Summertime

I hope you don't mind if I share some of my photos from our trip to Ontario. We had such a great time visiting friends and family in various places (Kingston, Toronto, the Bruce Peninsula) and I had fun recording it all on my little point and shoot Canon Powershot SD 750. I won't bore you with too many, I promise....just some of my favs to give you a flavour of the three weeks. Then it'll be back to sewing, quilting & fabric (I hope. I'm picking up my machine from the dealer tomorrow. It's been gone for 2 months now and I really, really need to get busy on my Doll Quilt Swap project, like PRONTO!). And if you can last, there's a sewing picture down there eventually.

I'll start with Georgian Bay and Bruce Peninsula National Park. This is natures most beautiful (and frigid!) swimming pool. Crystalline waters over limestone. Breathtaking.

Hiking on the Bruce Trail through all of the incredible geology is pretty fab.

So is the cliff jumping!

Here are some images from the 4-corner hamlet of Keady's Tuesday flea market. The hugest radishes I've ever seen!

QUACK!

At the cottage Flynn and I did a lot of this:

While D did this:

And the boys did this (well, usually the sail was up!):

And, luckily I managed a couple of days of this:

I wonder if the owner of this car was getting some sewing in on her cottage time as well?

And finally, I'll leave you with my two favourite pix of the trip from my Dad's water lily garden. I procrastinated for 2 weeks and finally on our last morning I went down to the shallow channel where he has planted these stunning flowers in the bottom silt.

Wasn't I lucky? It was a good thing I waited so long, look who decided to visit at the same time:

I always seem to do my best work at the last minute. So....to my Doll Quilt I go! Back soon with some vintage quilts I told you about a few days ago....

The Machine Stitch

Sunday's workshop was less contemplative (see post below), more free form. Less quiet, more machine buzz. Anni Hunt gave us plenty of inspiration to get us started - showing her amazing work stretched on canvass frames. Anni is a City and Guilds graduate Fibre Artist, a generous teacher and generally (like most quilters I know) a pleasure to be around! This workshop, called "Stitched Images" began with technology: transferring an image to fabric via a colour inkjet printer. Easier said than done! The receiving fabric included organza, canvass, cotton duck, muslin, and possibly others. From here the instructions were thus: go crazy! stitch! stencil! Shiva paint! burn! puff-paint!

I brought two of my photos, one scenery, one a bark study I showed you here. I like to photograph pathways. This one is from a very cool place in the Netherlands called Schokland - a medieval village that once sat isolated on a teeny island, but now is surrounded by reclaimed farmland.

In photoshop, I converted it to gray scale and ramped up the contrast a bit. Then with Anni's help, I printed the image onto organza and cotton. The plan was to layer the organza image on top of the cotton one for some depth. Sewing leaders around the organza allowed me to hoop it so I could do some stitching on my machine.

Added a little red and grey, some olivey-brown to the tree trunk....

Then, after removing the leaders, layered it over the cotton image and put those two on a piece of cotton duck. Then, more stitching to attach the three layers together. After stitching, I cut away some of the organza to show the detailed texture of the photo underneath (between the railings of the pathway), extended some lines off the image, and filled in the foliage of the tree.

It is now ready to be stretched over a piece of foam core and mounted in a frame.

I loved this opportunity to marry photo and fabric with thread!! I'm still working on the bark image, doing some hand embroidery and considering other ways to embellish that photo...I'll share soon....