Sonoma County

I took these photos at a friends home in California a couple years ago, they have a lovely property filled with fruit trees and vegetable gardens.

Sunday, I am off to the Chicago School of Fusing opening in Bloomingdale, IL.

Sunlight through a quilt in progress

Recently I mentioned, I have a large quilt in progress in the quilting stage. Today my son went under the table to plug something in and called out to me that my quilt looked really cool with sunlight glowing through it and I should come and see. This is what it looked like.


This is what the back of the quilt looks like in reality. Black fabric quilted with black and white thread.Seeing it with the light coming though was pretty cool, it looks pretty different from that on the front, interesting possibilities...

I Must Have Another...

Must Have Cardigan. I made this sweater two years ago with Knitpicks Shine worsted cotton cream yarn. I made a size large thinking that would be the right size for me. Well, it came out lovely and BIG. It is such a classic sweater style. It was fun to knit, and the yarn is so soft. I want another sweater just like it, with a better fit. So I am going to knit another one in a smaller size in Shine worsted black.

I always like to have some knitting project going. Knitting is my form of relaxation.

In the mean time I am using the leftover cotton yarn from my first sweater to knit a couple washcloths until my new yarn arrives later in the week.

Mixed Media Painted Fabric DVD is Back in Business

Quilting Arts has just released the next three DVD's in their new Workshop Series with Jamie Fingal, Ruth Rae and Rayna Gilman, go check them out. My workshop DVD on Mixed Media Painted Fabric is now back up on the website, too.

Vintage Thistles

On the left is my original uncropped photo. Once again I played with layers. I had my original as the bottom layer and placed a duplicate image on top. I desaturated the top image (turned it black and white) and then colorized it green. Using the eraser tool I erased the thistle flower from the top layer exposing the purple flowers from the layer below. Then I added another image of a vintage photo lens that I tinted sepia and multiplied the layers.

Making new things look old

More photoshop play, with a photo I took of a moth that unknowingly came inside on my shirt.


The photo on the right is the original, on the left is the photo that I manipulated the color and contrast. My daughter taught me how to create the effect on the top photo.

The Surplice Lace Top

Pattern: Surplice Lace Top by Gayle Bunn
Size: medium
Needle: US 6, 2 & 4

Yarn: Elann Den-M-Nit Pure Dark Indigo Cotton

The pattern called for knitting a front, back and three pieces for the top. I knit this in the round in one piece only seaming the shoulders and setting in the sleeves. I hate sewing seams in sweaters, I don't do a very good job of it, so I try to figure ways around it when I can.

I used size 6 needles for the lace section and knit an extra row of pattern to make it a little longer. I knit 3/4 of the top in size 6, then tried it on and found it was way too big. Sorry Deb, you aren't getting this one! I guess when I knit with cotton I tend to knit looser and so my gauge gets out of whack. I needed the top to be about 4 inches smaller around so I ripped down to the top of the lace section. I reknit the band on size 2 needles and I knit the top on size 4 needles. I knit the sleeves on 4’s but they were too small. So I knit two more sleeves on size 5 needles. The overall fit is good. I could have used another inch in length to the top portion but it looks ok. It may have shrunk a little in the washing, it said to estimate 10-15% in length.

The blue dye from this yarn rubs off a lot on your hands when knitting because it is heavily dyed on the outside with a white core, the way denim is dyed.. After the sweater was finished I washed it on delicate with two rinses using synthrapol to help get as much loose dye out as possible. The color of the yarn did not change that much but it did start to get a little of the speckling and irregularity of color that one sees in denim. I look forward to seeing it age, like a good pair of dark jeans.

4th of July

I wish I could catch in a photo what we see from our balcony. In the distance we see all the fireworks displays from every suburb, so the horizon is filled with fireworks, one right next to another. I can't even count how many there are. Unfortunately the closest ones are blocked from our view by the Harpo studios building.
All the buildings in Chicago color their lights for every holiday. Today they are all red, white and blue.

I hope you had a Happy 4th of July!

Oooops!

This is what happens when you quilt a big quilt and your table has too much stuff on it. Argh!

Rust Dyeing with Lois Jarvis

Bonnie McCaffery has put together another great Vidcast with fellow PAQA member Lois Jarvis from Wisconsin. In this interview Lois describes how she creates her beautiful fabric with rusty objects.