Melanie’s classes are FABULOUS, she always gives alot of information and is so inspiring.

First one – if you have wanted to “Bubbles” or “Pebbles” free motion quilting, Pat Sloan has a video HERE.

With Father’s Day coming,  AlyandAsh blog has a GREAT keychain tutorial HERE.

Over at Splitcoaststampers, you learn how to make Encaustic Wax backgrounds for your cards or artwork  HERE.

Creations by Kara blog has a tutorial on making flowers out of old denim HERE.

and last but certainly not least

Melanie Testa has a SUPER tutorial on making your artwork into a pencil case HERE.

I have it laid onto batting & a backing fabric but, I’m thinking using Melanie Testa‘s book ““Inspired to Quilt” as inspiration to add some layers.

We will see what it wants on it.

I’ll post the layers……

Well, Melanie Testa will be teaching it again over a Joggles.  Just tell them Dale Potter sent you!!!  The handouts alone are worth the price of the class!!!  Melanie is a GREAT teacher and it was the spark I needed this year!!!

Working on Melanie Testa‘s Mark Making class projects and finding this little (5 “X 8″) booklet makes me giddy!!!

Trying to work out a design idea for the next challenge over at Textile Abstractions - MUSIC.    Its very visual in my head, so going to try a tester today – to see if it will work or not.  I gave myself & DH a test yesterday……when you hear “O Canada” what colour do you see?  We both said RED.

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First hour drawing

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Expanding on that drawing…..

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Expanding some more…..

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Lesson 3 of the Freezer Paper, Paint class is to make a design to cut like Paper Dolls…….Do you see where I’m going with this drawing?

Soon, I’ll upload a photo of the fabric I painted using this design.

I have been PLAYING – with Dyeing Threads for the Mark Making class over at Joggles taught by Melanie Testa. I have run out of white embroidery floss now, so will set aside the dyeing materials until I get some more.  This is TOO FUN!!!  Lesson 2 of the Mark Making class is making a sample book…..below is page one – MY CROW!  Everyone else is probably doing a different bird but I like crows or ravens.

I am LOVING this technique – I am thinking of trying out a buffalo today for a project I am working on.

Page 2 – I’m still trying to decide what to make.

And, today we received Lesson 3 of 4 of the Freezer Paper, Paint, Oh My! and WOW is all I can say.  I have some other painted fabric samples to post, and I didn’t forget to do my Week 6 of the 52 Questions project – will post that soon.  As I said, I don’t know where the week has gone.  I did take an hour & half to get my hair cut & coloured. 

I have many upcoming deadlines and alot of the projects are just sketches right now, but really that’s how I work.  I work out the whole design in my head or on paper and then it doesn’t take very long to get the idea onto fabric.  For me, the longest part is getting the idea onto fabric, I make little samples if there a certain technique I need to check to see if IT WORKS….

Well, not only am I never-ending making freezer paper resists, but NOW, I will be dying threads!!!  Here is what I dyed yesterday.  I used DMC embroidery floss, perle cotton,  crochet cotton, and buttonhole twist as the threads.

I used Golden Yellow, Scarlet and Cerviean Blue Procion MX dyes.

Will be doing more, trying different colours!

When I came to the last of the dyes in my palette container, I pour all 3 into the ziploc and created MUDDY threads – they are my FAVOURITES!!!

My first sample  I used a snowflake and odd bits leftover from cutting out some other snowflakes.  I had this leftover strip from a hand-dyed fabric that needed something for sure. 

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I used Lumiere Turquoise and a Purple

I see how its very easy to blob on the paint when you are pouncing but over all I like how it turned out.

I’ll show other fabrics as the week progresses….YES, I’m going to make you come back often – LOL!

Today, I might finish a piece – seeing the end of the tunnel on it.  We will see….to warm up I’ll do some more free motion samples.