I love long weekends!!

I've had five days to play in the studio- doing both fiber and soap- oh, and a new addiction that goes hand in glove with the soaping.  But first to fiber.

I got Reclamation (or whatever it ends up being named, I'm not sure yet) faced.  I still have a sleeve and label to add, but those are no-brainer tasks I can do during the week after work.  I am happy with it- but it is still talking, and telling me it needs more!  I keep seeing metal on it, so I think I will have to walk the aisles at Home Depot to see if any inspiration strikes.  Do they make copper washers?  I doubt it, but what I keep seeing are copper circles.

I loved doing the hand embroidery.  I have a smaller piece of this fabric left that has more gray in it- I'm thinking of doing something similar, but doing the quilting in gray instead of the gold, and seeing what it does.  I think I have some gray fabric I auditioned for a border, also.  Something to play with this winter.

I also worked on my Tangled Textiles piece- but if you want to see that, you'll need to head over to the TT blog.

I got the last of my Christmas soaping done this weekend.  The Christmas colored soaps turned out well, just need a little cleaning up after they've cured a month or so.  I am getting better at this swirling business!!

 The Christmas soaps are scented with a blend of Champagne and pomegranate fragrance oils, and the bottom one with Champagne and ginger fragrance oils.  They smell heavenly!
 

The lavender swirl soap is scented with lavender, coriander and eucalyptus essential oils.  I'd used the coriander blended with other essential oils before, and not been happy with the result.  With the lavender, it is fantastic.

And, I felted some of my older soaps that were still perfectly usable but had lost most of their scent.  I finally got the hang of using the really nice Merino wool to felt after a couple of failures.  The trick is to lay down lots of very thin layers of fiber- I think I did about six.  With a coarser wool, I was only doing three layers, and it worked. With the Merino wool, not so much. The top one is done with a variegated roving I got in Grand Junction this summer- it made some lovely soaps, all very different!

And, this weekend I used my tall and skinny mold I made last weekend for the first time.  I made another rendition of my Rose Clay and Charcoal soap, this time with a dandelion zebra swirl.  I will be trying this again!

The soap at the top of the picture is upside-down- but I like the way the swirl looks from that perspective.  It reminds me of a mountain with the moon rising behind it.  I think I'm going to play with that technique again, and see what I can do with that image.  And, I am very happy with my tall and skinny mold!
 
I worked on my labels and packaging- I do have some orders for soap for Christmas!  If you can't tell, I really am enjoying this.

Saturday Marly and I tried something new- we made lotion.  I only needed to get a couple of ingredients, since I already had the oils from soaping.  It was so easy- it took longer to measure and heat the ingredients than it did to make.  And the lotion is fantastic!  We scented it with lavender and coriander, like the soap.  I will be doing more of this, and never buying commercial lotion again!

But tomorrow it's back to work, at least for a couple of days. Then I'll be back in the studio, quilting my TT piece.  Hopefully I can get that done next weekend!