Design Wall Monday 10-22-12

Unbelievable that October is winding down. It's scary how fast the rest of 2012 is zipping by.

Mamacjt's blog features her various art quilts and activities. One of her techniques that she uses on a frequent basis is crayon dying. I've done a few projects using this technique and love it. It's very easy to do. In a nutshell you transfer a design to fabric using pencil, then outline with a sharpie marker, then color it with crayons, then melt the wax away using your iron and leaving behind beautiful color. At this point mamacjt uses black thread to outline stitch the design as well as the details. I've used other color threads to add detailing and it is a very nice effect. Finally the piece is quilted and embellished using embroidery, buttons, beads ... whatever you like. I'm to the point with this piece where it's time to melt the wax and set the color into the fabric. I definitely see beads and embroidery on this piece, and maybe even buttons if I find some I like. As far as quilting goes, I think I will stiple quilt all the white space to make the design areas pop out a bit. I'm calling this piece The Ladybug Garden. (for some reason I'm having trouble creating the link to mamacjt's blog but it is www.mamacjt.blogspot.com)

And while I was working on this piece I started noodling around an idea for a small Halloween/autumn piece featuring pumpkins ...

Jump over to Patchwork Times today for Design Wall Monday to see what other quilters and crafters and artists are working on.

Design Wall Monday 10-8-12

This year I've participated in the Craftsy.com block of the month project. The two blocks for October complete the 20 blocks required for this project. It's been fun but ... I'm not crazy about the color scheme. I knew it was to be a scrappy quilt but it probably would have worked better with a few more colors instead of just white/black/red. It has a very "chopped up" look to it to me. In November the task is to add borders/sashings and in December it is to be finished. I'm putting it down until after the first of the year, though. In fact, I'm putting down most of my crafting and sewing projects until the start of 2013 because I have so much going on around the burrow and work. I've looked and looked at this photo and am thinking that I'll use one of the red fabrics as the sashings and border to try to bring it all together. I'll also really need to mess around with the block placement to make sure it doesn't get too heavy on one side with a single color.

Please take a few moments to visit Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times. It is a never-ending source of quilting inspiration to me.