With the return of hot weather, I have mostly stayed inside and am working on the beading of the last prairie fire piece. It’s a slow process, hopefully worth it for the spark effect.  The Heron is still on hold; I’m still hoping to find the fabric I need on my travels later this summer.  I have trips planned for Des Moines, Oklahoma City and Kansas City for guild programs. In case any of you visit a quilt shop keep an eye out for this fabric, and please let me know if you find it!

It is currently showing at the New England Quilt Museum til July 26, then will be going on to show at Texas A&M University.  I’m so lucky to be a part of this SAQA exhibit!

I LOVE it when I get comments! Thank you!! Your insights gave me things to think about.

Yesterday I went to three more fabric shops with no luck on finding more of the dark print that I used in this. I came home and went on line to view thousands more with still no luck. I still need to check eBay.

The garden is doing great with all this rain. I have been spending an hour or more most evenings picking peas and green beans and then another couple of hours processing and freezing them. Not sure if it is worth it!

The two main sections were completed and joined together; the only change I needed was to refine the dark background in the middle which had an awkward shape after I changed the background between the cattail leaves.

I’ve literally looked at thousands of batiks on line for the perfect sky fabric to complete the top. I know which one I want but it is apparently no longer available.  I purchased two possibles in Topeka, this one is too light, the other too dark.

It needs the extra length to balance the dimensions, but perhaps I need to shift my focus and add it to the bottom instead of the top. What do you think?

I do believe this is the way to go, however this fabric is not in the main piece and I don’t have enough of any of the ones that I did use to accomplish this border.  I guess I will have to go shopping again, because I like how the dark bottom border grounds the composition and the sky is actually better smaller.

Sometimes life gets in the way and things don’t go as planned. Progress on the art has taken a back seat to more important things, but still there has been some progress.

Unless I decide to add a bottom border, that is going to be the lower edge. I will have to tweak the reflection of the legs so that it doesn’t just look like extra long legs. Maybe with the quilting.

Some of what I had cut as feathers turned out to be background so I had to change that. I have shopped a couple of stores for some more sky fabric to finish up the top, but so far the perfect one has eluded me. Maybe I will look on line.

The spring rains continue and have produced an abundance of flowers.

The ponds are full and there has been flooding in some areas but not for us. We are ready for some sunshine but unfortunately that comes with 90-100 degree temps, that I am never ready for.

Yesterday I took the day off and went to an Art Fair in the KC area with friends.The weather was good, the art was especially nice and it was a fun day out and a yummy lunch. Then we visited a couple of galleries for more great art.

Before that, I spent all of Friday working on the Heron while it rained outside. I did some tweaking like adding more of the yellow/orange to the right side to bring in some light and adding to the legs. Sewed a bunch of seams and I needed to cut the cat tail leaves that will go between the sections so I can complete that portion on the left.

Not sure that I like that dark fabric; maybe it needs to be lighter. A nice medium tone would be more realistic but it would get lost against the background.

Nope. It needs to be dark to balance the other side, but that bit of dark between the leaves needs to go. Adding to the water and sewing more seams helps.

OK, better. It’s starting to come together now.

Continuing on with the background, I am auditioning some new fabrics. I think that new sky fabric has definite possibilities. Sewing some of the seams tightens things up and makes it easier to see and fix mistakes.

I am liking this new grassy fabric and I have purposely cut it at several angles which I think gives it a sort of nice windblown effect, and will give judges something to complain about I suppose.

Within the lower left portion there is a clump of smaller cat tails which I pieced in using a darker fabric which didn’t even show from a distance and needed to be taken apart and replaced with this lighter bit. It is not unusual for me to audition and cut several fabrics before settling on the right one.  It is always best if that happens before the sewing is done! But fabric choices are so important it is worth it to do the work.

There is also a new dark brush fabric as I like to get larger scale more detailed fabrics near the front. Laying in some water fabrics helps, too.

Quite a few more seams are sewn and I found this neat batik for the legs that looks sort of scaley. The bird is starting to moosh into the background so I need to get some more contrast going on.

This dark batik helps a lot. Nature wants to camouflage everything but in art— not so much! It also helped to tone down the black on the bird. So much to think about!

It is STILL raining!

It is always so exciting to start something new! After pulling out all of the fabric possibilities it became apparent that the actual work cannot be the picture in my mind’s eye. Which is a let-down, I just don’t have those fabrics! But, never mind. I will make it work. (That picture is soft and dreamy, lots of soft peachy dawn colors, even paler shades for the bird.)

This first picture is at the end of the first working day, using the color palette that I have to work with. My artist friends don’t know how lucky they are to be able to mix up the colors they need!. I will change the head from cream to white for better contrast.  I decided that curved seam piecing would compliment this design.  It’s harder to sew but worth it I think.

The eye is an actual lucky find already printed for me in yellow, black and white. I will ink in some of the white center, leaving just a little white sparkle. And YES it is pieced in, not appliqued! For nice contrast, I chose dark brown for the beak, but checking the books, they all say the beak should be yellow, so I will have to change that. This is approximately 40 x 50″

I finished the little 12 x 12″ quilt for the SAQA auction last week and got it sent off to them. It was adapted from a photo I took of the woodpecker on the sunflower seed feeder. I gave him a nicer place to sit. Well, prettier, anyway.

I used a variety of black and white fabrics, mostly zebra prints. Here’s what I pulled off the shelves in the beginning,

and here is what I actually used.

These little pieces don’t use a lot of fabric but still you need a lot of choices!

It’s been a cool and rainy week so everything is lush and beautiful. I try to get outside every day and weed or trim to keep it in check. Soon it will get hot and dry and it will be a different story, so we enjoy it while we can!

The first perfect rose

Kansas Blizzard Iris

Day Four at the Hudson River Valley Workshop, much progress is being made!

Corinne hard at work:Jean’s original photo:In Progress:Jean hard at work:

They are doing a super job!

I loose track of time but one afternoon after the designing and enlarging of the patterns, and preparing the freezer paper patterns, we took a road trip to Selkirk, NY to the Log Cabin Quilt Shop where the students were able to find some great fabrics to fill the gaps in what they had brought with them. I was not really planning to buy more fabric as I already have more than I will ever use, but I cannot pass up a good grass fabric, and some more of the brown marbley one that I may be running low on, plus a few fat quarters I couldn’t pass up.