Sweeeeet Sixteen

Well, my "Sweet Sixteen"  Handi Quilter is set up and ready to go.  Here I am getting the hang of it with a little free motion tracing.  "Ma Sweet Thang" surprised me when he went with me to the Textile Exhibition in Brisbane.  Ain't he just the "Sweetest Thang".  I'd seen the machine at Harvey Bay recently on a holiday and did a little trial run and ooooooo  it was luverly.  It took a bit of rearranging the studio but eventually it all fit in and there's still room to  move, just,  lol.  The tabletop space, the lights, the bigger foot, it's all soooo goood.
Thank you "Ma Sweet Thang".

That Half Finished Painting

I just love shells.  There's a dish full on my dining table and a vase full on the TV cabinet plus the odd one around the place. This is the last painting I was doing of shells when I got sidetracked by textiles and fibres.
It just seems to sit there waiting for me to return.  I think it needs to be finished now as "Ma Sweet Thang" is  asking when the empty space on the wall above the TV is going to have its shells, as intended. Summer always feels a better time to paint, for me, so another few months seems the best option. After some of those beadies are done first.

More Beadies

Well,  I've started my "Big Beady Project.  2000 beads to make and 1740 to go.  Ooh that look like a lot more than I thought now that I've written it down.  At 100 a month mmmmmm that's a lot of months to go.

I have a half finished painting that has taken that long to finish.  I wonder which one will get finished first.

With three quilt tops ready to quilt and a couple of crazy felt hats planned oops.

Leaf Me Alone

The Buderim Surface Design Group issued a challenge for the "Year of the Forest" and this is my interpretation.  Too many of our forest are being cleared, hence the pun in the name 'Leaf Me Alone".
On a piece of my onion dyed silk, I used a fern frond as a stamp to create the design.  First with discharge paste, then with a yellow and then two green dyes. A bit of stitching to add texture plus a touch of gold leaf to finish.  Afterward I realised the gold leaf was a bit too much but what's done is done.