"Moondance"

This memory quilt was commissioned by a gal for her best friend. The mom passed away October 1 of this year. Our mutual hairdresser put her in touch with me to make a quilt out of the mom's clothing. After meeting with the daughter and learning more about the mom; I came up with this design. It's still a memory quilt in the sense that the border was created out of the fabrics from her clothes with a few brighter scraps from my stash. But it turned more into an art quilt in the middle :) She was a hippie of the 60's; loved dragonflies; flowers and frogs along with peace signs.

The dragonfly on the front was created out of the dress she wore to her daughter's wedding. I stitched the wing membranes in metallic opalescent threads & couched the silver frizze yarn as well as the multii-colored frizze yarns on the dragonfly. The frog is out of some great batik. The size is 56"long x 45"wide. The backing fabric was cut from a large backdrop fabric that was used at her 60th birthday. I quilted it from the back so the dragonfly appears to be crossing the moon of the peace sign from the front. The song "Moondance" kept playing in my head so that's what I've entitled it.

The poem that the family shared was 'I wish you enough' and I wrote the versus of that poem on the denim strips around the border in sharpie marker.

Her friend picked up the quilt tonight and was thrilled. I can't wait to hear how the daughter likes it. I agreed to keep the clothing for a couple months in case any of her family members want one also.

Finished Dragon Head

Still have to get him into the quilt but here's the final shot of his head with finished mouth.

New Beaded Dragon Work

As always; starting with 'storyboard' Dragon is 16" H x 10" W. He will be placed as an off-center motif in a larger wall quilt that I'm still designing. In the storyboard you see the scales behind his head; those are being made individually out of orange/red silk and will be 3-D. I have other silk & some beautiful heavy brocaide tapestery fabric that will finish the 'frame'. I've had much fun beading him and will be adding more of the peacock scales (sequins) around his jaw area to bring that color out. And yes; each bead (and or sequin) is sewn on by hand one bead at a time.





The teeth were hand sculpted with sculpey. I 'scored' them to give them more reality. Then played with painting them to match the gold beads.



Ellen's close up shots are the bomb!




Those sequins that are black with the stars are halographic. I hand cut each one from a circle to the 'eye' shape you see then hand hole punch an additional hole to secure both ends.



The bead that started it all: The eye. For mother's day this year Ellen surprised me with a trip to the bead store. On limited funds of my own I passed over this bead and when we got home Ellen presented it to me. She had paid for it out of her own money. My daughter is the best! (A plethera of other words come to mind but that will suffice)

Halloween '08

This is how much fun you can have with your teenage daughter, some tulle & masks. (& rollerskates/blades) We skated through the neighborhood scaring the bejeebers outta little kids! We passed out candy from our jack o'lantern buckets and silly stringed the older kids who seemed to love that more than the candy! We skated through the party in the cul-du-sac near at the end of our street & none of our neighbors knew who we were! We were asked several times through out the evening to stop for photos. It was truly fun! At one point I thought I had given away my phone as it was in my bucket that I was frantically tossing candy out of. Much later that eve. came home & called it and heard the dang thing ringing on the kitchen table where I had left it. (phew!) We skated across a major intersection (yes in the cross walks with the proper lights) and got honked at and a few cat calls from drivers. All in all, it was a night to remember. After all that excersize; I only had one small piece of candy (which sadly was probably the exact amount of calories I burned).