Mini Mandala

It's the end of our process challenge and time to reveal the full quilt.  I have to say that this was a tough one for me to document - I so seldom actually have a full plan before I start, and then to actually stop and think about what I was doing along the way??!!
My early thoughts were captured here and here  I left you wondering how I was going to add colour and whether I was going to use trapunto.
To pick it up at that point, I decided to use two layers of batting and forego the trapunto.  I quilted up my outlines

and decided I would start with thread colour and see where that took me

some stitching - I gave myself some guidelines this time, and used a Frixon pen, which you will see in many of the pictures.  Being a wholecloth quilt, I wanted to stick to tradition and have it fairly symetrical.  The lines helped with that.

I started with the yellow centre, then moved onto the orange petals

Then to the green cross hatching - I used my rulers here

then to the blue - I started doing a feather but didn't like it so actually did some reverse stitching, which is pretty unusual for me, but I'm glad I did.

you can see I also added some pink in the form of the circles in the corners.  Next the background was quilted - I contemplated going with another colour, but then decided that there was such a thing as too much colour, so I dialed it back to white!

Finished the cross hatching, and then did matchstick quilting around the edge.  A quick hit with a hot iron and the green marks are gone

I decided that there was already enough colour, so I didn't get to try my pastels, this time.

I added the binding last night

and I am very happy with the final result! 

Thank you for another interesting challenge Vicki!

(My apologies about the quality of the pictures, seems I just wasn't ready to take any while the sun was actually shining!)

Dad's Spirit Pillow

Until now you have been reading the process I have used to create what I'm about to reveal today.  You read about the inspiration here, and the process of its creation here, here, and here.  Please indulge me a little more.  Here in its entirety is the rest of the poem that inspired my piece.

This song my friend, please understand

is from my heart, about my land.

My country young and great and wide,

two might oceans on its side,

And looking north, when clear the nights,

it's marked by our Northern Lights.

Where love and energy I give

with pride and pleasure, here to live,

in peace, in Canada, my land.

Please keep it that way, not to end.

I wish that it shall always be,

the country that it is for me.

A favour though, I'd like to ask

should you be charged a certain task.

When spirit moves to greater heights

my destination Northern Lights;

Just gather stems of wheat and hay

no matter what some people say,

Some twigs of cedar, birch and willow;

I'd like these for my spirit's pillow.

Then intertwine them, make a wreath, 

adorn it with a maple leaf;

Then place the same upon a hill

and know, my spirit is here still.

©   A.H.E. 

The final steps in the process included the addition of some thread stitched cedar boughs;

and of course some free motion quilting.

The process now being complete, here at long last is the end result.

I hope I did my inspiration justice.  Oh yes and thank you Vicki for this "theme", I'm getting better at documenting the PROCESS!

Musin' on Susan.....

A strange thing happened this summer....

Far from our vegetable garden...

a bunch of Black Eyed Susan flowers sprouted....

and I was fascinated with them...

how they grew...

what they looked like close up...

how they changed...

and the creatures who visited...

and so...

I tried to capture them in fabric, stitching, 

painted and melted tyvek, fiber,

French knots and a charm...

Unfortunately, getting this done with only minutes to spare

means that the light is no longer ideal for photographing!

And I have not yet decided whether I like 

the thread sketching on the petals

so I am still musin' on Susan!

bits and pieces

that's what my remnants challenge piece is made up of - the left over remains of previous projects. 

 

There were little bits from previous TT challenges - bits of the celebration fabric I printed for that challenge last year - bits of the background sky fabric used in the architecture piece.  In some cases the bits were too bright so the fabric was flipped over and the back was used.

I selected the brighter bits from my bags of scraps, and as we weren't having much of a spring at the time, I created my own - a nice bright yellow sun

and flowers reaching up to it

 

 

I had a lot of fun grabbing bits and piecing them together, creating as I went along.  Then the puzzle - how to piece these separate flowers and sun together into a single piece?  Add a bit here, trim off a bit there, slip this under, layer that over, and it was done!

 



the pieces all fit together.  Oh, but wait, I'm missing a bit of stem on the left.  More trimming, more piecing - now its ready.
some quilting -

add a facing and label and it is done!

 

Here Comes Spring!

Thank you Brigitte, a great challenge!

(a few more progress shots can be seen on my blog)

beginnings

but not the end yet!  This challenge had me going around in circles for a very long time, until it hit me that a circle has no beginning or end, and wait, didn't I have just the perfect piece of fabric that I had painted/printed while in Halifax last summer?  It needed a bit added to it to bring it up to size.  So I made a start, and here are my beginnings...

Unfortunately, no ending yet, but I'm going to keep working on it and will post again when it is finished.

Fowl Beginnings

Well this was indeed a challenging theme Vicki.  So to get going I began to think of beginnings.  What came to mind initially was a collage; a collage showing all the various beginnings of trees.  I envisioned the start of a maple tree, an oak tree, a ginko, but couldn't find the seed for a ginko.  So I began again.  Call it another beginning if you like.

I was quickly running out of time.  Then I started to get the seed of a Beginning.  Stay with me now.  I gathered some of this;

some wool roving and some of this...

                      fur that had feather like pieces. 

I sewed this into a circle, but it wasn't turning out the way I had envisioned.  But then I found some of this...

a decorative yarn that I had stashed away

 

I added this to the circle but it kept getting caught on the sewing machine foot.  Tracing paper helped to keep it in place while I zig-zagged it and tore away the paper, like this.

Are you beginning to get the picture? No? 

 

How about some additional embellishments?

 

 

Okay so I added some appliqued leaves, some, FMQ, and I finally had my Fowl Beginning.

 

Thank you Vicki this one was fun. 

 

"First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination." --Napoleon Hill

 

its all about the details

at least it is for  me!  I'm very much one who likes the little architectural details, and older buildings have so much character.  When I was in Halifax, Nova Scotia earlier in the summer, I took some pictures of some of the older campus buildings at Dalhousie University.


This building, the MacDonald Building, was the University library at one point.  I really like the crispness of the white dentil trim against the stone walls.  The building was built in 1914.  This became the basis for my challenge quilt.  One thing that I've discovered in doing these challenges is that I am most comfortable working from a photo.  I have a hard time with abstract, and as much as I would like to give it a better try, I'm just not comfortable there very often, and usually do not like my results very much, so I stick in my comfort zone, although this time I did take markers to my finished quilt!
So here's my progress - working from an enlarged photograph, I sketched out my pieces and started cutting fabric.  I had this great brickwork fabric in my stash, but it was  a little too regular a pattern, so I applied fusible web to it and then cut it up in much smaller, random size pieces, and applied them to my background - a combination of one of my hand dyes for the sky and a medium grey, which became the grout lines.

the starting fabric

the resulting fabric

I then added white and a darker grey to create the background and shading for some of the trim areas.  Many itty bitty little pieces later, I was progressing well.

progress

I added lots of little pieces of a couple of greens to create the bush, and used a layer of green tulle over them before quilting them down.  A lot of the detail in the trim was added with some thread painting and the quilting, but I was at a loss as to how to quilt the sky until I decided to just echo quilt it. with straight closely placed lines.

but it was still missing some shading and some of the finer details,

so out came my gel pens and markers, and with nary a hesitation, I attacked my finished quilt! I'm very pleased with how it has turned out!  (not so pleased with this picture - the sun was shining so brightly but I'm not really complaining!)

The MacDonald Building in fabric

Thank you Nicolette for a really fun challenge!

Happy quilting!