Fingers Crossed...

My cat, Arbour, finally let me finish the quilting on this challenge piece and I finished sewing on the binding last night.  Now for the scary part...

This piece is an experiment, based on something I read online about a year ago.  At the time I thought it sounded interesting but didn't think I wanted to try it.  Unfortunately I now want to play with the idea but I don't recall the site, and haven't been unable to find it again.

Best I can remember, it involves sewing pieces of plastic grass trimmer cord into the quilt, which has a wool backing.  The next step is to do some immersion dyeing and then to wash the piece and dry it in the dryer so that the wool shrinks.  The plastic cord, of course,  will not shrink, thus creating interesting ripples...

I'm worried about going to the next step, but the quilt as it is now is not is very inspiring, so apart from hours of piecing and quilting (a great challenge, fighting the plastic cording...not to mention the three machine needles I broke), what have I got to loose?

As I said in the title of this post, fingers crossed...

I hope to be able to post about the next few stages soon.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Valentine Hearts

Valentine Art Quilts  8" x 10"

 Thanks to a recent post by Terri Stegmiller I was inspired to make some little Valentine art quilts.  Terri does have a tutorial if you're interested, but I chose not to use it.  I just don't seem to be able to follow patterns - instead, I tend to look at the picture and then just do my own thing. I probably should have read Terri's tutorial because I think I like her's better, but it was fun playing around in the studio for the afternoon, so what the heck.  

My friend Diane sent me a lovely birthday card and there was a wonderful bonus in that the envelop was made with this wonderful 'love' paper (plain on the outside, but the 'love' text was on the inside).  I took the envelop apart, tore some of it into small bits and added it to the neutral fabric I used for the background.  Thanks Diane :0)

Close up of 'love' paper