My husband is doing well but is of course quite bored! I am finding out how much he really did for me before, which made it possible for me to do the quilting things that I love to do. I have been so busy doing all of the routine things, cooking, cleaning, even cleaning the pump and filters for the fish pond that I have had very little time to sew.

I had finished the freezer paper pattern which involves converting the printout of the original photograph by Tammy Patterson (click on “Elk” in the tags to go back to info about the photo and the “why” of this piece) to the large format before the accident. First I enlarged that and converted it to black and white and with tracing paper figured out where the sewing lines could be. That was enlarged again and transferred to overhead projector film.

This was projected up on the freezer paper which had been prepared to the final dimensions – I think about 41 x 46 ish. All of the lines are then copied to the paper side of the freezer paper in the mirror image of the finished piece so that when these pieces are cut out and ironed onto the wrong side of the fabric, you will get the proper orientation.

These are the fabrics that I pulled from my stash to start with. I will not use them all and may add different ones as I go along but I don’t think I will need to shop for more this time.

This past week I have not had a lot of time to sew, but I am pretty happy with what I have made so far.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and I wish you all the best one ever! For us it will be smaller than usual. We’ll miss the ones that will not be with us, but look forward to spending time with those that are. The turkey is thawing in the fridge and yesterday we shopped for all the goodies to go with it. What did I forget?

I seem to be in a slump as far as creative urges go – just can’t seem to get motivated right now. I think I am driven by deadlines and at this time they are not pressing enough. Even that new hand dyed fabric from Ghana and the blank wall in my living room that needs a nice landscape don’t seem to be enough to get me going!

Perhaps getting past Thanksgiving will do the trick and some new inspiration will “dawn” on me!

Thanks everyone, for the comments!

First thing yesterday I cleaned off the cutting table and put the fabrics away. The empty table makes the whole studio look bigger! The design wall is empty too, makes me want to create something new to fill the void.  Or I could just hang my “Colorado Kids” back up…..

When all of the fabric was sorted and folded, this is all that was left of the rock fabrics – good thing the piece was not any larger!

Most of these pieces were too small to keep and went into the trash. In a few weeks when I go to PA for the AQS show, I’ll be shopping for rock fabric.

I did get a nice start on the taxes yesterday afternoon so maybe it won’t be too long before I can mess up that table again!

More cliff base pieces. I’m really liking how this dark accent seems to compliment the goats and puts them in perspective within the scene. While still the focal point, they seem to look smaller, more like the babies they are, against the vastness of the mountain.

I need to work into lighter areas and you can see my problem:

I love this old fabric and have it in three colorways. It has served me well over the years, but now I am down to the dregs! I have too much fabric to fit on my shelves so it is nice to use some up, but also sad, when it is such a favorite!

By the end of the day I have placed some of the lights and pulled a light piece from the lower rocks to try up at the top. It is a piece of the Stonehenge fabric that is still available, so I got another yard of it. I think I will be able to finish, now.

I’m starting to get a little worried, finishing up the lower rock ledges, because these fabrics I pulled from stash don’t look like there will be sufficient amounts to complete the rock above the foliage line. I’m not even sure how tall this piece will be but it may be dependent on the fabrics available. I laid in a bit of darker rock fabric on those too light foreground rocks on the left and I think that helps. The brush fabric that I cut for the upper border on the right is not working for me

so I folded some fern to try there. I’m not sure I will use either one and they are not sewn at this point.

I’m thinking it might be nice to have that rock ledge extend out to the edge, but that brings me back to the shortage of rock fabric. It’s not so easy as painting, where you can just mix up a bit more color!

The storm didn’t leave us with much snow, but there was ice and lots of accidents so it turned out to be a great day to sew! The dog looked as comfy as if he had good sense, sleeping in the ground cover, but I disturbed him with my
interruption to snap his photo.

The Stonehenge fabric that I had anticipated being perfect for the rock ledges is proving to be rather boring actually, so I have pulled some old fabrics from the stash to mix in. I removed a fern piece and replaced it with one that extends into the border, cut a piece of foliage to complete that corner and added a border to the opposite side.

Don’t really like that lower corner, so I laid the removed piece of fern in on top just to see the effect. I think it lightens that corner – time will tell!

The work yesterday involved some changes in the chosen fabrics and the sewing of some seams. It’s always an iffy decision- when to sew the seams. Everything tightens up and looks better with the seams sewn, but then there is the un-sewing later when it proves to be not the best choice of some fabric. I see places that will need to be changed later.

I like the ferny fabric for the texture and light that it brings even though there are no actual ferns in the original photo. When I started the next section, I laid in a piece of the fern in the border and I think I like the effect. I hope the dark shadows will look better when there are more on the other side and the shadow line above the foliage line is added.

When I started to sew the leg section, I was not pleased with the fabric choices which blended away into the rock too much.

So I took it apart and replaced it with lighter ones. That’s better, and I know the quilting will help too.  Nature likes camouflage – quilt judges, not so much!

The first thing I did yesterday was to replace the light rock fabric under the belly, and I do think that this batik stripe works a lot better. It allows your eye to see “rock” without any difficulty and is much more visually interesting. Since this rock is in the foreground it does need to have more detail than those further back, and this fabric had been used further back so is a good choice.

I already had some pieces cut for the back leg and I cut some more which are laid out for sewing, but we had visitors so they are still on the cutting table.

I am enjoying watching the Winter Olympics while I work, but it does slow me down somewhat!

I tried several different fabrics for the last neck section- here you can see the first two and then the one that is more blue right above them. I really like the fabric that is right below the chin for rock shadows. Much better than the stark dark ones on the right side of the piece. I’ll replace those. I only have a small piece of that good shadow fabric though, not enough to do what I need to.

Checked the shelves and there is no more. So I dumped the scrap basket. More often than not, I can find what I need in there and this time was no exception!. Only one more small piece, but at least I can spread it around and augment with something else. One of the good things about this technique is that it uses small pieces so I can often work from scraps and I don’t worry about waste because they are so small. I don’t plan to purchase any new fabric for this piece and will work with what I have.

I decided that the last neck piece was still not right so I divided it, using one of the rejects on top with a blue shadow at the bottom.

Much better, so I sewed the seams, softened the facial blues and added background above the neck. Now I think the chin is too white against the dark rock so I’ll have to do something about that. No wonder it takes so long!