First some bragging then some blogging!

Okay. First the bragging. My friend Isabelle (one of my besties, in fact) has just started quilting. I helped her through her first one, but I made her do her second one on her own :D I knew she had the skills, it was just a matter of getting the supplies and doing it!

This is her second quilt. She did a fabulous job!!! She texted me the picture right after she finished. She was so excited, and I was excited for her!

My God. I've created a quilting monster! It's alive, it's aliiiiiiiiiive, IT'S ALIII- *cough* Congratulations to Isabelle on her newfound quilting addiction :D

Now onto the blogging. So apparently I've become the free motion, embellishment girl at the shop. I'm totally okay with that! I love the freedom that free motion gives me to let projects just evolve...and really, the embellishment is the icing on the cake!

One of my favorite embellishment items is Angelina Fiber. This stuff is COOL. It is a synthetic fiber that bonds only to itself, so it lends itself to ann kinds of neat techniques. All you need is some plain paper, some Angelina, and an iron set to your silk/wool setting.

Angelina comes in packs like so. The fibers themselves can either be straight (like above) or crimped. I prefer the crimped style, because I like the texture it has.

So what am I getting at? Last week I walk into work and there's a big ol/bag of Angelina waiting for me and at the bottom of the bag, a pattern for an Angelina covered fabric bowl. Yes, yes...I flipped out. It was cool! So I grabbed some Timtex and a few fat quarters and got to work. Do I have any photos of that process? Nope! I didn't think that far. Honestly, this was a free motion project that just kind of fell together. I didn't know how it was going to go until it hapened, and I'm pretty happy with the results.

So there's the bowl. It's a lot pinker than what the picture shows. iPhone camera + fluorescent lights...you know the drill. Anyway. Those little bags are snack packs of Angelina fibers. The cool thing about Angelina is that you can mix colors! I mixed the two above with a purple shot gold. I fused them together to make the center of the flower. Once you fuse your Angelina together, you sew the fused piece whever you want it to be on your fabric. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy!

So here are some more pictures that show the detail of the Angelina and the quilting:

I used a regular Gutermann cotton thread, and a cotton Sulky Blendables variegated thread in the stippling. I like the angelina to still have loose fibers, so I just really lightly stitched it down. Does that make the bowl functional? Nope. But it sure turned out neat!

When I brought it into the shop, I was informed that "Oh, good! You can teach a class then." lol. Okay then! So if you're interested in maing an arty little bowl and learning to use Angelina, keep your eyes open at the shop for details!

Today when we went to E.E. Schenk's, I scored some Decolourant. What is that? Basically, it's a fabric dye that removed the base color of the fabric when it is applied, leaving only the color of the dye. This means you cna make your own custom pieces of fabric...you can dye prints on black fabric witout compromising the effect of color on the black fabric! If that doesn't do the trick, think of it like a hair dye that both bleaches and dyes your hair at the same time. Cool, huh? I'll be posting about that soon, once I figure out the technique...and I promise I'll take better pictures of the process!

Well, as usual I'm blogging into the late hours of the night, and after losing an hour of sleep (oh the pitfalls of "springing forward"...yuck.) I'm absolutely bushwhacked.

Have a good night everyone, and happy quilting!