I returned home from Reno on New Year's Eve day, no problems- my flight even left on time and got to Salt Lake a little early! Bentlee spent two nights with us, and she and I had fun with some dyeing and painting. As I'd managed to get the borders sewn on the Autumn Mountains quilt while I was in Reno, I wanted to get working on the tree that I'll applique to it. Inspired by the Judy Coates Perez article in the last issue of Quilting Arts, I decided to paint batting for the tree, and try to simulate bark with dyed cheesecloth and embroidery- machine and hand.
I tried drawing a tree several times, and could not come up with one I was happy with. I finally managed to draw one I liked after I pinned the quilt to my design wall, taped tracing paper over it, and drew on the vertical surface. A lesson, don't try to draw something big on a horizontal surface, it just doesn't work.
The tree is bigger than my table surface, but Bentlee and I got it done without any problems. We used a couple of different browns, gray, and a little gold.
After a nice trip to Barnes and Noble so Bentlee could spend her gift card from Uncle Sean and Aunt Marly, and a run into JoAnn's for stabilizer and cheesecloth, we came home and I mixed about six shades of brown, gray, and a couple of greens. Bentlee and I dabbed and brushed on the color, letting them mix. I remembered I'd bought some pearl cotton thread to try dyeing, and cut off several yards from the cone, tied it in a circle with several enclosing threads, and brushed it with the same colors we'd used on the cheesecloth. Here's all of the cheesecloth and thread, ready to be wrapped in plastic and baked wth the heat lamps overnight.
And a closeup of the cheesecoth, ready to batch.
Once it's washed out and dry, then I'll start playing with it over the painted batting. This will be interesting!
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