A bit of nature and some stars

Today's ATC is a bit different, but I just thought, "what if..." and made it.  The background is some eucalyptus bark, which is always lying around outside.  The pebbles are ones I found in the garden (not the ones I bought, which are much more regular) and the twine was just out of the drawer.  It was quite easy to sew through the bark to attach the pebbles and I punched the holes for the twine with a simple hole punch!
I like this one, and it is telling me that the simple things are often the best.

Today is tangled textiles challenge reaveal day, so one of my deadlines is finally gone.
Here is my piece in response to the theme of "look up"

It is my view of the Southern cross and the milky way, which I see from the back steps most nights, only of course infinitely more lovely than this.

I started with a closely scribble quilted piece of fabric

Then painted it with acrylic paint.
Next, I stencilled in the milky way with a silver shiva stick and I disliked it so much, I didn't even take a photo.
I tried using some organza to cover it up

but that didn't work!  In the end, I thread painted all over the shiva cloud with a variegated white to blue thread.

I Added iron on sparklies for the stars, but I still didn't like it but I bound it anyway because the 15th was hours away, then as I sat, thinking, I started adding some hand stitching with perle thread, and I started to like it a bit.  Obviously, time was an issue, or I think I would have added more hand stitch.  Next time I will start hand stitching much earlier, as I think I am starting to want that texture in my work.

Anyhow, have fun creating every day.

Fiddling with photos

Here are some photos from my garden that I have been fiddling with to give me a bit of inspiration for some floral quilts.  Generally I use filters in Photo shop elements and I have my favourites, so without further ado-

Some daisies. Photo on left, filtered with "Paint daubs" on right.

You can see in this close up that the picture that the "pieces" are like confetti and I could use this filter to create a monet or impressionist type collage by using coloured scraps and tulle as in my journal.

Helleborus or winter rose, which I love. Here I have used "Cut outs"  to create a pattern for a fused picture.

You can see in this close up that this filter has created shapes which I can cut out of fused fabric.

Some violets. and the filtered picture using "frescoe"  I like this one because it gives lovely depth on the leaves.

In this close up you can see that this is a perfect candidate for a fused picture which is also painted.  I would use this to create a simple pattern, then use it to apply the darks and highlights which are on the leaves.

So you have had a little look into another one of my design processes.  These pictures would be converted to patterns using photoshop again, by tracing the outlines on a new layer then deleting the original layer.  Each colour would also be added in a new layer.  I have previously looked at this here.

Dilly Dally with designs, they don't all have to be created.