I think replacing the lighter background with this darker grass helps to make the fawn stand out better.  I was able to use several of the hand dyes that I made last month, in the sky. It’s hard to find leaves on sky color and sky colors to coordinate with the leaves that I DO find!

I was very flattered to be nominated for ‘Kreativ Blogger’ recently, but unfortunately don’t have the time to try to figure it out, technologically challenged as I am! I did have the computer guru out to calibrate the color in my monitor so that is hopefully better now.  I have not found the time to change any of the pictures in my website yet, though.

Christmas cards are starting to come in and I have not even started yet! Can it be that Christmas is less than three weeks away?  I guess my blog is about a year old as I was in the throes of last year’s shopping when I started it. All I need is more time, like everyone else!

I resolved the problem of the fawn fabric by going back to the stash, finding this piece that I had dismissed earlier as being too orange with indistinct spots.  It had areas of less orangeness, though, that I thought had possibilities.  I cut the body from an area that had nice sized spots, but on the wall they were not showy enough.  I decided to try bleach discharge with the Clorox Bleach Pen on the spots, first playing around with an edge of the unused fabric. Bleach direct from the pen ran and made the spots too big, but applied with a Q-Tip, I was able to control it and I think I got really nice spots!  I neutralized the bleach with Hydrogen Peroxide, then washed it thoroughly with Synthrapol. You can see lower on the belly, the original spots before bleach, I felt like that was good for that area to leave them alone.

I am not happy with some of the background fabrics and am in the process of changing them.

The fawn fabric arrived and was disappointing. Some of the stuff I already had may be better, but fabric will always find a place eventually!

Never mind that seams are not lined up, it will look better when they are sewn.

Progress has been slow, but I HAVE gotten some Christmas shopping done during the several trips I’ve had to make to town.  As I await the fawn fabric, I have laid in some of the darkest darks,

and decided that I could possibly proceed with the fence posts.  I hope that the colors I have already placed in the face will go with whatever comes for the body!

It’s been crazy busy around here since my return, putting away and generally trying to keep up.

I’ve spent several days designing the next piece which will be a picture of a fawn for “Celebrate Spring!”  It’s fairly complex so I’ve struggled with the planning stages a little more than usual.  After searching through my stash for ‘fawn’ fabrics I discovered that there is not much there to choose from and I do not want to piece the spots.  So that meant spending more time shopping, both online and locally.  The online order is in transit so in the meantime I have laid in some of the darks and have done a little piecing in areas in which I felt comfortable with the fabrics available. When I get “in the zoneâ€�, piecing,  I really don’t want to be bothered to do anything else, but yesterday I was scheduled to teach a machine quilting class, so I had to be gone all day.  The class went well and I had a little time after it to do some Christmas and grocery shopping.  Today is not looking much better as it involves another trip to town to get my flu shot and do some more shopping.