Pelicans

Yay storm delay. Nope, those aren't words I say very often, but tonight it was true. I had just finished basting a client quilt and boom... Thunder and lightning, and it was loud. Okay, no quilting for me tonight. Wait, I should be working on the Pelicans!

I hand washed the newest piece of silk that I ordered, swishing and scrunching making sure all excess dye was released. Then I waited for the piece to fluff dry and then a nice press and I was ready.   I began marking the areas of the water than will be painted. Unfortunately, marking was a far as I got tonight. Sleepy eyes were kicking in and that is definitely not a good start for painting. So here's where I'm at...

I'm excited to be working on this again. Changing from the appliquéd water to painted water was definitely the right direction. 

More soon!! 

The Pelicans

Progress on the pelicans has been nil.

If you remember, it was about a month ago when I was working on the water area, I was making the highlight areas (wave caps) from the lighter seafoam green into turned edge applique pieces. Well... let me just start with dupioni was not the best choice for turned edge - at least not on these tiny little curved waves. You can see in the pic how the curves aren't very smooth, some are almost pointy. Nope, not having that -- totally not how my brain was seeing this project. Time to rethink this!

Also, the more I thought about it the more I realized all those applique pieces would start to outweigh the pelicans. I really want the pelicans to be the main focus of the quilt; the water would serve its purpose as background. Oh, and the difference in the two greens was way too drastic (as if I needed yet one more excuse). 

What to do? Order more silk of course! I ordered a sea green which is darker than the light, but lighter than the dark that I already have. And my solution? Paint -- my old faithful Shiva Paintstiks will work perfectly to create the water movement while not detracting at all from the pelicans.

So like I said, not much progress, although I am still holding to my 10/1 deadline!

The rest of my quilty world has been going crazy, its all good though. I have packed up and shipped out all my class supplies for AQS Syracuse. I am so excited to be teaching with AQS!! It is a great honor and I'm hoping to see and meet many of you there! There may be some spots available in a few of my classes - everything from beginning stitches, to feathers, to some super fun take-home projects -- go check them out, just click on the photo or the link above.

On the client work front I've been trying to squeeze in a commission baby quilt between the scheduled quilts. It is amazingly cute, watch for a post about it soon on the other blog.