Microwave-Dyeing Wool

I made a bunch of felted wool ornaments last fall. So when my friend Mary was given a package of white wool roving, she shared it with me. Thanks Mary! The next day Nikki Wheeler posted a blog about Food Color Yarn. I had heard about dyeing wool with Koolaid and decided to try it.

Here is the finished wool dyed with Tropical Punch Koolaid.

Last year I needle-felted wool roving onto a purchased felted wool purse in the style of Artgirlz.

The small purse below is made with felted wool sweaters. The patterned sweater in the background was given to me by Pat. It's on the back of the purse which was made for her daughter.

Ice Day

After two days of ice and no school the house is back to the normal quiet. Ahh.

"Rock On!" Challenge

I finished and mailed my entry in Quilting Arts Magazine's "Rock On!" challenge yesterday. It was fun to take a break from the big quilts I'm working on to do a small fun piece. This is titled "Are YOU Addicted to Love!". Wish me luck!

Small Quilts with Deborah Boschert

Yesterday I took a class titled "Small Art Quilts – Designing a Series" that was taught by Deborah Boschert for the Denton Quilt Guild. She taught us how to create a series of small fiber art quilts using common design elements and principles of design. You can see her hand-made book describing the class here.

This is the beginning of Johanna's series.

Here's one of mine.

And Virginia's.

Here's Jo's.

And Dawn's.

It's a fun way to spend the day and way better to create six at a time.
The others were equally interesting (and different) but the photos from my phone are not worth posting. Now I'm all inspired to create some more!

Thanks Deborah!

Calendar Boxes and Block Challenge

While at coffee with a bunch of quilters, someone mentioned that they couldn't bear to throw away their old quilt calendars. I remembered a box that was made from squares that are cut from greeting cards. Here are some instructions. I thought it would be easy to adapt the instructions to calendar pages and showed everyone how to make these boxes at the next two coffees.

Each year the Quilters Guild of Dallas issues a challenge to make a block for a quilt to be made for their collection. This year the theme is Oriental Expressions. We had to use the provided black, red and gold fabric in an original oriental design and had to include one 3D element. I've made a challenge block every year since 2000. I like that it makes me practice my traditional appliqué skills. Here is the block I did for this year's challenge.

Happy New Year!

We had freezing rain yesterday that coated everything with ice. I love this photo by DRC photographer Al Key. One of my resolutions for 2009 was to update my system software. Yesterday was a good day to stay in and fool with the computer.