My daughter Steph had this link to threadbare on her blog today. It is really funny! Just wanted to share. She had some other funny links if you want to head over there and check them out.

Sorry for the title. My daughter Steph and I love to come up with punny titles. We used to work for a food and travel magazine in Wilmington , NC and it was part of our job requirement to come up with stuff like this. Like "Going with the Grain" for an article on whole wheat bread!!

I was making plans to paint some silk for leaves today and thought to myself -oooh! Shibori leaves would be cool. Then I remembered these pieces of silk that I did in a silk dye-painting class and my shibori scarf from Joy Lily’s class. So I pulled all the stuff out and I think I have some more organic looking fabric to work with.

I’m really loving the piece with the deep reds and blues.

We have 20 people coming for dinner on Friday night. I have guild tomorrow. I  have to get to work on this house. I hate to clean house! I’d much rather be messing up my studio, but alas, it also must be cleaned because everyone wants to come up and see what I am doing.

I did finish Dot Calm. Here it is:

Close-up:

I’m off to do the dreaded housework.

of leaves floating in a rippling stream. Took some advice from LizzieB. Found that I had some cotton organdy in brighter colors that was already fused. Tried some stronger colors. It is getting there I think. I may try painting some leaves, but not tonight. Got to get back to Dot Calm and pay some bills. Here is the latest version:

Thank you all so  much for checking in and letting me know how you felt about my leaves. I have to say that I have not decided yet what I will do – leaves or no leaves. My daughter’s, Lisa and Stephanie, are my style mavens. Steph has not checked in, but Lisa has voted for no leaves. So her vote is weighted very heavily against any other votes. After making more leaves and playing around with them, I have decided that IF I use them, they need to make a statement and so they would cascade from top to bottom and go off both edges. Here is a photo with the leaves pinned. The leaves are quite transparent and echo the colors in the silk fabric of the quilt. It is really hard to photograph luminous fabrics and sheers. I have tried with and without a flash.

Here is a close-up. A caveat: The yellow looking fabric is really more of a lime-green. It is a piece of charmeuse dyed by  our very own LizzieB. 

If I do this, I plan to fuse each leaf to a background to make them sturdier and stitch veins and then attach them so that they are loose.

Look at what I am doing with Dot Calm!! I remembered to do some hand quilting with perle cotton BEFORE I added the back. It is not quite finished. Worked on it last night until my hand was numb.

I need some advice about my Reflections piece, which is now Ripples and Reflections. Here it is quilted and edges finished:

I got an idea that since it reminds me of reflections in a woodland stream that I might add some sheer organza leaves. I had to pin them so ignore the pins, but here it is with some sheer leaves added:

Let me know what you think! This is also a test to see how many of you are paying any attention to what I am doing!!