Complications...

Due to a cycling accident, I have been slowed down considerably in my art work.  Since I write with my left hand, art journalling is sidelined for a while.  Fortunately I do most other things right handed, so I'm still plugging away at some machine and hand stitching, although at a slower pace.

My husband likes to joke and tell people that it's dangerous to 'hit the bottle' while cycling, but the fact is that I did hit a discarded plastic bottle that was blowing across the road.  And, because I saw a car approaching in my rear-view mirror I didn't dare swerve around the bottle.  Obviously I didn't hit it at the right angle or whatever, and when I fell I landed on my outstretched hand.  The result is a scaphoid fracture and traumatic boutonniere deformities to the two middle fingers.

So, to further what Bill says...beware:  "If you hit the bottle while cycling, you just might get plastered!"  And, once I can get back to my art journalling, you can expect to see that quote on a journal spread!

Ontario's Beautiful Flower

We are very fortunate to have a beautiful trail through the woods right near our home.  It was once a railway line, and the township has removed the rails and groomed it into lovely walking trails.  I especially love it this time of year because there are huge patches of trilliums growing along the trail.  This beautiful flower is the provincial foral emblem of Ontario, Canada.

I have edited both images using the same texture (Kim Klassen's kk_stampedright2) and blend modes, etc. Please see the screen shot below for the details of my editing.

Linking up with Our World Tuesday, Texture Tuesday, and Sweet Shot Tuesday.

The Denim Series Finishes...At Least For Now

The final piece in the series, goes back to using some rust dyed fabric along with a piece of hand dyed coral 'waffle' fabric.  The French knots found their way onto this piece as well.  I seem to be in a bit of a French knot kick these days.  The coral fabric seemed to invite simple cross stitch in those wonderful little square depressions and I decided to use a simple running stitch to provide some movement in the rust dyed area.  The mono printed denim was machine quilted using a repeating squared spiral pattern.  Since I wanted to leave on the two buttons from the original denim shirt, I've called this piece "Two Random Buttons".

My Denim Series Continues...

I've deviated slightly in my denim series, bringing in some other commercial fabrics for this latest piece.  I especially like the combination of the mono printing done using my Gelli Plate and bubble wrap, combined with the hand embroidery on the shirt tail.  I pulled the colours from the beautiful piece of commercial fabric with it's loose and easy floral pattern.  I did some random French knots on the lighter green band on the left to add some more texture to the piece.  For lack of a more creative name, this piece has been called "Blue and Green".

The Shirt Off His Back...

For this piece, I've gone back to that denim shirt I told you about in a post a couple of weeks ago.  Since that last post, I've added a lot of free-motion quilting, hand stitching and some flat, wooden 'button like' discs.  I am amazed at how tough it was to do all the seed stitching into the rust dyed fabric.  Even the areas that are lightly rusted are tough, but stitching through the darker areas has left me with several punctures in my hand from the back of the needle.  I guess I should have pulled out a thimble, but I'm just not used to using one so I find them a bit annoying to work with.  Having said that, puncturing your hands is a tad annoying too...

Mother Nature's Not Happy!

Last week I was cycling in shorts, and yesterday I drove through blizzard conditions to visit my Mom for Mother's Day.  Ironically, I took her to Rockway Gardens in Kitchener to see all the beautiful tulips.

It's a good thing I've got a tough little Momma!  We enjoyed our stroll through the gardens in spite of the awful, cold weather.




While there, someone asked if we knew the name of this beautiful flower.  Mom only knew the name in German, but as it turns out the direct translation, "King's Crown" turns out to be pretty accurate! "Fritillaria imperialis (Crown imperial or Kaiser's crown) is a species of flowering plant..."  Beautiful and smart...that's my Mom!

Linking up with Our World Tuesday, Texture Tuesday, Sweet Shot Tuesday and Orange You Glad It's Friday.

They Just Move Somewhere Else...

I recently saw this quote and I couldn't help thinking how true it is.  Oh, to go back to the simplicity of childhood when a hug and some reassuring words from Mom would get those monsters under control so that we could have a good night's sleep!

I guess as we get older, it takes a lot more 'self talk' to control the monsters, but they can still be tamed!

This spread isn't a favourite in terms of it's over all look...I'm not very happy with the composition or colours, but there's a lot of good 'talk' going on in that blue journalling, so I guess it has served a purpose!

And now I'm off to visit my Mom to wish her a Happy Mother's Day (and to get one of those great hugs...'cause they never get old!)

Wishing all you Mom's out there a Happy Mother's Day!

Block Party and a Ball Toss...

After creating the Pick-Up Sticks art quilts, I decided to continue the mini series by using only some of the pieced stripes along with some other bright fabrics.  The first piece is called "Block Party".

 The idea of the block party got me thinking of games and from that "Ball Toss" was born. I am especially loving the process of the free motion machine quilting on these smaller pieces.  It is such a relaxing feeling to be able to doodle with a needle and thread.

I have more ideas popping into my head than I can keep up...I'm considering a couple of other series that I can't wait to get started on!

Pick-Up Sticks...

A while back I posted about some piecing play I was doing by cutting, sewing, cutting again, etc.  The little art quilts that resulted are now finished.  I think all of the free motion lines of stitching really help those colourful stripes to pop.  They are called Pick-Up Sticks I, and Pick-Up Sticks II, respectively.

Henry's Haircut

I had an opportunity last Spring to see some alpaca's being shorn and was given some of the alpaca hair to experiment with in my fibre art.  Using my embellisher, I needle felted the fibre's to create a base using the darker grey hair.  I then incorporated some of my hand dyed cheesecloth over top of the alpaca felt.  I added some circles in a lighter colour of alpaca hair, and intentionally left some of the long dark strands hanging so that I could later add beads to them.

I did a lot of machine stitch/thread sketching over the cheesecloth to bring out more of the copper and turquoise colour before moving to the hand beading.  As for the title Henry's Haircut...you guessed it, the dark gray alpaca's name is Henry.