Best layed Plans

See this ship. This is the Emerald Princess. Right now it's in the Caribbean sailing towards Aruba.  Why am I telling you this? Well I'm supposed to be on it, with my husband and my friend Gail and her husband.  Instead I'm stuck here in NY because Mother Nature had a hissey fit and dumped a hold lot of snow on us. Oh, between 12"-20" worth.  So there was no way to get to Ft. Lauderdale. To say that we're a little bummed out is an understatement. We were so looking forward to New Years Eve party...It's been years since we've gotten all dressed up and gone out to celebrate.  So our travel companions and my sister & brother in law are coming here for NYE and we will make a lovely dinner of Fillet Mignon, roasted potatoes. grilled veggies and salad.We will get all gussied up and open a bottle or 2 of bubbly to bring in the new year. One of my other friends suggested we get a tub of water and place it in the living room. Maybe put in a couple of boats. We can make believe were on the ship. Do a little swaying back and forth....LOL.

Day 3 Something New

I have a small collection of buttons. Some of them antique and some are reproduction antique. I've always had a love of antique jewelry and back in the early 90's I took jewelry making classes in NYC at the Cecila Bauer studios. Right around the corner from FIT on 28th St. I worked in fine silver and gold. Anyway, I seem to have a certain style. Which seems to lean towards the romantic. I fine that is also the case with my quilts. If I had to describe my work with one word, that word would be dessert. And don't we all Love dessert...LOL

day 2 of Something New

 This bracelet was a real challenge. I had to follow a chart. So it was a lot of 2 rows forward and then 1 row back. Another words, a lot of unstitching.  It was me or the chart and I won....LOL...At least I think I did. I like it. It is made with #11 delicas in jet black,   24k plated beads, and Swarovski crystals.

something new

Just because I haven't been blogging regularly doesn't mean that I'm not working...LOL.....This necklace is made with #8hex beads, silver beads and dodads. And just for fun some freshwater pearls and a Murano bead. Here is a closeup. Tomorrow I will post a different piece....maybe a bracelet...

Love Letter's

I can't believe a whole month went by without one post from me...I'm so sorry. I have been working and I do have pictures to post. For now I will post this sweet little quilt that I just finished. I friend of mine has a home decorating business. And she gave me lots and lots of upholstery samples. Really, a perfect size for small quilts.

I call it Love Letters..Ohhhh I'm such a romantic..
I also shared most of the fabric with my fellow art quilters.

Finished

I'm happy to say that my 2 mini quilts are finished. If you click on the photo you can see some of the details. I really enjoyed doing these and have a couple of more in the works. After that I need to do think again about my Roman couple quilt...I think on that one I'm going to have to handquilt it. My machine quilting is not up to my standards yet. Anyone who thinks machine quilting is easy or maybe cheating is way wrong. For really good machine quilting you need a tremendous amount of patience and skill. Both of which I have not achieved...LOL So I'll stick with what I do best. Handquilting...It takes longer but I'm not going anywhere....LOL

Another 12" fiberart square

Lately I have been on a 12" x 12" quilt kick...I guess you can say it's like eating potato chips. You just can't have one....LOL..And since I can't have the chips the quilts will have to do....Very Low Cal. And who knows, maybe someone one would like to purchase one. Here is my latest one, using a picture of a painting of Frida Kahlo.  Not quite done yet. Needs to be quilted. But I just had to share...

Lesley Riley's workshop

Last week my guild, Northern Star Quilters, had a visiting Fiber Artist as a guess speaker and teacher at our meeting.. I had taken one of
Lesley's workshops before, so was really excited about taking other one of her classes. And as usual I was not disappointed. This time we worked with Lutradur. We painted, used TAP transfer paper, used a heat gun and embossing powers. We were children playing and it was very liberating. Yesterday 4 of my friends came over and we played again. Here is a almost finish 12" quilt. It still needs to be layered and quilted. Hopefully I will get to it in the next day or two.

Via Appia Antica

As I mentioned in an earlier post my husband and I where in Rome this past March. One of the many things we did was to take the Archo Bus out to the Appian Way. It was a beautiful spring day and we really had a wonderful time. This was one of the photos that I took.

In July my friends and I went QBL (quilting by the Lake) near Syracuse NY. There we took a class with Kerby Smith in Photoshop Elements 8.  Where I learned to manipulated the photo that I took of the wall and saturate it with color.  Kerby then printed it out on a wide format Epson printer on to a 11 x 17 inch fabric sheet. I have now made it into a small wall hanging.

The art group that I belong to, FiberArtNE, has a challenge that is due this Thursday. It's a word challenge. The goal is to interpet a word in a quilt. To change it up a bit 2 people got the same word. The rules were that we were not to tell one another how we plan to use said word in our quilt. It will be interesting to see what everyone has done.

This past month I have been taking my new knowledge of Photoshop Elements and incorporating it into my quilting.

I made this Photo Album for a friend as a Birthday present. I used photos of our meet up in Rome with the Traveling Scarves. A group of Ladies, who all met online on TripAdvisor.com in the Rome forum.










On this page I used a photo I took in Rome and using PSE I changed it from a color photo to a vintage photo. Place it on a textured background and using layers and the eraser tool blurred the edges. Then I pulled up the group photo and did the same, laying it on top of the previous photo. Printed it on TAP by Lesley Riley and ironed it on fabric. 

 

Using the drop shadow tool in effects, I laid the 3 photos over a texture background that I created by using a photo of a statue from the Angel Bridge in Rome . Then I added a architectural stamps from the brush tool. These were printed on Fabric sheets.

All were embellished with ribbon trims and beads. 

 

                                                                                                                  

. Here is an old photo of my Mom. I removed the original background and placed her in a new setting added wings and some butterflies and flowers. The new background texture is from edi07. If I remember correctly I got that one from  flickr.com
Some of the flowers and the butterflies are stamps that I got on line from webdesignerlab.com. Wings from bes-stock.deviantart.com

Awhile back I started this quilt. Along the way it has made a few changes and now I'm happy to say that the top is done. Yayyyyy! I had spent last weekend taking it apart (very frustrating)because I realized it wasn't square and there wasn't enough of the background to make it square.So when I put it back on to a new background fabric I decided on a couple of changes. Background is larger and I added a quarter inch flange. In the end I like it much better. So the next step is to mark it for quilting and then layer it up.

I'm still playing with Photoshop...this is the latest

Some more photo manipulations in PSE

Looking up at the Pantheon Dome

 I love this one.  It's a wall that is on the Appian Way in Rome....Tom and I took a open air hop on hop off bus ride. It was well worth the 10 euro ea. It was a beautiful day and we were with wonderful friends.

Back from QBL

Last week I was at QBL. For non Quilters it's Quilting by the Lake.. This year it was up at Onondaga Community Collage in Syracuse NY. Myself and 3 friends took a Photoshop Elements class with Kerby Smith.                              

         
 this is one of the pictures that I manipulated in PSE.  The other 2 will have to wait for tomorrow before I can upload them. It seems that Blogger doesn't like them....LOL....

Photoshop

 I'm taking an online Adobe Photoshop class with Marie Otero. After a slow start I think I'm getting the hang of this. Here are just a couple of photos that I worked on.

Acqua di San Giovanni

 Every morning I get a Newsletter from Italian Notebook.com It is short, so its quick and easy to read. Today this little story arrived and I thought I would share it.  This is why I just love this country. It speaks to my soul.

Acqua di San Giovanni

Pre-School Graduation day

This Grandma just has to show off her grandson. Here's Joseph and his cousin Michaela....

Top finished - well almost....

I have attached the borders and added dark navy blue batik in the corners. I really had no choice about the corners. I ran out of the blue and so couldn't continue the block design. So instead I hope to applique rosettes in the four corners.  This is the last time I will show the quilt on blog until I'm finished with the quilting.I also want to thank everyone who stop by and sent along advice and suggestions. It was very much appreciated.

I had some fellow quilters over last Thursday and we discussed what I should do next. I wasn't pleased with the border I had done with the black squares in  the center. Too distracting. We tried all kinds of things like turning the border around placing the blue on the inside. I definitely didn't like that. Then we tried adding a different color over the black.  Until we decided that I would alternate the colors like I did in the circle of tiles. 

I fused 1 1/2" squares over the black and then satin stitch around the edges. I think I did a pretty good job on the satin stitches, if I don't say so myself.....

Quilt -

I'm still working on this quilt.   Don't know if I over work it. I think it has be too much stuff around my couple.    I just might  take everything off except the first ring. Place it on a dark background and be done with it. Here are 2 photos  one with the 3 of the new 4 borders and one where I pinned all the border rings to the back and placed it on a background just to see how it looks.  As usual I'm obsessing over this. 

Gallery Show 2010

This is the 2nd year for the Fiberart Northeast groups' show at the Mahopac Library. The following is just a few photos that I took. There are more photos posted on the fiberart blog.
View from the balcony at the library.