I tried to get into my blog yesterday but I guess it was down for some reason.

I finished “Majesty”, 35.5 x 42″, last week and wanted to post the pictures! This is the first time that I have done a faced edge instead of a binding.

I am not sure about facings. I read that it gives a more “art” finish and less of a “quilt” finish. It does hang very nicely. It takes longer and there is more hand work because whereas when I do a binding I insert the raw edges of the sleeve under the binding and sew by machine, with the facing method I had to sew all of the sleeve edges by hand. All of the facing edges are hand sewn as well, just like a binding would be. We had the most gorgeous weather last week though, so I was able to sit outside for two afternoons and do the hand work.

It’s done except for hand sewing the twinkle in his eye – what you see here is the white head of a pin that I use to see where the stitches should go. I am pretty happy with the way it came out. There is a LOT of quilting on it!

Saturday I took a workshop with Patty Hawkins from Colorado through the Kansas Art Quilters; she has had many entries accepted to Quilt National, and the subject was landscape, so I thought it might be fun even though it was on raw edge bonded applique/collage which is not a method I enjoy. I was hoping to learn something, which of course I did! It’s always nice to just get away for a while and play. Here’s my start on a piece from a photo that I took on our Alaska trip.

I’m so lucky to have such a nice stash of “nature” type fabrics to work with! In fact I have so much fabric it is overflowing the space I have to store it so I was very happy last week to hear of a local group making clothing for Haiti that was in need of fabric. I boxed up two large boxes of calico type prints that don’t really work for me anymore in the type of work I do now.  They would have been quite expensive to ship somewhere, so I was really happy to have found some place local to take it. A win-win situation for both of us! And now most of what is left fits on the shelves!!

I was accepted to participate in “Seasonal Palette” an exhibit through Studio Art Quilt Associates which will debut in Houston next fall and travel for a year or so after that. Thirty-eight were accepted out of hundreds of entries. We each will make a piece that measures 32″ wide by 78″ high and my assigned season is winter. So, as I have been going through the fabrics for stuff to give away and stuff for the workshop, I have been pulling out possibilities for this new work. I am starting to feel excited about it and anxious to get started……

Progress is slow as I am quilting very densely. Yesterday I got quite a bit done on the lower portion, put it up on the design wall at the end of the day and noticed the dark strip by the nose. Well, I did notice it before, but it is starting to bother me now.

Of course now, it is quilted in. I know once something bothers me it doesn’t go away, it just gets worse, so I will probably fix it.

The new fabric came Saturday. We don’t get mail til afternoon, so by the time I washed and ironed it there wasn’t a lot of work time left. By Sunday afternoon this is what I had.

It didn’t work to have yellow flowers in the foreground, too choppy. The darker fabrics work as a subtle border, grounding it down there. The elk’s shoulder blends in better and the bush to the right looks more natural. I still see a few things I want to change but I should get the sections sewn today!

It’s still rainy and cooler today – such a relief! I hope to get outside and do some weeding while the ground is soft. Things are looking so much better, but the heat took it’s toll.

So– I changed out the darker weeds around the elk’s front legs, changed some of the other fabrics and added some more. I think that lets us see better what is going on there. The brush to the right needs to blend better but it is coming along!

I really like how these large yellow flowers brighten and lighten the foreground and harken back to the original photo’s yellow weeds.

Originally they were part of a landscape print panel and this is all I had. I went back to get more but the store didn’t have it any longer as it is several years old. I found some on line in a shop in New York and ordered a couple more panels yesterday which I should have in a few days. I’m thinking I may bring some into the foreground in front of the log as well, if I have enough. It feels like I have done more un-sewing than usual this time, but I think to make this technique work, you have to be willing to make the changes.

Changing out some fabrics to the right has integrated the brush better and I will still need to remove that glaring dark spot. Also I think the elk’s shoulder needs to be darker as that whole area should read as one big shadow. I can do that and perhaps sew some section seams while I wait for the fabric to arrive.

It’s RAINING!!! Yesterday it was 112 degrees here, an all time record high. Everything was just burning up so this rain and cooler temps are just what we need.

The air conditioner is fixed and it’s a good thing! Outside temps are triple digit again and the rain hardly made a dent. I hope the rain predicted in the next few days actually happens because the last didn’t amount to much; only a quarter of an inch! Even the weeds are drying up.

I changed out the foreground weeds in the elk picture to some darker fabrics, but I’m not very happy with that either.

There are two different batik prints but they are just about the same color and that is boooooring!! They will have to go!

I went through all of my green fabrics again and found a couple of more interesting batiks to try:Better, but we aren’t there yet!

The last few days have been spent refining the background choices and sewing things together. I re-did the chest area as I was not liking that at all. The photo shows light weeds to the front but I’m thinking it’s starting to look too busy, maybe because I have more yellow in the background than the photo does, but I like that. Perhaps a darker foreground would ground it better.

It has been SO hot! Yesterday was the 10th consecutive day of temps over 100 and everything is looking stressed. We put out 10 five gallon buckets of water with a little hole in the bottoms to give a nice soaking to the newest trees and roses that were planted this spring. Thankfully we got a nice rain last night which should give relief to the rest. Temps today should only get to the high 90’s! I guess that’s good news since this morning our air conditioner quit! Someone is supposed to come out to check on it later today, but it’s already getting hot in here and it’s only 9 o’clock. Time to get out the fan!

Tuesday I took some time off and went to the Kaw Valley Quilt Guild meeting to turn in the Butterfly piece.  It was well received and it was fun to see all of the other offerings which were all very different! It will be fun to see them all laid out together at the silent auction in the fall. After, I shopped at Sarah’s for some large scale grass for the foreground of the elk – found three possibilities, but nothing really better than what I already had.

Yesterday I worked at filling in some background and sewing together some of the sections. I’m liking how the yellow areas of the green hand dye bring in some light and life to the background. Also cut and laid in some of the dark body areas, but they are not ready yet for sewing. As the background areas come closer to the viewer they need to have more detail and yet still work with the more abstract distant background. It’s also important to keep contrast between the elk’s body and the background to overcome nature’s desire to have the animal disappear!

Just finished the butterfly!

Butterfly 18 X 23″

I had a huge scale flower fabric that I had thought would make a nice background but it seemed too busy. Nothing that I tried really worked and there wasn’t time to shop, but these from my stash set it off nicely…. One of the background fabrics worked well for the binding. I only use beads if the piece calls for it and this one did – only two for the antennae; they are matte black square beads. Perfect!

I found my fabric’s inner butterfly and by the time I cut the best parts with their quarter inch seam allowances, there wasn’t much usable left. I had to fill in with other fabrics – quite a challenge!

Not quite what I envisioned, but it will do!

Today I will quilt it and then it will get hand embroidered antennae. At this point it is about 18 x 24″.

So yesterday I was going to post an update, but when I went to download the photos my camera batteries were dead.

I had mentioned that I thought that the elk’s butt might need to be lighter

but I decided that the original was light enough.

Notice that I did tweak the antlers a bit! They are smoother now.

Filling in some background, I will use some lighter yellow areas of the hand dyed green. I think this dark shoulder is a little too much, it needs to be lighter.

This one is too light, though.

I think this one will work. But that highlight is too light and will need fixing.

This morning I was reminded that a challenge I had committed to was due soon – like next week I think!!

This is the fat quarter that I have to use:

Funny how the background, which is light blue with yellow spots reads about the same as my gray design wall. My piece has no info on it as to the designer or the fabric company, but it is certainly an interesting bit of fabric that must have piqued my interest at the time.

Accepting the free fat quarter meant that I accepted the challenge to make a small wall hanging  no larger than 18 x 24″ to donate to the guild’s charity silent auction.  I decided that I could get a butterfly out of it so yesterday I did a sketch and made a pattern for a fantasy butterfly that I hope to start today. The elk will have to take a back seat for the time being!