(un)balanced

Balance - yin and yang
Competing priorities
Pushing and pulling



This may be my favorite piece so far. It is "8.5 x 11" like my other pieces, but is not square - the quilting distorted the dimensions and so I left it that way.

Waters of home

I grew up in south Florida, on the shore of Lake Okeechobee, so that's what jumped into my head when I thought of "waterways."

Lake Okeechobee
Altered by the hands of man
Fragile, beautiful





One shot with flash, one without. Combined, you get an idea of what the piece actually looks like! Color is truer on the darker/no flash shot, but you can see the couching (new technique this month) around the lake better on the lighter/with flash shot.

I really like how this one turned out.

Dandy-lion

"Soft"
Dandelion puffs
Explode softly in my yard
Hard to get rid of!

The new technique this month was trapunto, for the dandelion leaves. A couple of them wound up a bit overstuffed, once I stitched the veins, so I resorted to snipping the back and pulling out some of the stuffing on the biggest leaf.

I also bought some rayon embroidery thread to use for the dandelion puff. Shiny and pretty - and not too much of a pain to deal with!

Procrastination

Sucks joy from my soul
Prevents me from achieving
What is possible

I envision procrastination as a door.


There is hope - there is no lock on the door.


And behind the door lie dreams.

Sunflower 1

Like sunshine distilled
The sunflowers nod their heads
Dancing in the wind



The image of a sunflower popped into my head when I heard this month's challenge word. A step-by-step description of the process is on my personal blog.

Love, by Michele

A grandmother's love
Stitching through the threads of time
Unconditional

When I thought about the theme of love, I thought about romantic love, then the love of a dog, then about other types of unconditional love, which led me to my grandmothers, Grandma Dunaway (Goldie) and Memaw (Opal). My grandmothers were the fountainhead of my love for crafts in general and fiber in particular. They were generous with their scrap bins and button tins, my love for which continues to this day.

In keeping with my personal goal of challenging myself to try something new with the challenges, I decided to weave the background. I didn't obsess about color and deliberately limited myself to the two small bags of strips I had in the dining room when I started. Well, almost - I picked up a couple of other strips while searching for other needed stuff throughout the house.

As usual, the design changed along the way. The original plan was be to machine FMQ and bind. I had the strips woven and pinned, and the hearts cut out, and decided there were too many pins to FMQ, so I started closely hand basting around the edge. I liked how it looked, so I just quilted the rest of the piece by hand, in big stitches. The more I quilted, the more the edges didn't want to be bound! While I was working on it, both the quilter in residence at the Arts Barn and my daughter the artist asked me if I was going to bind the edges, both with that unspoken undercurrent of "Don't bind it! Leave it uneven!"

The two hearts are my two grandmothers - the commercial gold for Goldie (Grandma) and some snow dyed fabric for Opal (Memaw). The embroidery floss I used to blanket stitch the hearts came from Memaw's stash, as did at least one of the buttons.

START

Seeds beneath the earth

Awaiting the warmth of spring

Soon will sprout and grow

As I thought about the word "beginnings," I thought of new growth in the spring.

The word "start" didn't come to me until I'd nearly finished the piece and decided it needed something on the left side, so I added a few alphabet beads:

My primary goal for the fiber pieces that go with the haiku for this group is to try new things. I also don't want to obsess about finding the "perfect" bit of material - so the earth is a piece of upholstery material (which DID work out perfectly!), the sky is a scrap of flannel, and the pieces of the plant are assorted odd leftover pieces.

I'd never done anything remotely resembling threadpainting, but it worked really well for the root hairs. I'm not so happy about the leaves; I like the 3-D aspect, but the rough edges still bother me some.