and shared a lovely bun and pot of Tea in primrose hill, some actress came in when we were there ( I don't know who she was -I am so out of the loop). After she left Jenny couldn't remember her name either but knew that she had seen her naked in something.

Jenny and me posing in Camden
Down at Camden Lock

This was a great stall at Camden Market everything was such good value, I bought a little purse for my camera. I would have bought more probably but I had no cash and my atm card wasn't working.

That was a whistle stop tour of London, I also went home to Bangor for 5 days and then to Italy for a week. I have so many photos from Italy - I don't really know how I will pare them down.

Showing Dad how to use Blogger

One of my Dad's illustrations from his sketchbook. I am showing my blog off while at home and trying to teach my Dad about it.

What happened to that play day?

If you were wondering what I did with all those papers I dyed on my play day last month well here it is. First I ripped up those papers to make them a little smaller and to make the lettering not so obvious. I arranged them to make a rectangle. Then I took each piece of paper and used a watery mix of metallic paint on each. Some pieces I used more paint than others.

After the paint dried I arranged the pieces on Iron on vilene and made one big sheet out of all the papers. In the picture below you can see the metallic paint reflecting in the sunlight.



Above you can see some copper leaves which I am going to verdigris to match some other leaves that will eventually be used on this piece.

This is how the piece looks today, I have done a lot of free machine embroidery and embellished with fancy yarns and threads.



Close up of free machining triangles and leaf outlines.

Embellished with ladder yarn and stitched spirals.


If you look at the back of this piece you can see all the stitching I have done.

This piece still has a lot of work to go, so stay posted to see how it turns out. I am planning on adding my verdigris leaves and doing some hand stitching and beading.

Teeth

I am dreading today, I have to get my wisdom teeth pulled out. I haven't heard any good stories about wisdom teeth removal. Maybe I should have ordered this tooth fairy pillow from smoxcreations (Sleepy Sammy the Vampire - tooth fairy pillow) What is the going rate for wisdom teeth - I have to make sure the Hubs knows (so he can help out the tooth fairy, tough economic times ya know)

4th of July

Marilyn Rose Journal Quilt: Fireworks, originally uploaded by Penny Sanford Porcelains.

Since it is July fourth, I have been hearing fireworks for a couple of hours now. We just got home from camping so we aren't heading out tonight to see them. I was just thinking about how you could use embroidery thread and stitching to represent fireworks, as with most things that come to you someone else has already done it so... I did a google image search for firework embroidery and this beautiful image popped up. It is by Mississippi Quilt Association member Marylin rose.