3.15.12

Our second pieces have a more finished feel.  Mary Ann brought in her Crazy Quilt piece she was making for her brother that featured a picture of their father and some items that would remind her brother of his childhood.  She was looking for a real, old-fashioned Coca-cola bottle cap to flatten and attach to this pretty sampler.

Lisa was inspired by children's books and one in particular moved her to make what I think the author called the lady with the umbrella? Maybe.  THIS lady has the cutest purse and shoes of the tiniest pieces of felt you ever saw. They were clearly smaller than the scraps she was looking through when one got lost.
I started some work on a second sampler. I practiced some stumpwork with the acorns and a background of Sashiko oak leaves. I also practiced weaving over laid threads and some couching of a weird little eyelash yarn also in my newly discovered favorite color combination.
 This is my favorite color of variegated thread, #4130, called both Chilean Sunset and Pumpkin Spice, depending on which website you are tracking. I have not bought any for myself yet but I am still hoping to get to a "real town" and go to a JoAnn fabric if I can not find a needlework store near here. I will look for it in all the sizes it is available.

My final project is a pin. Do you see what is going on in the picture? It is a dog delving into a trash can.  Dee Dee had some fabric filled with pictures of dogs in a nighttime city scene.  I loved this guy immediately.  I did a little embroidery enhancement, and then used needle felting to make him scruffy looking. I discovered that if I matched the embroidery exactly to the surface it was too subtle and melted into the background. The embroidery on the trashcan is much more effective.  Dee Dee suggested I add the flash of yellow/green to reflect the light from a neon sign that was somewhere "off stage".  

It will always remind me of the nickname my roommates gave me--Backpack--since I was always digging around in the bottom of the backpack to find that one thing I had to have at that moment. It also stands for the time our embroidery class went to the blacksmiths' refuse can, looking for metal to rust onto cloth. Since my return, I have taken a second look at a lot of things around my studio to see if they can be used in new ways. Come back tomorrow and look at my iron treasures.