happy birthday to me

apparently this is me:


***Your Birthdate: August 27***


You are a spiritual soul - a person who tries to find meaning in everything.
You spend a good amount of time meditating, trying to figure out life.
Helping others is also important to you. You enjoy social activities with that goal.
You are very generous and giving. Yet you expect very little in return.

Your strength: Getting along with anyone and everyone

Your weakness: Needing a good amount of downtime to recharge

Your power color: Cobalt blue

Your power symbol: Dove

Your power month: September


What Does Your Birth Date Mean?
http://www.blogthings.com/whatdoesyourbirthdatemeanquiz/

"longing suffused with desire"

postcard sized quilt - corduroy discharge dyed in bleach solution, embroidered with silk and gold metallic threads, beads, cotton batting, backed with silk.

the fabric reminded me of looking over the sea just after sunset - that strange lovely melancholy of something just out of reach and perhaps lost forever. it also made me think of 'death in venice' - beautiful, strange and wistful

felting

well last night's felting was disappointing at first - it came out of the washing machine looking like a pathetic rag but improved after an hour in the dryer. it finished up looking like this:





i learned from this experience that :

• including batting doesn't add much, apart from grotty looking raggy bits around the edge
• if you use beads, you should also use net otherwise all your beads end up being washed into the storm water
• wool tops add texture and oomph
• there is such as thing as too much angelina fibre

so these lessons were taken to heart in making this:

waiting

waiting, waiting, waiting.....

pacing, pacing, pacing

another d'oh felting creation is in the washing machine. it's been there for 5 minutes and i am pacing around wanting the 30 minute cycle to end so i can see what happened.

i didn't use any net with this one so it could be falling apart as we speak.

wish i could go and check if but a) the laundry is outside in the axe murderer filled dark and i have to summon up more courage before i can go out there again and b) we have a front loader so i can't scoop it out and inspect. not easily anyway.

pace, pace

and then it has to go through the dryer. so at least another half hour after that....

you're making me nervous. i'm going surfing and will come back later

a good weekend's work/play

i had the most enormous fun playing with felting - using a fellow quilter's technique of putting wool, silk yarn and other bits onto cotton then overlaying with solvy, machine quilting, then putting the picece through the washing machine and then the dryer. i used black homespun, strips of kaffe fassett prints and then beserk with wool and silk tops, silk cocoons, rayon and silk embroidery threads, sari silk and wool yarns and angelina fibre. then a layer of black net and solvy and free motion quilted over the lot. no planning just playing and the breath-holding while it was in the various machines but i'm very pleased with the result and had a great time






winter into spring:



japanese kimono fabrics, cotton batting, free motion quilted in ripples in the grey "slices" to represent rain. i based this on ricky tims' technique of graduated strips although as this is an A4 size quilt i couldn't do the full convergence trick.

and then......

i had more fun with discharge dyeing - using bleach to peel back the colours in black fabric. these ones used ajax and stencils as described on the "my life on craft" blog

the photos aren't tremendous - it was a bit dim and i was so impatient to take photos the fabrics are not even ironed