Reveal!

Last year I finished an art quilt for the Inspired by the National Parks challenge. Donna  De Soto is again heading up a wonderful book project.  I was thrilled to be able to make a landscape of one of our Utah parks. I was lucky to get the park nearest to where I live, Capitol Reef.

Ready to quilt

I did not take very many in progress photographs. I was too excited to get started! I had chosen to depict the Fruita Cliffs near the barn. I wanted to do a mosiac, so cut tiles of hand dyed and prints that had fusible web. I had drawn lines to designate the placement of the horizon and grassy areas. I used a solid background with the color name of Espresso. It was a very dark brownish black. I thought it gave the other colors a better contrast than solid black. I fused the tiles down to the background and then pin basted for quilting.

quilting on the back

I quilted the areas with what I thought would mimac what each section of tiles represented. I did take photographs of the back showing the quilting. I had previously written a blog post about my finish, but without showing the front.

backing

I miss calculated and miscut my backing fabric. I really wanted to use this John Flynn Artifacts print from my stash. I thought the piece was large enough, but I cut it in the wrong direction. So I added a bit of the background fabric to fill in.

Adding the sleeve

I sleeved and labeled it and it went on its way to Donna. 

Fruita Views (or Cliffs)

The finished piece!  I didn't know what to the actual name of the cliffs was, so I titled it Fruita Views. Labor day weekend, Sweetie and I took a camping trip to Capitol Reef. It was fabulous! At the ranger station I found out that the cliffs were actually named Fruita Cliffs! I let Donna know, it was late in the game and I am not sure which title the quilt received in the book.  But the book is due out soon! Donna has received her author's advance copy, I have my copy on order! The exhibit has already started to travel. Check the schedule here.

This is my off the wall and Finish up Friday post.

Also linking to Emily's Moving it forward.

Bowl city

I love making fabric wrapped clothesline bowls!  I get carried away and make way more than I can use. I have the excess for sale in my Etsy shop.  A couple of weeks ago someone bought a yellow bowl. She said she was thrilled to find one in yellow! I realized that it was the only yellow bowl in my shop. So I cut strips and made a couple more. Of course I got carried away and made a couple others as well.

Four bowls!

They are all different sizes and shapes.  I just let the bowl turn out however it feels like growing.

Daisy print

This is a cute little guy. I had this daisy print on a pale yellow background. It did not photograph well, but is a bit darker than pictured. It is the perfect size to put on your nightstand for jewelry, chapstick, etc. Or I use bowls this size next to my sewing machine as a thread catcher.

Bright Yellow

This was a bright yellow background with tiny red, green, blue and white spots!  It is a larger size, big enough to use as a knitting bowl, to throw the mail in, or display fruit.

Flannel scraps!

I had some leftover strips of flannel that I took out of someone's trash at the retreat last month. Along with a few yellow and green flannel strips that I had in my scrapbag I decided to try making a bowl with them. I hadn't used flannel in making bowls. It turned out really charming!

Total scrapbag

I am a scrapaholic. I can't throw out usable strips and squares. I cut my scraps down to the largest size possible and then sort them into boxes of like sizes. Yeah, I save 1 inch strips. I have this idea of making a crocheted rug out of them.  One day.  So anything that is about 1/2"-1" wide gets thrown into another bag and I use those for making clothesline bowls. Sometimes I sort them into piles of colors and other times I just grab strips out of the bag and let it happen. This big guy is a fun shape. A very wide bottom and not very tall.  I can't decide if I want to keep him or not.

I will worry about it next week when I get the yellow bowls listed.

This is my Finish up Friday and Off the Wall post for this week.

April Fool's Day!

Finished Swap Blocks!

I finished the swap blocks that I was working on last week! Yay!  A real finish! I need to check with Diane, make sure she is not out of town before mailing them off to her. Nice to be able to cross something off my to do (sew) list.

Newest Sweet Sixteen

For my March Sweet Sixteen personal challenge piece I am making a fern. I was able to get my swirl cut out, and now I need to do a bit of research on fern leaves unfurling.  I ended up with an alternate swirl, so I decided to make a second piece, not for the sweet 16 project, just for fun.

Leftovers

So of course, instead of working the official next on the to sew list, I start quilting on the leftover piece! I am going to FMQ some swirls in the background. I got out my practice piece to try that out today. We will see how that goes, swirls are within my FMQ skill level (which isn't very high, but I keep trying) Hopefully this will be next's weeks finish.

Treasures from Trash

Sweetie's favorite Beer

At Sweetie's workplace they buy bags of rags. Sometimes he finds treasures in the rag bags and brings them home to me. I turned one of them into a Sock Monkey challenge for my friends. Read about it here. The reason I did the challenge 2 years ago was that I dislike Sock Monkeys, they are a bit creepy. So since Sweetie was so thrilled about finding treasure in the rag bag, I felt I had to do something with it and so conned my buddies into a challenge. There was quite a variety of projects.

This time he brought home this Guinness Stout piece, looks like it was cut from a pair of flannel pajama bottoms. I am keeping this piece for my own use. Not sure what it will become, but I am sure it will be fun to work with.

This is my off the wall and finish up Friday post for this week.