Color in the ice and snow

I ventured into the snow and ice yesterday to see what I could see in our yard. I was on the lookout for color.

I found red berries and branches sheathed in ice.



A woodpecker's red head popped against the gray world.

From the kitchen window (when I came inside for a chocolate fix), these yellow flowers glowed against the muted woods.

No, I'm not hallucinating from the chocolate, but I did have a flashback to this summer scene (above) as I took a photo from the same spot yesterday:

This is also the scene of the devastion below, where a tree fell during the storm and landed on my little seating area.

Here's another flashback to that same spot last summer, when I was sitting in that same chair. My embroidery supplies were on the table now covered with snow. 

More branches bow under the weight of the ice, above, while sturdier trees, below, stand majestically in the snow.

Our neighbors made a snow fisherman, and my Kokopelli yard art did an ice dance.

How's the weather in your part of the world?

Have a colorful day

Hot strips, cold drips

If you're following the weather, you might have heard that the Northwest is socked in by snow, ice and wind. It's true. So in between power outages, I've been working on my "Rayna Gillman strips" to give me something bright to look at.

JUST NOW A TREMENDOUS BOOM

SHOOK THE HOUSE!

I think it was a giant hunk of snow or ice falling off the roof!

Anyway, I'm working on blocks and strips in my favorite bright colors to get in shape for Karen Musgrave's ugly fabric challenge, which I blogged about a few days ago here. You can pop on over to her blog, here ,where she has links to everyone else participating in the challenge, including Rayna herself.

Here are some of my hot strips and nature's cold drips.

The purple X means "NO MORE GRAY!"

If you're familiar with this part of Washington, you might be interested to know that they have closed the Tacoma Narrows Bridge today because of falling ice that was damaging cars. That's the only link between here and Tacoma.

We just had two more giant crashes on the roof. Better post this before the power goes out again.

Have a colorful day

Wordless Wednesday

Tea to the rescue



Tea dying the ugly fabric.

Not a pretty site.

I decided to tea dye some of the ugly challenge fabric to tone it down. I also threw a piece of white fabric in the tea so I'd have a coordinating strip.

Now it's REALLY ugly ... at least to my mind, because I don't generally like anything brown or beige unless it's chocolate. I may end up using the original.



From left: original ugly, tea-dyed ugly, tea-dyed white.

So I browsed my stash and found the chocolate bunny fabric that coordinates colorwise with the tea-dyed ugly. Then I pulled out some vegetable fabric (since rabbits eat veggies) that picked up on the brown and pink. The green and purple help jazz things up.

But once everything is sliced and diced with the Rayna method the rabbits and veggies will probably be lost, so I may just use them as color inspiration ... or I might go in a totally different direction. More later ...

Have a colorful day

Ugly fabric, fun book

Fabulous book,

hideous fabric

This is the "ugly fabric" that arrived in the mail this week from Karen Musgrave, kicking off her internet challenge.

The mission, for us fearless (foolish?) quilters who signed up, is to turn Karen's hideous, vintage fabric into fabulous art quilts using the techniques in Rayna Gillman's new book, "Create Your Own Free-form Quilts." (Click here for Rayna's comments on the ugly fabric.)

Rayna slices and dices ugly blocks and hideous fabric and combines them with other fabric until she has sizzling, fantastic art quilts. I just got her book this week and started practicing her techniques with my own fabric while I waited for Karen's to arrive.

Here are some of the scraps I started with, and below are my first few baby steps using Rayna's free-form, no-stress techniques.

Thankfully, Karen is allowing us to paint, dye or use other means of surface design to help in the transformation.

Stay tuned

Wordless Wednesday

Rainy Day is done

Detail, "Rainy Day," by Sherrie Spangler

Here's my first finished quilt of 2012!

"Rainy Day" got done in record time, about four days from the start of painting the fabric to pulling the last thread tail through. The motivation was panic that I wouldn't have any new work to show for a jurying appointment later this month.

Today there was some sunshine, so we took the photo outside along with a SUNNY DAY piece of yardage that I bought earlier today at 40% off. Those are the colors I REALLY like.

This is how a rainy day looks from my part of the Puget Sound, with the Olympic Mountains visible sometimes when the clouds shift. The toned down yellow is the color of the sun diffused by midafternoon winter clouds, but more often the clouds are a purplish gray.

I left all of the edges exposed and raw (top, batting and backing), and slipped some slivers of painted fabric behind the top and left edges to square things up and add a little more layering.

I like side shots the best.

Parting shot: late afternoon sun highlighting the tree in our yard.

Have a colorful day

Rainy Day Dream Away

I'm trying to embrace the rain and gray this year instead of hating it, so this week I started a "Rainy Day" quilt by painting some cotton and cheesecloth (above).

Before reading more, you need to get in the mood by clicking on Jimi's "Rainy Day Dream Away." As I painted, that song kept popping into my head until I finally just put in on. (You know he was from this rainy part of the country.)




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVqJl-FOYIA

I got impatient waiting for the fabric to dry, so I finished it off with the blow dryer, ironed it, and then pulled out some other fabric from my stash that I thought might go with it. I ended up only using a piece of black tulle, but the pile is still on my floor.

It's a pretty pile.

I tore the painted piece into rectangles and pinned them on a piece of batting and black backing ...

... then I started sewing with silver thread in the needle and bobbin.

I started by tacking down the smaller rectangles with a zigzag stitch and leaving long silver thread tails, pulling the bobbin tails to the front for more shimmer.



Back on the design board, the piece looked washed out, so I added black tulle to the top and bottom of the center rectangle for more contrast.

This is where I am right now, and as soon as I finish this post I'll add the final quilting and do an edge treatment. And yes, it's rainy outside.

Have a colorful (if rainy) day

Chocolate for the New Year! (And quilted houses)

The Twisted Nut Stitchers went to Poulsbo, WA, a few days ago for our annual holiday bash. First stop was the quilt store, where we pounced on this chocolate fabric and finished off the bolt.

So many possibilities ... pillows, aprons, toilet seat covers, little framed pieces ... or maybe I'll just stretch my yard over a foam core board and hang the whole thing in the sewing room.

Poulsbo is a little Scandinavian town, and it looks like those Vikings made a pit stop at the chocolate shop. My kind of guys.

After the quilt shop, we exchanged our quilt blocks over lunch. Here are the four that I made. A year ago, we each chose a fabric that we liked and gave a piece to each of the other Nuts. Then we had a year to make an 8-inch block for each person, incorporating their fabric.

I knew right away that I wanted to do houses, because we meet each month in each other's homes. But I waited until two days before the deadline to make them because sometimes I just need that deadline pressure.

My houses aren't nearly as cute as the ones is Laura Wasilowski's new book, which we found at the quilt store. She really brings charm to hers with fanciful embroidery using her own hand-dyed threads.

Here are the blocks, showing which fabric I was given for each one. They were really fun to make.

These little buildings that we could see from our restaurant booth reminded me of the houses in my blocks (and of colorful Scandinavian houses).

And at the fabric store, I snapped this photo of fabric cleverly bundled in tree and star shapes.

Have a colorful New Year!