Something About Nothing

Leslie Tucker Jenison was the Queen Bee for September for The Printed Fabric Bee.  She chose Urban Surfaces as her theme because she loves the look of layered textures of old walls, peeling paint, and graffiti on building walls. I have been looking forward to this theme!  I wanted to do something that would resemble a wall with bits of paint peeling away to reveal other layers of mystery.  I started with a piece of fabric I dyed in one of my favorite color ways:  Next I added a few words in turquoise here and there from a thermofax screen I made from an image I found at The Graphics Fairy . I must have been very caught up in the process because I missed getting a photo of the next layer - another thermofax.  It was comprised of lots of scribbles.  I printed them in brown and yellow.  You can see a little bit of the results on the lefthand side of this photo of me stencil more texture: The next layer of texture was created using a stencil I...

Just a little glimpse at the fun I had during this year's Quiltfest in Utah. Display for my class - Beginning Surface Design: Monoprinting & Stamping The opening social My friend Sandy.  She was very interested in her food! My quilt, Muses, in the quilt show. Sylvia 's quilt. My quilt, Green Valleys. A few of the youth quilts. They did a great job! Bev's Kaffe Quilt Nancy's quilt Ruth's lovely quilt won a ribbon! The smorgasbord dinner we had in our room the first night. I met up with my friends, Danelle, Chris and Penny. It was so nice to meet them in person finally! My students were fabulous. I hope they had as much fun as I did! Sylvia's class. I love all the beautiful color ways! It is always nice to spend time with friends!

The Holiday Season is coming fast! Only 6 Weeks until Halloween, 10 Weeks until Thanksgiving, 12.5 Weeks until Hanukkah, 13.5 Weeks until Christmas, AND about 15 Weeks until New Years Eve, so no matter what Holiday you celebrate,  it's time to think about parties, decorating and gift giving! To help you get in the mood, it's time to read QA Holiday   and get great ideas for lots of beautiful projects. There are so many fabulous things I would love to make in this magazine! Jacquelyn deRuyter 's Village Houses, Lyric Kinard 's Beaded Snowflakes, Carrie Bloomston 's Love Pillow, Linda McLaughlin 's Holiday Postcards and the list goes on and on! So many projects, so little time, I need to get started! One project I have already finished for a friend  is my Hanukkah gift bags on page 20 . The fabric for the bags were painted  with a stencil I designed and then cut out using my Silhouette Portrait. You can easily stencil d...

I'm preparing to teach a class about Monoprinting on fabric this week and so I have been working on a lot of sample pieces.  I recently read a great tip about cleaning the brayer off into a sketchbook and using it as a background for collage or drawing. I LOVE this tip! So far I have created two doodles onto my brayered pages that I just love! Flowers are always my go to drawing.    And trees come in a close second! This one makes me think about the long cold winter we have ahead of us in the northern hemisphere! Do you have a favorite go-to doodle?

My "baby" loves Cosplay (costume play) and attending Comic Con.  For this year's con she decided on three costumes and despite OUR plan of letting her create them all by herself. . . I TOOK OVER.   CONFESSION:  I have a lot more patience teaching sewing to strangers then I do to my own children.  Does anyone else have a difficult time teaching their children to sew?  Poor girl has had to learn at school.   Anyway, her first brilliant idea occurred when we discovered this fabulous Batman fabric at a great price. She purchased it with the idea in mind of turning it into a corset. She cut out the pattern after we measured her, but the pattern looked small to me (foreshadowing of trouble here when I rely upon my own sense of size perception), so I told her to cut it a little bigger.  The pieces sat for a long while because we needed some good interfacing and we kept forgetting to buy it when we went out.  Finally I picked up the interfacing...

Lynda Heines ' theme for August was Inspirational Words  and she wanted her 8" x 18" pieces to be in southwestern colors.  I knew I wanted to make a thermofax screen to use in her project and so I searched the internet for inspirational quotes and then arranged them in photoshop.  You can click on the photo below and copy it for yourself.  Feel free to use it to make your own thermofax screen (for personal use only please!) I dyed a piece of pfd cotton in a lovely turquoise.   This is my favorite southwestern color! To add some texture I used my zentangle thermofax screen and some Speedball fabric screen printing ink in turquoise. And then I added the words on top using Speedball fabric screen printing ink in a deep plum. I really like this color combination. Here is the 6"x6" piece that is part of this months giveaway: If you would like a chance to win all nine of this months pieces head on over to Lynda's blog or The Pr...