the fun has begun...

I think this is my favorite part. Having all the elements and deciding how to put them together. Well, I really don't have them all. There are more beasts to be made but they will mostly be embellishment. I put a thin 48" square cloth on the design wall and I have started playing. After most of the decisions have been made, I will take a picture and remove most of the pieces and start invisible stitching from the center out. This thin background is not THE back, just a way to assemble all the elements. There will be a backing added at the end and maybe a thin, flannel middle layer.

48" thin cloth and begin placement of elements

this will be the center--there will be beasties added here

 I'm still experimenting with making black and white sewing thread.

3 strands of floss marked with a permanent marker

And I was thinking that all this magic (Jude's workshop) called for a new pincushion. So I made one last night.

a special pincushion for the Magic Diaries Workshop

Moving along slowly but now it's getting exciting. Any ideas, suggestions, comments are always welcome.

still making decisions...

I dyed some silk gauze with onion skins and love the way it turned out but was not happy with the way it looked over the orange cloth I was trying to tone down. So I decided to break up the orange cloth into smaller blocks and took one of the blocks and dropped it into the onion skin bath. Well, I like the way it turned out so I think I will continue doing that with the rest of that cloth.

the onion skin dye has toned down the color

I also found a couple of other things I might be adding to this 'magic diaries' cloth that I'm working on through Jude's workshop. Just couldn't pass up the thrift shop this week. I think the two pieces I found will fit into this cloth somewhere.

silk gauze dyed in onion skin and 2 thrift shop finds

Also did some weaving on the goat piece and made the whole piece a bit smaller.

did some weaving on the left side

On a completely different topic, I decided to try and do some writing of words using the sewing machine. I've been practicing in my head for a couple of weeks. I tend to do that when I want to try something new. It seems to help me to get a better start. I think I did pretty well for the first try. All was done free form except for the bottom right where I wrote out the quote in pencil and stitched over the lines. This was done on a sandwich of 2 pieces of cotton with flannel in between. Next I will try it with just the 2 layers of cotton---and maybe in a hoop for easier maneuverability.

practicing free motion writing on the sewing machine

So things are moving along now and the magic cloth is in its early stages. At least I now feel like I know in which direction I am going.

and we're off...

Jude's Magic Diaries workshop started today. And, as usual, I'm off in a different direction than I planned. I did want to work on my moon quilt but I don't have as many pieces for that as I thought. I pulled out all my pieces and decided to go with the beasts and the very bright red/orange/yellow background. I'm hoping I can get all those pieces to work well together and plan to make some more beasts to add on. Also hoping I can tone down that bright background with lots of embellishments. If you want to join in, you can still sign on for this fabulous 6-month workshop here.
I'm back in here to say I just decided I'm going to onion skin dye that bright red/orange/yellow background before I do anything else. That should knock down that color.

the pieces I have so far

I came upon some silk scraps and just started playing with them and some cotton that was leaf bundle dyed. I was disappointed that the cotton was very hard to handstitch through so I wound up using the sewing machine for some of the stitching. I'm thinking the cotton and silk pieces will make a nice pouch and the nine-patches (hand stitched) will probably be used in the lining.

silk and cotton

The July/August issue of Piecework Magazine has a couple of great articles on Oya Lace with some instruction. It's a type of needle lace. I'm trying to learn. I'm using the edge of a vintage napkin.

the second one is a little better than the first.