Works in Progress Wednesday

I finally tried out my watercolors that I bought myself for my birthday in May.  I've never used watercolors before, and I really don't know how.  I was so smitten with that one photo I shot last weekend that I had to try it out.  It has EVERY color of the rainbow in it.  Since so many fibre artist work from their sketchbooks, I thought I should try to put something in mine. 

At the bottom is the backdrop for the remake of Boundless, a commission I got from the Forestry Farm Show & Sale.  The last photo shows the fabric glued on with Lapel Stick (of course).  The next photo is of the same piece after doing some threadpainting in several different colors.  It's nearly ready for all the handstitching.  ; )  This one is slated to be someone's birthday present.

work in progress - barbed wires and flowers yet to be added

I started staring again at the weekend's photos and really wanted to stitch them!

every color of the rainbow, 5 min east of the city

So I pullout out the felting machine I've still not used.  I bought the machine from some very nice people through Kijiji in Ontario.  Since I don't actually have felt, I used a scrap of quilt batting.  I topped it with hand dyed wool from the Wool Emporium that I bought last year, and covered it with a soluble film so that I could sew it down a bit first.  (I will re-do this some day.  It's not the right green here.)

Neat, hey?  Then I gave it a quick bath to dissolve the film, let it dry, and away I went with the embellisher!  Right now it's on an embroidery frame and awaiting many more hours of hand stitching to get all those flowers in it.  Here's a start...

I realize that it's not at all impressive at this point...  but that's just the backdrop.  It will spring to life once the stitching is done.  This piece is bigger than my finer works, and more 'chunky', so it won't go under glass.  It's big enough to be a wall hanging.

And finally - Jesica's quilt!  Can you believe I had 2 red triangles upside-down?!!?  So I had to take a portion of the quilt top apart and put it back together again the right way.  Then I realized it's too square, so I added two more rows of triangles.

my favorite section - you can see the green better here

fabrics from her late grandmother - all colors of the rainbow

It's not see-through.  It's just the sunlight glowing through the thinner fabrics that once belonged to her grandmother.  The wide white border will have prairie native flowers in honor of her other Grandmother.  How will I do this?  Not sure yet.  I've been struggling with hand embroidery, and I'm not happy with it yet.  I can't get those Lady Slippers to look like they were stitched by someone older than the age of 6.  :(  I'll have to get to those Bridge City Needle Arts stitch nights to get some help.  I tried a combination of applique and embroidery.  It's okay.  Please note - this is a sample - with a variety of chain & split chain stitch lines.

I don't know.  The Lady Slippers aren't working for me.  I'm not happy with this one.  I'm not even showing you the other ones I tried that are really hideous.  lol  When it comes right down to it, I'm much better at free motion quilting.  I think I may do the whole white border with white threaded free motion, and just let all those different flowers dance their way around the quilt top.  hmm... Challenging!  What do you think Jesica?

For more WIP Wednesdays, check out the other fine folks at Esther's Blog, and Lee's Freshly Pieced blog!  : )

See you tomorrow!

~Monika