October Almost GONE?

I have so much to tell you. The summer was so busy and so was my fall. I looked at my oldest fiber photos that I forgot to share. Much earlier this year my Surface design group did some wool dying at my house and lead by me. I chose to mostly work on getting some of these silk roving dyed so I could use them in my felting. The blackish roving was yellow but there was some rust in the jar and it went a cool black colour. I am sure I can never do that again. 

I did each colour in a jar on the stove. I used the fast acid dyes that need the steaming heat. 

Outside drying is some of our wool and silk wool fabrics. 

It is out of focus by, here is a scarf Yvonne did, I think it also had rayon in it too. 

Look at this great green and turquoise strip.  

I had kind of a bad summer with my horse. Jester the Dark paint in behind has hurt himself and it was not looking good. Well I can keep him but he might not be sound enough to ride. He is finally off the medications but still has some swelling. This fall I when shopping and bought Ace the new horse in front of the photo. He is so much smaller. We are still working out some ruff spots and learning about each other. So far he is very quiet and good on the trails we did last weekend. 

I will try to get caught up in the next few days. I need to copy more photos off my phone and camera. 

Marbling Fabric Day

My Surface Design group try to meet once a month and have a play day with our fibers. For March we did a day of Marbling or Gel printing with paints. I did marbling, here is my table space already to start. On the left is my hand dyed fabric cut to fit in my pan. I remembered I had my camera with me and used it. 

Dianne was getting started with a gel plate and some paper. She wanted a better stock of papers to make more cards. 

My first few fabrics with the marbling paint. 

Yvonne and Dawna did both gel printing and marbling. 

Look at what Yvonne did to her marbling paint. Wow love it. I missed getting a photo of the paint on the fabric. 

My fabrics all laid out with the marbling done. It is all very wet so it looks pretty dark. 

A golden yellow with marbled paint. 

Some of yvonne's fabrics drying before she packed them home. 

Dawna did some papers and the bottom one is Dianne's.

Yvonne and her magic again. 

I still have to heat set my fabric and wash and dry them. Then maybe I can iron them and get a good photo of each fabric. I will have a little bit more pretty fabric to used again. 

Small Gifts

Many family members have received Ear Bud Cases  from me this year. I had a good time making them. I would pick out a fabric I thought was good for the person and make them all a case.  My boys got the dark colours ones with the bleach resist fabric, then spider man for Jason.

I did one case with the tab on the wrong end, so it got 2 tabs and not just the one the pattern had. Well I liked how much easier it was to close it so, Many for the men got 2 tabs. I did a saddle one from my husband, horses for my dad. Then paw prints and dog bones for my brother and his son. They got a puppy this past year. 

For my friends in the Surface design group I made them each one out of hand done fabric. The green and purple one is soy wax batik and hand dyed. The pink one is marbled with paint. 

Here is all the parts and pieces laid out for the case, just before I start to sew. I think I missed getting a photo of a few cases. I do not see the one for my mom or sister in-law. 

Gemma has been playing with my sheep. They are all too much fun to frolic with. So I have the sheep in the barn behind the manger and guarded by the wise men and shepherds.  The sheep have some real wool on them so the smell like fun to the dogs. 

Stamps

So almost 2 weeks ago my Surface Design group got together for some stamping play. I remembered to take my camera. Here is the blue scarf all printed out with my iron rod stamp. I had craved it out just a few days before we got together. 

I guess I called it iron rod because it was inspired but some iron rod fences designs from France in the 1600's. Below is the enlarged photo of some of the iron rod. 

The whole scarf, done and ready to wrap up for Christmas. Yes this one is a gift. 

Then after our great lunch I worked on the lime green one. I plan to save this one for myself. I used a stamp I made a few years ago. It was a cod fish. I do not have a photo of the stamp. I should do that. 

Dianne with her leaf stamped scarf. She has left her scarf natural cotton. 

Yvonne is doing some more craving. 

I forgot to get a photo of Dawna. 

We had a great day. 

Edit: We ordered scarves from Maiwa. There are 100% cotton, so I was able to dye mine a few days before I did the stamping. I used Pebeo Opaque fabric paints on my stamps. 

Gemma your in my chair. 

Fiber Day

Today I am off to play with the paint and have a good time with my Surface Group. Here is a photo of our last day together. We met last month and had a planning day. We had a great lunch too.

I needed to do some dying before we got together today. So Wed I dyed my 3 scarves and a few other meters of cotton yardage.  

This is the scarves drying out and the yardage folded on top. It makes me think of the colours of summer Ice-cream. Or at least something better then winter.

I also had to carve my stamp. I was going to make a new design but I just did a few adjustments to a design I had done last year. I still needed to crave the stamp. I hope it works well. If not I may not have much to do. I plan to stamp at least one scarf with this design and use paint. I am taking some dyed yardage so I can sample the paint and stamping method. I am hopping it can be one gift done. 

Gemma got a new bed. So far she loves it. I have been teaching her "to your Bed" and if she gets it right she gets cookies. Tonight is dog class too. 

Design Wall Monday Sept 22

I did a couple of block exchanges using Kaffe Fasset collection this year. I finally got them up on the wall. This was one of the groups. Each person send a block to everyone and I sent them a block. I have 4 blocks I did in here. I am not sure if this is how I will sew then or not. Some blocks read like one fabric and have very little contrast in it. I not sure what to do. 

Fall today, so it is time for a summer wrap up, stuff I forgot to post. 

These Jars are canned and dying my fabric. My Surface Design Group got together earlier in Sept and did the canning over an outdoor fire. We gathered many different natural weeds and plants around our homes so that we could try natural dying. The top right is my flowers. The other red one is Chockcherries. We also used golden rod, tansy (a yellow weed brought to american for dying), wild sage,  and some kind of nut thing (forgot the name) on the far left. We added metals also. most of mine have iron- rusty nails, or brass/copper from shell casings. All of my jars sealed, so I can leave then to brew for a few months. I may even leave them till spring. I have some cotton and some wool fabric in each jar. Hope it works. Sure was fun to plan and gather all the plants. 

My new pots. Last winter my husband ran over my two big pots and this spring he bought me 3 new pots. I kept forgetting to take a photo. So this is earlier in Sept when we got snow on the ground. I was using the agility jump standards to help protect the plants when I put a blanket over the flowers. To bad I did not get a better photo when they were looking so nice. 

Gemma and I on our summer holiday last month. 

I have added this post to Judy's Design Wall Monday

Scrap Quilt

Love the scrap quilts. This is another customers quilt that I was asked to quilt. It is so much fun to look at all the different fabrics used. I have some of these fabrics. I love how much lime green is in this quilt. 

She saw my leaves and loops quilting pattern and asked me to do that quilting on hers. I think she was very happy with it. 

So nice to give the completed (or almost completed) quilts back to customers. 

More flowers in my garden. This white rose is very smelly. 

Today my Surface Design Group is off to go shopping for some wool and lunch. We are also going to start to gather plant for some natural dying. We may have to stop on the road sides to gather our weeds. Later this summer and early fall we hope to try natural dying. 

Dyed with Friends

Last night was the Edmonton Guild meeting and year end dinner. We had a great time and got to see Kathy Wylie speak and her beautiful quilts in person. Check out her web site and you will know which award winning quilter I mean. She is teaching 3 classes here in Edmonton but I did not sign up. We had a great time, thank you Kathy. ( She has just the best first name, just the spelling is funny, doesn't she? ha ha)

Last Thursday my friends in the Surface Design group gathered at my house. We planned to do some fabric dying. First off I went though my old pages of samples and dye recipes and picked out what colours I wanted to dye. I for sure wanted some dark purples, brown, red, and always a few more greens. 

We are very good at having a great potluck lunch. The table is set and we are ready to eat. 

Here are my results. Each fabric is one meter, except a few pieces were just short as I had the fabric cut for something else and thought, just dye it. 

I just love the second one from the right. It is Turquoise with a bit of black. I may have to play with the family of dyes again.  

My reds. 

I forgot to take many photos the day we dyed. I carried my camera in my pocket but forgot it once my gloves were on. 

Greens and a few brown. I may over dye the brown again as I love darker and richer browns. 

Finished Fish Pond Purse

Years ago I bought a felted purse and loved it to death. I had to make my own to replace the old one. I started by wet felting the turquoise purse shape with handles and the green locks on the bottom. I knew I was going to put some kind of flower on the two sides. As my purse was drying it had that wet sheep smell and my son thought is was pretty bad smelling. He also thought the green bits looked like the pond slim in our fish pond. 

Now that the purse was dry, I was ready to do the side decoration. The idea of the pond was still in my head. So I did a water lily and a fish.

I used water solvable interfacing, the clear kind, to do the needle felting on. I drew out my flower, fish and lily pad on paper and then traced on to the interfacing. This gave me a base to felt on to and the shapes I was planning to do.  

 Many of the days I worked on this was done with my Surface Design Group. One day to layout the purse base and do the wet felting, then another day to do the fish and a part day to finish up the lily pad and flower.
I needle felting the decoration to the purse all dry then I did a final wet felting at the end.

My fish

I have added this post to Crazy Mom Quilts,