HORSES

I have begun a new piece.   It is from a quilt I made a year ago but I only took the horses heads from it and cropped them down.  I began with the larger horse. 

 After he was done I did the smaller girl horse.

Now I am doing the thread work on both of them.

GEESE

A lot of progress in this piece since the last post. The geese were time consuming  to first draw and than construct out of very small pieces.  I waited to make the final placement until they were all completed and now am happy with how it looks.  Next step, quilting down them and the larger chopped cornstalks.  This may take a bit of time especially with all the holiday prep that will be in between.

I am enjoying the construction of this and am happy to have snow somewhere since, so far, it has been a very mild winter and there is nothing on the ground.  It is even staying above freezing!  I guess those Greenbush Ladies at the church cookout know more than the Farmers Almanac!

UNDER THE NEEDLE

Mr. Rooster is still "under the needle" and will be for a while yet.  Feathers take a bit of time.
Will be having family coming this October and staying for several days.  I am setting that as a reason to finish this beforehand.  So we will see if I meet that deadline.  Sometimes deadlines are good to set for yourself.  

SOMETHING FISHY

Because I like to quilt as I go rather then quilt around a lot of objects, I need to add a fish now even though early on.  So I draw him out on tissue and then take a sheet of fusible and trace all the parts of him labeling them with what they are and what color they are.  This is all done in reverse of the way he will face on the quilt.

 

 Then I cut out all the pieces and peel the fusible off.

 Using a long my teflon sheet, a long needle and my tissue drawing I place the parts onto the fish in order.  It does not have to be exactly precise....it is your fish you know.

Once he is finished.....I place him on the background and will fuse him down and quilt him.

This construction took me one full hour before quilting.

SUNFLOWERS

I am adding more sunflowers as I move towards the foreground.  I quilt each part as I go....first the stalks, then the leaves, then the petals and last the pods.  Takes time to change the thread colors but well worth it.  Next will com the very closest flowers.

There is a lot of come....as you have probably guessed to fill the left side.  You will have to wait to find out what it is.

TURKEY NO. 1

Viewers have asked me how long it takes me to make a quilt.   I can never answer that question as there are always so many variables but I do have a general idea.  So when making this turkey I decided to pay attention to the time factor.  He took me most of the afternoon...5 hours to construct and I was not happy with him.   So got up this morning and worked 2 more hours on him.  Then 4 hours quilting him...so a total of 11 hours.  Of course there were some breaks in there for answering the phone, fixing mistakes,  cleaning out the machine, changing threads over and over but over all....pretty accurate.  Yes...the next one will go much faster just because I will not need to do as many fabric selections, thread selections, or make the mistakes that I did on this one, but it give you an idea at least.   All in all....I am happy with No. 1.

QUILTED BACKGROUND

 Finished all that I need to do int he background, the furthest back in the scene.  

All the quilting is finished.  Looks odd I know but it will all come together as you will see when I start the first thing is the middle ground which is an old pine tree.  One of my favorite trees to quilt.

Had my grandson's Max and Clay come for a visit and a sleepover in the new house.
We had fun gathering acorns for fall decorations and riding on Grandps's "tractor" and having a campfire.  Those boys fill my heart with JOY!

BLUE JAY CONSTRUCTION

Here is how I constructed this bird.  I start with a sketch on tissue paper, so once all the major pieces are cut out of the fabric I have chosen,   I can line them up properly using the tissue paper sketch as a guide. All is done on top of my teflon sheet.

 He looks good now but will get better with his feathers quilted in.

Quilting and Windows

Here is a look at how far I got working on this most of the day.   The additional pieces have been fused and  quilted on.  with the exception of some of the smaller things which I may or may not finish up tonight.

Try not to be bothered by a few things like that rock wall  and the what these buildings are on.... there are foreground pieces coming up and they will be covering a lot of this.  I purposely end them because I do not want to add extra bulk where it is not necessary to do so.

It has been lots of fun so far on this project ......hope that continues on.   Stay with me....there is lots to come.

Starting Again

I started a new piece yesterday selecting fabrics etc.  and began fusing today.    It is not a farm this time...need to take a break from them and go in a different yet calming direction for one piece.  I have a few ideas for another farm piece but will "ponder" it while working on this one.  I am excited to work on this and am hoping it works out like it is in my head.    No hints yet but you will begin to see where I am going soon.   Come join this journey with me again and hopefully it will not have too many bumps in the road.

Progress

I 

I have discovered that Fuchsias are fun to make......I am really enjoying this piece.  It is time consuming though...takes a lot of time and patience.   Keep watching....hopefully more to come soon.

Fuchsia Construction

 I have all my drawings finished....took quite a while....did some while watching the Packer Game.  It helps me to not feel guilty about not working for 3 hours!  Once finished on tracing paper, I like to roughly lay then out on my background to see if I have enough for my composition.
In this case I needed two more fuchsia flowers so I did those before proceeding.

 Once I have all my "parts" I start with one and number each petal, leaf, bud, etc. and then trace the reverse side, singling out each one,  with fusible paper.   All of my fabric selections have been made in advance so I fuse each piece onto the fabric that I have selected for that particular petal or leaf.

 You can see above that these are all the darker fuchsia colored pieces.  Now they have to be cut out individually and then the fusible paper is peeled off leaving the heat set glue on the back of each piece.

 Once that is finished I use my tracing paper drawing again.  This time to place each piece where it belongs.  Once it is lined up correctly I fuse it down to my teflon sheet.  The teflon sheet allows you to construct the entire flower on your ironing surface.  Once it is finished and cooled you can peel it off and place it on your background and refuse it there.

 The flower continues to grow.  Always remember, the quilting will add a lot of texture and detail to this flower but that comes later.

 Now the fuchsia is finished and ready to place on the background.

 I start another one immediately.  Once you are "in the groove" it is good to keep working.  Things will move along much smoother and the second one will go together a lot faster because of it.

Here are the first two on the background.   These two took me from 9AM until 4PM to construct so it is not as fast as it may look on here.  I did take a few breaks to do laundry and grab a bite to eat in between though. It is good to rest your brain and move around a little and stretch when working in the studio most of the day.

Hope you are enjoying the process.   Stay tuned as there are lots of fuchsia to come along with leaves and stems and then two beautiful ruby throated hummingbirds!

Unquilted Boreal

Being stuck upstairs with all pets may have it good points.  The workman came today to put in the kitchen floor, the last step to our project.  So I brought everyone upstairs with me so they would not be underfoot while he went between the kitchen and living room where the boxes of flooring are located.   This allowed me to begin working on my Boreal Owl at 7:30AM.  It is now 3:30 PM and I am finished with the construction of his face and wing.    He will now go under the needle to add all the detail.  I chose to use a fabric paint for the small white dots on his head.  It was an important detail and I could not find any fabric that was suitable.  I am really happy with how he looks inside the nesting hole in a tree.  Tomorrow I will begin quilting him.   Now I will take a walk and stretch a bit.  

I worked on the hole as well.  I think it looks more a part of the tree now.  I may add a bit at the bottom of the hole plus there is a bit of foreground quilting that is still to come.

Owl Under the Needle

It is going to be many hours of quilting on this Great Horned Owl.   He does not look like he is enjoying it either.

The snow is coming down and coating all the trees again.  A good day to spend in the studio until shovel time.

Face Time

 I pick my background fabric and cut holes in it.  Then I fuse the yellow and black eye under the background fabric making sure he has the right expression.  In this case it is INTENSE!

 I add the brow......

Highlights to his hairdo..........

After trimming him up he goes onto his body.  Now I will do all the detail work on his face and around his eyes with thread. 

Face Time

 Everytime I vistied my blog last night I felt so bad that this guy was sitting there with a big black
hole on this body.  I could not wait to get up this morning and give him a face.  Here he is before quilting.

Seemed strange to me when I first learned about the Barred Owl that he did not have the typical yellow eyes that you see on most owls.  These dark eyes are mesmerizing and they say, look into your soul.  I hope I have captured that.  Now on to the quilting.

Truckin'

If your on a farm you have to have a pickup but this one has seen its day.  That took a bit of time and patience!   Tomorrow will be cleaning the house day so I wanted to share this with you now.
You just have to make hay when the gettin' is good!   (That's the farmer in me coming out from working too long of a day on a truck.)

Staying cold enough for the snow to stay on the ground and bit still on the trees but soon it is going in the 40's so that may end what little we have left.  I like it.  Feels more like Christmas is coming. 

Birches

 I have added some birch trees and a couple other structures in the background.

 Here is a closeup of some ot the quilting  on the small structures in the far background.  I usually do not do anything fancy with my quilting.  I just try to reflect nature and in some cases the allusion of leaves or grass etc.

This is the larger barns and sheds. You can see the grasses growing around the base of the shed and the beginnings of a fence line. 

Off to my mother's now to help her out with a few things (she is 88) and then back home to the studio.  Taking my camera just in case I see something inspiring when I am there.

"Hootlet"

 "Hootlet"

17 inches X 26 inches

Rawedged fused applique

Machine Quilted

 This was quite the journey making this short eared owl known as a short eared Hootlet in Scotland.

 They like to make their nests low to the ground in grasses so my guess is he was guarding his territory.  I wanted to be sure his stare translated into that intense warning he was giving my brother, the photographer.

I am particularly happy with my bark on this stump.  It took lots of different scraps of greys and browns but I was happy with the results.

Hope you enjoyed this journery constructing this piece with me and watching "Hootlet" come alive.