Colors and Piecing

I had trouble deciding which color palette to use with Olive.  I had several shades and I kept looking at the opposite ends of the spectrum.  When I finally looked in the middle, and went from there, it finally hit me which shades to use for Olive.  Olive spent a lot of time hanging on my design wall this week with me just staring and thinking.

It was easy to find the larger shapes in Olive and trace them.  I pieced Olive together differently than I did for Lucy. For Lucy I traced all the shapes onto the fusible web and then I ironed them onto the material. For Olive, I traced a shape and then I ironed it onto the material.  I went shape by shape because even though I had the material lined up from the lightest to the darkest, and had numbered the shapes on the pattern.  I just had a difficult time imagining the shades on Olive.  Doing it shape by shape took a long time, because I would stop quite often and pin it on my design wall and just stare.

First,  I did her body because it was the easiest to pick out the shapes and shades.

Next, I did her head, but something was missing.  Her head looked flat.  Thinking of my painting lessons from Karen Winslow in July,  I realized the top of Olive's head needed to be darker to give the appearance of dept.

Olive's owner likes pink.  I thought about making the border pink, but it just didn't work for me.  So back on the design wall went Olive and I left her alone for several days to think about it.  Next week, I hope to complete Olive.

Here is  pretty view from our visit to Vermont this summer.

Can you believe that rainbow?  The brillance of it?  Also, look at the formation of a second rainbow to the right of the main one.  If you look closely above the roof, you can even see the beginning of the rainbow, something I have never seen before.  It was truely "candy" for the eye.

Olive, it's your turn

The first week back is always the hardest and most tiring.  We sit through meeting after meeting, thinking when do we get time to work in our classrooms.  How many weeks left of school?   Like everyone else, I will once again treasure my weekends and days off....to quilt.

I have three projects sitting on the back burner that I am just itching to get started and I have my Christmas gifts to make.  Hopefully, Olive, will be my last dog portrait for awhile.

 As you can see, she like the other dogs,  is very cute and very much adored by her owner.  Olive is a rescue dog, that Cathy fell in love with at first sight.  I have pictured putting Olive on a geen background with a blue border.  Also I plan to add daisies  to the right side of Olive. I am thinking about having them start outside of the picture at the bottom of the border and spring up to cover part of her body, thus the reason for the blue border and green background.  Olive looks and is playful, I want to add just a little bit to her portrait, but not take away from it.  This week, I mainly played with Olive's photo.

  I put her photo in Photshop Elements 9 and changed it to grayscale.

Then, I cropped and applied the posterized filter to further define the edges.

Also, I decided to use the pencil tool with a white color to outline some of the shapes to further define the major shapes before tracing her.

Tomorrow, I will sort through my fabric stash looking for material to use.

Even on hot, humid days, there is beauty to be found.

Something New from Something Old

My summer vacation is over; I go back to work tomorrow. Yes, I am a teacher. Last week, I decided to take the time to make my mother's birthday present. Her birthday is in September. I made her birthday present from a wedding gift given to her by her mother that she never used. The wedding gift was a set of pillow cases and sheets.

They were still in the original box, undisturbed, neatly folded and pressed. My grandmother had done some of her beautiful cutwork on each of the pillow cases.

On one pillowcase she put the initial D for my mother and

on the other one a Ch for my father.

When she first gave them to me, I asked why she never used them. She looked sad, and replied, "I don't know". It has made me think about the presents I have received and never used or enjoyed because I was afraid of ruining, breaking, or loosing them. Maybe it is time to get them out and take my chances and appreciate them more. Well, I had put the precious box of sheets and pillowcases away and dismissed them from my mind. When I suddenly got one of those "brilliant ideas" what to make my mother for her birthday this year, I forgot where I stored the box. I had to search for a couple of hours to find it. My mother loves dolls, so I decided to make a pillowcase doll for her. Then I decided to make her two. I searched the Internet and found a pattern. After buying the pattern, I realized I could have made one myself, but it made things easier having the pattern.

As you can see her handwork is absolutely gorgeous. The stitches are tiny and uniform. Imagine doing all that work by hand!

I have other pieces she did and they are just as beautiful, but I bet they were not made with as much love as these were.

It was fun making the dresses, knowing that my grandmother had also contributed her fine handsewing on the fabric.

The cotton is of such high quality that the dresses have a very crisp look to them. I decided to add machine embroidery to the bodice of each dress and to the back of each bonnet. Also, I edged the bonnet brim, bodice and sleeves with tatting.

Hopefully, my mother will approve what I decided to do with the pillowcases. If I get the opportunity, I would like to make a christening dress with the top sheet of this set. The hem on the sheet also is decorated with scalloped edging and I really do like the material. I would like use one of my grandmother's patterns and do machine cutwork on the front of the dress; something I haven't done for years. Fortunately, I have a couple of my grandmothers original cut work patterns that she drew years ago.

I especially like the butterflies pattern. The straight lines indicate the bars in the cutwork.

Here is a view from the Needles Highway in the Black Hills, South Dakota. Ten years ago, Mom and I went on a "Little House Trip". Laura Ingalls Wilder was a children's book author who wrote stories about her family and growing up during the pioneering days. We traveled the path that Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family took in their pioneering days. We were gone for about six weeks meeting people along the way on the same mission. My husband even called during our travels and asked if we were ever going to come home. It was a fun summer and to this day, I have many fond memories of that adventure. Best of all, my mother and I came back talking to each other, and best of friends.

Velvet, Tapestry, and Tatting

After making my first wall hanging with pictures from Prague, I wanted to make another wallhanging that would give the feeling of  the "old country".  I decided to use velvet, tapestry, silk, and tatting.  My first idea was to use a background consisting of nine squares; placing my grandmother's family in the middle and the pictures of her and her sister surrounding it along with pictures we took in Prague.

 It just didn't seem right. It was just too...not what I kept envisioning.

I took it apart and reduced it to six squares, kept the family picture as the main focus, and added three pictures we took in Prague.  I think the wallhanging has a better flow to it having made it narrower and making the family picture larger than the other pictures. The tatted medallions and the embroidered words also help to move your eye around the quilt.  This quilt has a much different feel than my other quilt  with the Prague pictures;  same theme, two very different quilts.

Prague is such a beautiful old city, pictures do not do it justice.  Leaving Prague and coming to the USA had to have been a big adjustment for my Grandmother.

This is a picture of my grandmother, probably around the time she came to the states.