Atavistic Inclinations

I cobbled this together from one of the discharged pieces I did last weekend. Added some details with a Clorox bleach pen and then broke out the paints. So far, so good but I see a lot of hand stitching in the near future, perhaps even some beading. I brought home about 4 pounds of juicy glass beads from Grand Rapids and they are heaped up on my work table just beggin' for action.

Committed Now

It must be our lizard brain that makes us think that machine quilting is easier than hand quilting. Of course I started out with some foolish metallic white thread that the Janome just hates so the backside of this quilt is going to have to be covered up like so many turds in a sandbox. Once I switched to rayon thread, Big J settled in and stopped fighting my moves. Now I feel like I am building a huge cheese and it's going to take a while.

More Discharge Devilry

I guess this is called a monoprint. I used the plastic squeeze bottle to apply the dishwasher gel to the green piece and laid the blue one right on top of it. Somehow I have to use both of these in one piece. And Jimmy, here are two of your kat crew, sleeping it off. Miss Karma is off having her hair and nails done somewhere and charging it all to you. We miss you.

Sleeved, Hung & Shot

"Sunny Jim" (59x42, hand dyed and commercial cottons, antique cotton damasks machine pieced and hand quilted) Now now that I take a good look at it, there's a little more work to do -nothing a good squashing with the steam iron won't fix. And then another round of pictures.

What's hatching

I got this one sandwiched last night during the (yawn) home run derby. Jake helped me square and smooth it at the kitchen table - work that goes so much better with another pair of hands. After pillowcasing this over W&N, I find the edges are crisp and regular - nothing to distract from the front of the piece. He is a patient and thoughtful assistant who will find himself pressed into service regularly in the future. I may wind up painting and/or appliqueing on this one to recover the intensity of the darks as they were when the fabric was wet. Colin suggested that I quilt the white parts and leave the rest in relief. Sounds promising. It's about 42" square. Working title, Kodamas 1.