Hi again,

I hope that you had a good week.  Easter is quickly approaching and I was panicking yesterday about not having a turkey yet.  As usual, the grocery store had lots so I am not so far behind in preparing for this upcoming weekend.

Again, I am trying to catch up on orders that are coming in-which is a great thing;  no complaining here.

For those new to my blog, I am a longarm quilter.  It has been 8 years now since I began this journey.  There is always so much to learn, practice, see and do.  It never gets old or boring-too many techniques to try  and learn.

This past week saw me completing 3 customers’ quilts so I am catching up somewhat.

Here is one that Nathalie completed, just in time for spring.

Nathalie is a new quilter.  She wanted something for spring and this fits the bill perfectly.  The middle of the blocks have flowers in them and I quilted leaves all over the top to finish off the piece.  Very nice indeed, Nathalie!

As I mentioned before, here are some of my completed art quilts.

The first two are of  the tip of a peacock’s feather.  Isn’t it amazing how something so common can be turned into art? Again, Susan Brubaker Knapp is the designer of this piece.

Here I am using Tsueniko Inks to paint the feather onto the white fabric. As you can see, the paint bled into some of the neighbouring colors- not quite sure if I did something wrong there. Maybe I should have waited for one color to dry first and then painted the next color.

Stitching was then added for the details of the feather.  Not bad but lots of room for improvement here. The next one is a little better.

Here is the same feather but using different paints. I really like these paints- they’re very bright, easy to work with and thick.  My only dislike was that it makes the fabric very stiff when the paint dries.  Pellon was used to stabilize the

piece so that it would not become distorted with all that stitching added to it.  I like this one the best out of the 2 that I completed.

Which one do you like the best?

I also tried another subject for thread sketching.  Can you guess what this is?

Again, Susan Brubaker Knapp is the designer.  Pieces of fabric were fused onto the cream background.  I think that I used red and yellow, that was it. Then, all the stitching was added and the thread colors and the stitching created the

shading and the shadows.  I think that I used some colors of thread that I would never had thought about before.  For instance, there is purple thread in there and brown, not black was used for the shadow-I think

that black may have been too harsh or extreme of a color for that area.  It was a fun thing to do and you always learn something when it is finished.

One last picture:

Our local school is holding a fundraiser in June so I had to put this in the silent auction section.  It is a frilly bag that I just had to make.   Hopefully some young girl will think so too. There are cats hiding out under the frills.

Have a great Easter and don’t eat too much turkey or chocolate.

Ruth