Getting stuff done

My workroom is an old outbuilding in the garden. (I may have mentioned before that once upon a time it was a pigsty but that's another story!) On a sunny day like this, when I work with the door and windows wide open it feels as though I'm actually in the garden and it's lovely! I don't even play my ipod because I'd rather be listening to the birdsong. I took 10 minutes to block in a bit more of the background to the latest still life. I'm reluctant to show it in this wishy washy state and yes, I do know that that iris looks as though it's in the jug rather than on the quilt in the background. Have faith! I intend to paint over it all with a darker wash to make it recede and that'll help give the things in the foreground a lot more umpff.

There's still lots to do but I am liking the lemons better now.

I scraped a knife across a watersoluble pencil to make the little speckles - they only stick where the paint is wet so unwanted colour can be blown away.

 I've got a new printed fabric panel on the design wall today. You may recognise this fellow from my sketchbook. Laura photoshopped him with my moth drawings and photographs and printed him out for me greatly enlarged. The original drawing was 8"x11" but the quilt will be about a metre square. This is just a detail.

Here are a couple of the photographic images of moths.

And a closer shot of the graphite pencil drawing. The digital print even shows the marks I made with the plastic eraser.

I like to have several projects on the go at the same time. I think switching from one thing to another makes best use of my time and means I never get bored! So, I also have this quilt top on my design wall. I've used the digital print of the old boat to help me chose the fabrics for the railfence blocks which measure 4inches square. All the angles are at odds with each other right now but I plan to quilt a 4 inch grid over the whole piece and then applique a band of horizontal squares of patchwork and digital printing towards the lower edge. With luck that should marry everything together.

I think the hand dyed fabrics match the surface colour and texture of the peeling paint quite well. I might even embellish with a few buttons to suggest rivets and nails heads when the quilting is finished.

I'll leave you with a glimpse of yet another quilt top I'm working on. I've foundation pieced the strips on the left to continue the direction of the lines of the digital print on the right. It's very exciting to work with colours I don't often use. I'm loving all this patchwork! Next time I'll show you how the whole thing is coming along.

Hope you're having a good day too - thanks for dropping by - Linda