TIF - June Completed

The challenge that Sharon gave us for the month of June was about our stashes than the stories they told. I spent a lot of time thinking about this concept, but the one thing I get out of my mind was that my considerable stash of fabric, threads, paints, notions etc.didn't tell a story until I made something with it. Its filled with possibilities, but no story until I touch, paint, cut and then it tells me a story. You can read more about the June challenge on Sharon's blog at http://sharonb.wordpress.com/2008/06/01/take-it-further-in-june/

Sometimes I do buy fabric and patterns for specific projects, but since I've retired from the workforce, I shop my stash and what fun it is. The last project(s) I've bought fabric for has been baby fabric, that tells a wonderful story about how much we all look forward to the baby's arrival, in December. I can't wait! The other large project I've bought fabric for is a queen-sized wedding quilt, that is almost a year overdue but I have much notice and last year was filled with traumas and loss and health issues all around, and the quilt is much more complicated than any other traditional quilting I've done. Traditional quilting is not really my forte.

Anyway, back to the June TIF. I decided to do a small landscape of a local rock arch that 50 or so miles out of town. I had also joined a challenge on a yahoo group I belong to, called Textile Challenges. The challenge was to make an arch approximately 7 inches tall, 4 wide. There could be anything in the arch but since my was going to England I combined the two projects that I did in June. The rock arch is called La Ventana is is in the El Malpais lava fields outside of Grants, NM. We had such a wonderful day exploring the area the day we went and that was the story my finished project was called. As usually is was sunny and fairly warm for a winters day, no wind, and all was well in our world!

The original picture of the arch is on the left.

My arch doesn't have rounded sides because I wanted the arch to be the main focus with the sky in the background, I also felt that the straight sides going up gave a better illusion of height. I used a fusible web for this project and didn't even paint any of the the fabric! I did darken the sky under the arch to add some shadow and depth, although I should have added some to the sides also but next time I will do that.

I was pleased with the way it turned out and I was actually done on June 30th since that when the challenge ended. I've just gotten buy again and haven't gotten any blogging done, but I will do better in the future, promise.

Thanks to everyone who has left comments on my blog, I have tried to answer all of them, but some don't have their email address in there profile so I have been unable to answer.

I want to thank Mixpix for her comment on wetting the cloth before I do the mono printing. My anniversary was also in June and my DH got me the 1st set of Quilting Arts TV, and one of the shows had some mono printing in it. It looked to me like Pokey was using regular acrylic paints, rather than fabric paints, so I used my coupons at Michael's and got myself 3 jars of fluid acrylics and I'm going to try the mono printing again. The fluid acrylics are thicker and seem to be more opaque, so we will see what happens next. I will post on this blog how they turn out in case anyone would like to try the technique themselves.