Studio Kit

So I made a teeny little cottage in the woods using my teeny tiny patterns and I put it in amongst the trees.

and then I got the rest of my fabric ready for fusing, because there are an unbelievable amount of teeny tiny little bits of pieces going into this piece.

Fused fabric ready to go....

don't forget about the giveaway, you can enter until midnight tomorrow.

Cheers!

(Sssssp! Don't forget about the fabric giveaway!)

That was the question I asked myself when I decided to do this project. Because the cottage is where all the action takes place - and it's in a forest. I didn't want to have a painted forest necessarily because of the secret technique I'm going to be trying with this piece (don't worry, you'll see it when I get to it!) - but before we get to that, I decided I needed a fairly textural first layer.

You can see once again that I traced the big tree that goes behind the cottage to make a pattern.

But as for that forest - I decided that a fabric that did most of the work for me (without actually being a print of a forest!) was the way to go.

Ta da! Hiding in my stash, I had some scraps of silk brocade. And what I LOVE about this fabric is that when you initially look at that fabric, you might think "What the heck will I do with that?" But look! Here it is pieced together carefully (I thought it important that a lot of those blues and blue-ish green bits lived together closely for my dark-ish forest) - it turns out it's really the perfect background for this piece when lightly quilted.

Here's where we're heading by the way... once this background is finished, there will be a little stone path leading to the cottage, the cottage itself, a fire, my little animals with their instruments, and of course, one more tree.

You can see by my blurry notes, that I didn't fill in the whole sketch - it was just meant as a guide - mostly for pattern pieces.

By the way, if you're not familiar with The Musicians of Bremen - you can read the story here.

See you Friday for some more cottage in the woods goodness!

and a new technique! I don't know how it's going to turn out, but let's find out together, shall we?

Earlier today, I was checking in on some of my favourite blogs and saw Mary Stori's beautiful unfinished piece called Bluegrass Postage Stamp Quilt.

I don't know why, but as soon as I saw it, it reminded me of the Brother's Grim story, The Musicians of Bremen.

There is a new technique I've been wanting to try, and I thought this would be the perfect piece to try it.

I started with a sketch, as usual, and because it's going to be a many-layered piece; before I started drawing the rest of the sketch, I needed to trace an overlay of its composite pieces as a template for the fabric.

and speaking of fabric - I thought these lovely scraps of silk brocade would be a good background.

Let's see how that works out on Wednesday, yes? And don't forget about the giveway. It closes on Saturday, March 10 at midnight.

ETA: GIVEAWAY IS CLOSED.

Winner will be announced on Monday. Cheers, dears!

Would Barb and Sharon report to the front desk, please?

As you know, I don't usually do Saturday posts, but I reached a rather silly personal goal this week and I had always planned that if I achieved that goal, I would acknowledge it with a giveaway.

But first, I have to tell you a story. :)

Before I started blogging here under my own name, some of you will remember, I had another blog, Diva Quilts. It was where I began when I first started quilting in 2008, excitedly sharing what I was so proud of, with my horrible photos and quite badly made quilts. lol

And I was out here in the universe all by myself - so I was so excited when all of sudden, I had my first followers: Crystal at Sonnet of the Moon, and Elaine at La Belle Helene. I wasn't talking to myself any more!

By 2010 I had started to explore art quilting. I wasn't much good, and most of my regular readers weren't very interested in what I was doing - they seemed to want me to post finished quilts, go "Ta da!" and move on - or at least that was my supposition when former followers began fleeing my blog in droves! lol At one point, I had nearly 300 followers, but by December of 2010 it had trickled down to 128.

So I started another blog, where I would chronicle my art quilting experiments. I called it "Coneflowers In Leslieville" (I live in a suburb of Toronto, called Leslieville.)

That blog was pretty much a failure. (After a year, I had 27 followers.) I didn't tend it properly, felt torn between two worlds (quilting and art making) and after a year of doing both blogs and not making any great strides with either; I closed it, combined all of my previous content from both blogs here and I said to myself:

I'm going to do what I want to do and hope that SOMEBODY will like it. But even if they don't, I'M DOING IT ANYWAY!

There may have been some puny fist shaking as well. :D

It started off pretty slowly. A handful of people from my Diva Quilts blog followed me here, and a couple from Coneflowers too (bless their hearts!); but in the first month I had only 14 followers. And so it became a running joke between BSP and I that a blog I hadn't even blogged on in 2 months, 4 months, 5 months - not only had more followers than the blog I was actively posting at, but actually had more HITS although I hadn't posted there in 5 months!

When I hit the six month mark here, I had about 45 followers, and was finally getting more hits than Diva Quilts did. I figured I had reached a turning point, and set a secret goal for myself - I wanted to have as many followers here by my first anniversary as I did at Diva Quilts.

Well, thanks to Barb and Sharon at Wit's End, I reached that goal this week! Nearly two months before my actual goal date. You two are collectively my 128th followers! So, thank you for helping me reach that goal!

As for the REST of you - all of you are the ones who have helped me achieve this goal after all, so I wanted to thank you. One of you will win the stack of fabric as shown above (Buddha not included). :) There are two lengths each of two Kaffe Fasset prints, a Robert Kauffman floral and then two lengths of solid purple cotton (not Kona). Combined, there are a couple of yards of fabric.

Leave a comment on this post, and one of you will win that stack of fabric!

Thanks for coming along with me. I'm so glad you're here.

You're all awesome,

When I first started making this, I told you it was another piece inspired by the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series. If you know the story - it refers to the last scene at the end of A Storm Of Swords - it's called "Catelyn At the Riverside"

The white (weirwood) tree represents Catelyn, and the other trees cowering before her are of course, her foes. If you haven't read the books; have at it - interpret this as you will, and tell me what *you* see. I've already gotten "trees dancing in the moonlight" - and would love to know your take!

Have an awesome weekend everyone, I look forward to seeing you on Monday!

Oh - and, if you're not a regular reader, the "how to" posts are here, here, here, here and of course, the "recipe post" here.

So, you'll remember on Monday, I had drawn out my trees on paper. Since I was out of Steam-a-Seam, I actually used that paper as my template for my trees. I did so by brushing thinned out craft glue onto the fabric, laying my paper template over top and cutting it out. Which meant I had fabric with paper glued onto it when I was done.

And so later that day, BSP called out from the bathroom: "Honey, there's a tree in the sink. Should I wash my hands in the kitchen?" :)