Back to the blues: It has absolutely nothing to do with my mood. I'm feeling more like a rainbow these days. It has everything to do with the fact that blue was my first most favourite colour. When encountered with the proposition of doing my next creation for the journal quilt group to which I belong, I chose this blue fabric. The page to go with it explains more about it.




When I started looking for more tea cups and pots for all the tea swaps Mary Ann organizes, I came across more blue.



And for this week's Friday finds I couldn't help myself but buy this beautiful trunk which I found three houses away at their garage sale for only 50 cents.



I love the inside of it and when I sent Greg to pick it up I mentioned all the nails in the greatest hope that the wooden containers came with the nails. YES! They did.



My dream will be to empty out the nails right quickly and clean those containers, then decorate with ribbons and tins and odds and ends to look remotely like this idea I found in the book Designing with Fabric which I was fortunate to receive from Mary Ann also.














We're off to the farm again for a couple of days. Angels be with you.

sliding through shades of blue:
I've always loved the colour blue. I was so entranced when we were returning from Regina to the farm a couple of evenings ago. Greg was very kind and made some minute detours so that I might capture photos. The clouds, their many colours, the moon, the sunset - all were intoxicating. This photo shows in some small way the layers of blue.



The summer days often make me feel as though I'm sliding through shades of blue, not necessarily in a good way. I'm thinking more of the moody blues. Cat's frequent need for attention, our holiday time being spent mainly at the farm (not really a holiday if you can imagine) and little time to create, especially in my mind, bring on these blue shades.

Here are a couple of examples of some creative time I've been squeezing in between the other blues. Some of the journal pages mention snow, heaven forbid. Some of the writing is newer. I tend to write while on longer road trips. The inks are kind of a new fave - cat's eye color box fluid chalks. Yummmm. They're nearly as scrumptious as the Reese's miniatures I mention on one of the pages.





I've also been doing a tiny bit of writing at windyangelsandyou - more on shades of blue. Take a look.

favourite photo: for Thursday photo day (a bit late as usual) at CaC - difficult choice to choose from the past four months plus but I am drawn back to this spring composition photo which Molly just reminded me of when she found the "our house" set at my flickr
Have a great weekend and, as always, angels be with you.

Beginnings of inchies, barely - just backgrounds:
Extremely busy day today with meeting, driving. Crafting for the day only a bit of writing whilst sitting at meeting. The two blue pages were done at previous meetings. I glued them to card stock. The butterflies are tissue paper glued to larger piece of water colour. Thursday and Friday should bring more crafting time. Tomorrow I'll post the winners of the give away, probably in afternoon as morning and evening are busy.

HAPPY SPRING

One lone tree and moon in winter: my first journal quilt for the CPS Journal quilt group. I actually finished this late last night but was hoping to write a journal piece on paper before I posted it. I am running out of time and the deadline for the group, while "there are no police" is January 31. Though it is only 3 p.m. here, over in Australia it is quickly approaching a new day, a new month. And so I post.

I have had so much fun doing this quilt and have learned so much along the way. I will not show the back. I used a layer of actual quilt batting and the layers were not pinned very much before I started sewing. I will next time use something much thinner like a piece of flannel or something similar. The light blue and light purple fabric were both hand dyed. I recycled an old sheet for those pieces. They dyed nicely. The different textured pieces are dryer sheets painted with inexpensive metallic acrylics. Around the tree I zig-zagged over embroidery floss. Most of it was complete a number of days ago. I did more quilting lines, finished the edges (please do not look closely) and added the beads and sequins last night.

Watch for the further posting about one lone tree and moon in winter.

Having Fun: I added some words to the white on blue.


As heard on the radio - "remember, it's your backbone, not your wishbone".


Do you know what the fibers are? I was trying to figure out what I could do for fibers for my journal quilt and remembered this, which I'd seen in a Cloth, Paper, Scissors magazine.

Christmas pillow; trying to take one day at a time; trying to complete something instead of starting many more new projects.

I think all this little pillow (7 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches) needs is handstitching on bottom. I had been thinking of making it into a mini quilt with four knots but I got carried away with the stuffing and decided I liked it the way it was. The photo does not show detail very well. The purple fabric is some muslin I had dyed a couple of weeks ago at farm. There is some purple fiber sewn between silver thread and edge of blue. I like it.

Our godchild, TW, was here for a visit this afternoon. We always have such a hard time breaking our hugs, saying good-bye. We are very tight. I love her very much.

TW wants to get into art. I think she's impressed with what I showed her. She says I have done so much. HUMPH! If my accomplishments would be anywhere near my plans I would be happy.

About TW - she needs to find happiness. She saw it huge one summer and would so love to have returned. It never worked for her to return. I sense she is racing now, with life - won't go into details. I wish she would start an art journal. I showed her how to do the quick and easy backgrounds while she was talking a mile a minute and I was listening with heart wide open.

I hear TW questioning herself far too much and talking about maybe needing to change. Sigh. She'll sort it out just as she always has. I hope there won't be too many challenges along the way.

Till tomorrow - have a great day, hopefully with some magic.

AEM - November 16, 2006: Little time today or tomorrow. Main art I did today was buying lovely fabrics that were on sale for 1 day only, moonlight madness day in our small City - tradition. I'll show you some of them another day. I'm excited by them - lovely flannels and cottons, rich textures and patterns. Yumm.

This picture was just tossed together digitally. The photo was taken on weekend at farm. We have more snow than there.

See Binds of time at windyangelsandyou.

Have a great day and may you be blessed with much playtime and creative inspiration.