The Eyes Have It!

This is my finished piece (11.5" x 16") for the online blog challenge, The Eyes Have It!.

 I started working on my vision for this piece while in Florida.  I initially wanted to have a piece with animal eyes in it but then decided on a flower created from eyes!  So I started off with a Google search of eyes, selected different color, size and shapes of eyes and printed them onto white fabric with fusible on the back. I cut out each eye and started to layer into a circle, starting with the largest eyes first.  Then the fun began!  Organizing the different sizes into the shape of a flower!

This was my final circle of eyes...

 I then fused the eyes to a piece of white muslin but just around the middle of the flower.   I did this because I wanted to fuse the eyes to my background after it was quilted.   Thanks to my bud, Susan, for the assist in selecting the background!  We took my 'eyes' flower with us to the quilt shop to find a good background and, as you'll see, the brown fabric was perfect.  I just free motion quilted leaves on the whole background using brown thread.

Next up was the layout on where to place the eyes and create the leaves....flowers have leaves on their stems, right!   I sandwiched two layers of green fabric between some batting then traced different shape leaves onto the fabric.   Next I free motion quilted the outline of the leaves then I cut out each leaf.  I did color some of the edges with a green marker if the white batting showed too much.

Next, I played around with making some stems, which I wrapped with a piece of brown bias fabric I had in my stash around a piece of bias green fabric I had fusible already on!  Then I added my leaves where I thought they might look good.  And I had to add some 'eyes' inbetween some of the leaves!

 Once I was happy with that, it was time to start to work on the center of my eye flower!  For this, I used my tailor tack foot which worked perfect.

When I was totally finished with the edging and sewing down all the leaves, I did go back and snip some of the tailor tack threads.

And as they say...that's my story and I'm stitcking to it!

Where have I been???

If it's May...then it's grandma time!  Darrin and Kris try to get away during May for their anniversary (27th this year!) so between Auntie, Kris' mom and I we stay with the kids.  I picked up Nick from school on Wed. and my 'time' began!  I took both dogs with me too, which was a 1st for Gigi and Kalee was happy to see the kids and cats!

Amber had Lacrosse practice every day after school so Nick and I were on our own for dinner.  He made burgers for us the 1st night.  They weren't too bad either!

And Nick and I had to do our Monopoly game on his Xbox!  It takes a long time to finish a game, which we didn't get to finish!  The dogs enjoyed some quiet time watching us play!

Nick was showing me one of his race car games.

Of course, there's always the homework and chore lists that you need to oversee...not the most fun of the 'job'! HA  Kids are good students, thank goodness, so they didn't need any assistance from grandma in that area!







I did buy a new game for us to play, which was fun.  Monopoly card game is still my favorite...Nick's too.  This one is called:

The green cards ask you to match a picture card.  For example, 'has a handle'...I would throw down my coffee mug picture.  Something to sit on, I would throw down the tent.  You get five picture cards and you want to get rid of them as fast as you can.  Fun game.

It goes quick but we sat until 10 Friday night playing it!  I finally "cried uncle" and said "ok, grandma's getting tired.  Time to watch our movie!"



We watched "The Wall" and it was good...special effects really cool!  Matt Damon was in it and did a good job. This was Gigi snuggling with Amber!

The girls were really good and Gigi finally got used to the two cats.  When we first got to the house, she kept chasing them.  They run pretty fast, which is good...and by the time we left all four of them would be in the same room together and actually sitting within 2 feet of each other!  HA

Dogs did get wore out!  But Kalee heard every little noise at night!  

Kids are growing up so fast and could stay by themselves...but we all feel so much better being there at night for them.  Really Amber was the one who asked us to stay.  She doesn't like to be in the house without an adult at night!  Nick doesn't care one way or another!  Must be a boy thing!  HA





So another year has come and gone...before you know it Amber will be off to college and won't care about grandma....Nick will just want grandma around for games and pizza!  But that's ok...when I get to the nursing home that's about all I'll want too!

This program has been temporarily interrupted...

OK, I know I need to finish my 'eyes' quilt, as it's due May 31th...but I just couldn't resist playing with Linda Kemshall's latest video on using up your scraps!!!

Yesterday I worked on making the strips (after I came home from a great lunch & margarita with my bud, Carol T.!).

I made 3 sets of strips.

And two of the six sets/blocks I made from the strips! If you want to know how to make these, you'll need to sign up for DesignMattersTV!  I don't get any magazines and put all my $$'s to this online resource.  It's not cheap but well worth it in my mind....so don't ask how these are made!  HA  Go sign up!!!

So many different layouts are possible....

This is how I used the blocks.  And the leftover strips I put in between each block.  To be honest...I almost cut the block apart so I could stitch together again!!!  But I didn't...but I do have 3 other blocks left over to do something else with!...hmmmmmmm

This will end up being another table runner.  I know..I need another table runner like a hole in the head!  But, it's fun to be able to change them out frequently!  That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Creating Background Fabric - Day 2

Day 2 - I'm not showing the before and after pics...just too many pics to upload and I'm lazy today!  So here are the results of fabrics I stamped or did rubbings with Neocolor 1 pastels or oil pastels (cheap brand not the Shiva - only 1 piece used Shiva) which I showed in my  last post.  These were each brushed with a dye solution of blue, green and brown.

This should be the last pic because it's not very pretty!  I painted with all of the leftover dye....the stamp was red textile paint on one of my foam/cardboard stamp.

The top piece was stamped with Shiva oil pastel in white.  The only piece I used a Shiva pastel on.  Then I brushed on blue dye.

The bottom was a rubbing using Neocolor 1 pastels and painted with green dye.

Another piece with rubbings using Neocolor 1 pastels.  Blue dye...duh!

Just a closeup of the rubbing

I don't think I painted over this with green dye...seems to me I just used green textile paint to stamp....again and again!  HA

Ditto with this piece.  Fossil Fern background fabric that was stamped with green textile paint.

Red stamping then brushed with blue dye.

Another Neocolor rubbing and brushed with blue dye.

This was a deconstructed screen printing that I did rubbings with Neocolor and Gelato pastels.

I have two of these pieces.  Similar but different!

This was a canvas type fabric that was stamped with textile paint, then brushed with the brown dye.

I am keeping this piece as is.  It's a rubbing using gold and purple Neocolor 1 pastels on white fabric.  I think it would be perfect for a whole cloth piece but with hand stitching.  We'll see!

Creating Background Fabric - Day 1

Sometimes you just have to play with your paints, stamps and fabric!  So that's what I did!  I showed the results of using the iron to transfer rubbings in my last post.  This time I decided to do the old fashioned way of stamping and rubbings!

 

Above picture is a stamp I carved several years ago along with a negative of the same stamp I made using the foam (green stamp - you heat it and stamp with your stamp!).

Another stamp I made...

I stamped two of these pieces, which are Pat Campbell's fossil fern yellow, with the stamp above.

Above is a stamp I carved this past winter with our little fiber group in Florida.

I ended up using the stamp above as well as using the smaller tree stamp in previous pics.

The stamp above is actually sticky foam I cut and put on a piece of cardboard.  It's been getting a lot of use and I'm not sure how much longer it will last but so far so good!

The stamps above are positive and negative stamps.  Again, I carved the bottom stamp and then did an imprint on to heated foam to create a negative stamp.


I used a canvas fabric for this stamping.  All the rest of the pieces are muslin (bleached) or JoAnn's white Egyptian fabric.

This is a roller type stamp...not even sure where I got it from!  But it worked out pretty good.















This is a piece of fabric that was screen printed using deconstructed screen printing technique...I think this was about the fourth or fifth pass.  Nothing exciting....

But after stamping using Neocolor 1 pastels, I am really happy with this piece.  I actually had two of these pieces I stamped.  Again, I used Neocolor 1 and an oil pastel crayon.


I did several other pieces that I didn't take photo's of...but my next post will show some of those as well as some from this post that I painted over with dye!  What fun!  I was inspired by Hilary B., who does wonderful work and shares so much!  I love her embroidery stitching she does with floral designs.  Just fantastic work.  Check her out!!