Cooking up something in my "lab"......

This week, my sewing room has felt a little bit like a lab

and I feel a little bit like Beaker...

I didn't set anything on fire or blow anything up...

(well.... not really!)

but I still managed to make a colossal mess...

Almost every surface in my sewing room was used for something!!!



Like Beaker, I had a lot of trial and error...

 Pebeo Setacolor paint, Jacquard Lumiere paint,
and Caran D'Ache Neocolor artist crayons on Lutradur


and some experiments didn't go quite as planned...

...I decided that after spending a lot of time transferring an image with TAP

onto polymer clay (on the right) and baking it.... it didn't look so great,

so I went with the image transferred with TAP onto painted Lutradur (on the left)!

And then I got sidetracked....

and spent an evening just painting on Lutradur and not finishing the quilt!!!!

In the end,
I sandwiched the transferred image onto some Peltex
and backed with fabric, zigzagged around the edges,
added an eyelet and then secured it to the quilt right where you might find the park on the map!!!

You can also see the french knots that I added for trees...

and the added quilted lines that I had traced from the enlarged map onto tracing paper
and quilted the roads onto the quilt.

We were also required to make a facing-type binding
and I found a great tutorial here...

Finally, the label was sewn on last night!!!!

And so....

my experiment is done!!!!

"Along the River"

(featuring the Hudson River as it passes by our hometown)

If you happen to be passing through upstate NY on June 4th or 5th,
you can see my quilt (and 5 others) along with many other quilts
from our guild members and visit the great vendors too at our quilt show!!!!

Now who wants to clean up my 'lab'????

Generally, a lazy day

It has, generally, been a lazy day. The air outside is cold and windy. The ground is icy. Not ideal for outdoor play on this loooong winter break! My little one had a low grade fever again this a.m. UGH. I couldn't really think of anything exciting to blog about today (especially since my winning streak didn't continue and some other well deserving person, "ladydi" won Dorky Homemade's Happy Hula Giveaway) so I thought I would take a day off.

But this afternoon, my 11 year old son (who has not yet received his share of blog time) announced to me that he had something to show me. I had stopped at Joann's earlier today and bought him some Fimo clay to use to ease his boredom. He loves creating small stuff and often can be found with a hunk of Fimo.

His biggest piece .....

ain't it cute??? it isn't very big at all. Nothing like eggs cooked over an open fire. He loves camping!!!

And there isn't a boy that doesn't love a dinosaur!
Unfortunately, Frosty didn't photograph well but this minute sample won't be melting anytime soon.

This guy has a good vantage point atop the pencil.
So there it is! His masterpieces.

I showed this book on an earlier post. I plan to make one of the felted bags from it. I figured that I would start getting it going so when I have my next looong sit at a cheer competition, I will be ready to knit.

That is, if I don't finish it first. Once you get going on an easy knitting project like this (or any project, for that matter!), it is hard to put down!!!!
But hey, it is generally a lazy day and there's nothing like sitting on your butt, working away at some project (even if you finish it ahead of schedule).

Have a lazy day!