I am participating in a postcard swap. The only guidlines for this swap is that the base must be made from orphan quilt blocks. I have had so much fun working on these. I am a day late getting them in the mail but I don’t think the recipients will mind so much. One is going to the United Kingdom, another to Canada and the other two are staying right here in the USofA.

I think I may have been making up for the forced creative inactivity due to my broken hand because I have been very prolific this past month. Some of these are regular type of artwork, some are art on fabric and some are felt or needlefelted. Most have been listed in my Etsy store, a few still have to be listed. Enjoy!

I have done a little more than the last time I posted on this piece. Just thought you all might like to see how it is coming along.

I started this challenge piece but have not worked on it very much. I thought I would show the basic beginning that I have started. I had just bought some Dye-na-flow textile paints before this challenge was announced. I have named my piece “Changing Currents.

Okay, I know when you look at this month’s piece you think,”Now how is that related to a Kitchen?”

Well….we have a problem occuring in our kitchen right now but the story is more involved than that. We rent, well, sort of rent. Our landlords quit paying the mortgage so nothing in the house gets fixed if broken. We also don’t know when we will be asked to move out when the bank finishes the forclosure.

That being said, the faucet in our kitchen is directly attached to the hose; the faucet is also the sprayer. Well the faucet part broke off and all we are left with at the sink is the hose. If you pull the lever more than just a tiny bit the water sprays out like a fire hose all over the kitchen. We have had a few accidents and more than a few guests with varying degrees of soaked clothes. We are so used to the faucet now that we often forget to notify others of it.

Anyway now you understand why my “kitchen” looks like water! *chuckle* 

This piece is 8×8 inches and is comprised of commercial batiks with overlays of organza.

My hand is not all better BUT as you can see, I can create again. Yay!!!!! Here are my latest offerings in my etsy shop.     www.crftyscrapper.etsy.com

This posting finds me typing one handed. Yesterday I slipped off the edge of my driveway, couldn’t recover, fell and broke my left hand. As a result, I will not be able to work on anything new for a month. I am already going through creativity withdrawls. I will just have to keep my sketchbook busy so when I have two hands available again I will have a lot of concepts to work from. I can’t wait. I will sketch out my challenge pieces and complete and post them as soon as possible.

I have been asked to explain the construction of this piece. Well, after I came up with the title and the words I wanted to use I had to decide how to do it. I first thought that I would have a grapevine looking thing across the top and the hearts would hang at different lengths. As I progressed with this idea it morphed into a tree. Hint, STARCH your fabric!!!! I applied the fusible to the back and then drew my tree on it but when I went to cut it out it stretched. Oh, it looks okay, but my tree was a little smaller to start with. Fused down the tree and used smoky colored monofilament with a blanket stitch to stitch it down.

The hearts were hand lettered (traced on the lightbox) as the original font wasn’t quite what I wanted. They were also fused and then satin stitched. The bows are silk ribbon, with the streamer part coming down in three dimensional waves (I took little tiny stitches here and there to hold it in place).

The “berries” are beads with a seed bead on top.

Oh, before I forget, the background is pebble quilted. I had never tried pebble quilting before and I really like the effect. But…it does take a bit longer than stipple quiting! *chuckle*

For the title I scanned the fabric I used for the leaves, changed it to green and printed it onto Extravorganza and then hand lettered the title. Organza frays very nicely so after I stitched it down I frayed the allowance and then trimmed it to look uniform.

Lastly, the leaves were applied the same as the tree trunk and then I shaded some of them with Tsukineko inks. This was one of those quilts that went together smoothly once the agonizing part of deciding what to do had passed.

The list of semi-finalists was posted today. I looked eagerly for my name and didn’t find it. Bummer! BUT, that means now I can share it with you. The theme for the 2009 Calendar is Comforting Home. Below is my interpretation of this theme.

This theme immediately brought to mind The Secret Garden, but as a couple of others jumped on this and used keys in their pieces. I wanted to do something different - to stretch myself. When kids tell each other secrets they frequently bring their finger to their lips, “Shh, don’t tell anyone,” and proceed. The thought image was so strong I knew I found my idea. I found a photo, cropped it within an inch of its life and started playing with it. At this point I still didn’t know how I was going to execute my idea. I started playing with all of the filters in Photoshop. I thought I was just going to find the edges to make it easier to trace but then one filter was just “right!”  I printed it out on printable organza (Extravorganza) and found a beautiful marbled piece of fabric in my stash that looked like the wind blowing & eddying. I put the two together and did some thread painting. The title of this piece is “Whispers on the Wind.” This piece really did take me out of my box. I love these challenge groups because they really challenge me to grow and try new techniques and ideas.