Meet My Leetle Friend

Subtitled "Something The Cat Dragged In"

Sub-sub-titled "Slug Guide: Hitchhiking"

The cat. She refused to speak on behalf of herself. 

And now onto to more clothy stuff.  I was itching to tear up some fabric last night. It started out as a secret garden kind of thing....until I happened across a couple of  black starry scraps....then the cloth suddenly took on a whole different look.

I even broke out the scissors for the star!  I had no intention of adding a mythical being to this....until I got a good look at the scrap of fabric I had cut the star from....

 ...there it was....a being shape....that gained a head shape...and a starboard to cruise the universe on....

in case you can't see it...i 'painted' around the original being shape

More Woven Bits

So here I sit on days with no girls....weaving bits of cloth together....or just adding shapes....or scraps.  

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

fun fun fun

Planets and Moon Faces

Stephanie was home again this weekend, so more tattooing was done.  I think you can figure out the planets, but the constellations are Aries and Cancer. For Megan and Dad-Lily, {who share the same bdate.}

The piece of lavender dyed batt now has a face!

Stitching and Family

 the part above looks totally different with the stitching...not sure I like it this way.

 I took 3 shots and didn't get a single full cloth shot. Damn.

 Now this one, above, I do like with the threads.

 I kinda felt I had to do this here, going around the holes....

 This lavender is cotton batt I dyed with the t-shirts.  I want to do a face on it.

 The moon shape was in the dye already....

3 of the 4

 Ashley wanted a family picture....Rhiley wasn't cooperating with mama, but she had no trouble with Aunty Steph....Sucks to be 2.

aunty and me...stephanie and rhiley

Small Cloths are Fun

This one is actually 2 pieces. {I am scanning as much of my work as I can now because it gives me a much better picture.  Now that I have a scanner.}

Anyway.  #1 is the Valori Wells print I have been snipping.  I liked the flower, but wasn't sure how to 'treat' it, until last night.  At the *'s you can see where I snipped and folded back the yellow to show the base fabrics behind. 

 #2 started out with scraps....that got lined up like a tree....then got fangs....and a yellow topknot.  #1 is not stitched at all yet, but you can see that #2 is basted. 

 I am doing the 'summer dye' of t-shirts and such. {Ben gets plain white T's for the girls, in multi-packs,  I dye them in fun colors}  I have also been tossing in some batt, string, fabric scraps, even a pair of shoes in the 'jeans blue' load.

Not sure if I showed you my black hole, on the larger cloth.  I also removed one of the 'drunkard path' scraps that I had above and to the right of the block hole.

I Have Fun

Even though I had Rhiley all day yesterday, and her 22 months of energy, I managed to snip and sew this piece.  I folded the fabric sq. in 1/4's and just cut snowflake style, but straight lines.  Then folded them back to point out....what I don't know, but they are pointing it out.

5 inch square  5/24

 This is my bigger original piece that I started for this class [sunmoonstars with Jude Hill]. I used 3 strands of floss, 3 colors and backstitched around and around and around, go around again! [been reading go dog go]

painted batt sun

 This is a 'what if' below... cut out triangles and fold them back to form star rays.....

i found a moon in this piece, then i snipped out the points...

 Back side of the sun, which we see as we go around and around and around again.

the backside of the sun....hehehe

I added some flannel around [theres that word again again] the outside of this cloth because there wasn't a layer there and I missed it.  Stitching on one layer of fabric seamed so.....lonely.....

On the home front, Ashley and Danny signed the papers yesterday to make the house they built their House!  And then they moved into the house!!

That's why I had Rhiley.  I will have to go take pix of the house.

Snips

This sunmoonstars thing I [and others] am doing with Jude has got me going.  I decided to date each picture from now on to 'number' them. This one below is from a Valori Wells print I have had for a couple of years, but when I happened across it yesterday, it jumped into my hands and wouldn't let go.

front 5/22

So I snipped it here and there, following the print lines. A close-up version is last in line here.  Below is the back side.  These are scans hoping the stitching and such will show up better. The purple backing is just scraps for the moment, I may put this on a larger piece of the purple...or not....

back 5/22

front 5/21

These 2 shots are of the 5 inch sq. I snipped snowflake style and stitched to 3 different scraps I had handy.

back 5/21

close up of 5/22

Waiting....and Cutting

humph.....no baby yet.....they sent Ashley home because she wasn't progressing on her labor.  But that was at 2 am, she just called and said things have progressed....

In the meantime....I worked on this smaller 9-patch moon and stars.  I enjoyed it. But I still like the 'story' cloth I was working on.

 But then I was intrrupted to try this out.  Cut a piece of fabric like you would a snowflake.  That was fun!  

 But as you can see in this not very well photographed close-up that the small cuts I made were hard to stitch around.  So I will try again on a bigger cloth [this is a 5 incher] and make bigger and fewer cuts. 

Kibbles and Moondance

My baby-day bag.  Packed and ready to go...hopefully the camera will get put back into the bag....

bag'o'tricks

 The hand work in the bag is this piece I started a couple of years ago...just random bits and bits.  It was once larger, until scissors made it smaller.

kibbles 'n' bits

 Christine gave me a piece of fish print for the Pine Lake Quilt and these were left over parts, so I used them here...the head, the body and tail, and the ruff.

here fishy fishy

 I guess I shouldn't take pix in the sun...will I ever learn?  Nope.  Anyway, this is moondance, or so I seem to be calling it.  This is the 9-patch I started in answer to my inner self.

moondance

 I basted the star shapes down then decided they needed more umph....so I stitched yarn all around and am couching it down...the middle right side is done.

couching yarn around the stars

 I found it easier to stitch the yarn onto the piece, vs. just laying it down and couching as I go. Kinda like the invisible baste vs pins everywhere, easy to handle.

behind moondance
This is the back, the silk scrap I am stitching it to.

Playing With Goo

 Thought I would try a cornstarch/bleach solution for a discharge 'paste'....Weird Science is what I got.  Seen the Mythbusters where they walk on cornstarch?  Yup  Bleach-water does the same with the starch. The drawings are done with a crayon for a resist idea....the crayon went on great in straight lines, BTW.

pooling begins....then just STOPS

after washing out

humph

 The goo worked ok on the purple, just didn't do much to the others.  Not to mention my resist idea was BUSTED, as they say on Mythbusters.

So. Onward.

I was having fun with the first cloth with it's sun and drunkard paths, but I really wanted to go with the 9-patch idea, damn it, and not a 'storyboard'.

So on Saturday, with the girls here too, I pulled out some blue fabs, tore then up and pinned them to a piece of silk

the moon is a piece of felt to use as a pattern area to work around

 In the center square I put in a full moon.  After I basted everything down first.  I use Jude's invisible basting method, but I didn't go as heavy as she likes to do hers. I figured the visible stitching would take care of a lot of the 'becoming one cloth'....but it's really because I wanted to get onto the visible stuff!

The thimble is for Susan, in case she needs a more reliable ref for size, since my hand could be any ole size, right?

Oh and as far as sewing with a silk fabric base....yum...it makes the cotton fabrics more supple.

Starry Starry Skies....

So instead of the damn blog-o-versary widget staring me in the face, I dumped it. Gone. Phitt.

Susan...my foot is about this......big!

onto the fun stuff...i am taking a Jude Hill class to soothe my battered soul.....SunMoonStars.....thats what that bright ass yellow thing with my foot is for.

 my sun is taking the drunkard path because thats what one of the scraps is from. 

 I took the scissors to this drunk[up]....makes it kinda flowery, which is not what i want...this is not a flowery kind of thing....so now it looks rather space-capsule-landing sort of thing....hummmm

 this is the original drunk shape[up], with it's flowery cut shapes disguised by a circle and a sun ray.

 this batik fabric [above] reminds of a star nebula...

 the sun [up] is created from the batt i painted.  the painted batt behaves like felt, but i found it is not needle friendly unless you tear it up.

 this black 'cloud' shows a bit of the fluff [up]

 heres [up] the painted batt un-pulled. just like felt.

 another drunk [up]

i dug through some of  my silk scraps and found these starry looking pieces for the space behind the sun.