I used my own hand dyed cottons for the water and sky, white organza for the sun, pale turquoise lame for the sails, and solid black cotton for the boat hulls. I used Quilters Dream wool batting and Superior “Lava” threads in the sky and water and metallic silver in the sun.

I have to run, as my plane is boarding…but you should head over to Fiberactions and check the fabulous pieces from the other artists.

And here is a tiny sneak peak of my challenge quilt….the full reveal will be on Tuesday….I’ll be posting mine from the airport

Hope all the Mother’s out there have a wonderful day!

“Sadie” is a painted wholecloth quilt. She measures 25 1/2″ x21 1/2″ and was painted with textile paints, inks and pigments on PFD fabric prior to quilting.  She was quilted with Superior threads…Bottom Line and Lava to be exact, and has 2 layers of batting…Quilters Dream Puff and Quilters Dream Wool.  She was finished with a curved, hand painted bias binding and embellished with Swarovski  crystals.

“Sadie”, along with her sister “Henrietta”  is being donated to the IMQA  Audacious Auction for Education being held at MQS on Thursday, May 17,2012 at 7:30pm

“Henrietta” is a painted wholecloth quilt. She measures 23 1/2″ x20 1/2″ and was painted with textile paints, inks and pigments on PFD fabric prior to quilting.  She was quilted with Superior threads…Bottom Line and Lava to be exact, and has 2 layers of batting…Quilters Dream Puff and Quilters Dream Wool.  She was finished with a curved, hand painted bias binding and embellished with Swarovski  crystals.

“Henrietta”, along with her sister “Sadie”  is being donated to the IMQA  Audacious Auction for Education being held at MQS on Thursday, May 17,2012 at 7:30pm

My 2 quilts for the MQS auction are completely done; that means bound,sleeves on, labels on and suitably blinged!  Yeah, I know I made that word up

But a good feeling to be done. Photos of them tomorrow.

So…….what should my next show quilt be?

For tonight, I think I’ll knit!

Turquoise is my chosen complement, so my 5 analogous colors are:

Red, Red-Orange, Orange,Yellow -Orange, and Orange-Yellow.  And I added a touch of black and white.

Yeah, I know…really stepping out of my color box….not!  maybe next time
At any rate, I made good progress today.  Got all the pieces cut for my background; did the necessary piecing and applique and finished the background. The applique motifs are drawn, cut and fused ready to be stitched to the background tomorrow.

The reveal is not until the 15th, but here is a look at the fabrics I used.

Any guesses as to what the outcome will be?

I’ll be following her to MQS on May 15th and hope to see lots of my friends there!

Also today I shipped  the “Queen’s” entry package off to Houston for the IQA jury process, so keep your fingers crossed!

Now it’s back to work…got to bind and bling my 2 small auction quilts for MQS  and make my Fiberactions challenge piece that’s also due on the 15th.  Guess I better go get busy!!

I’m really pleased with her… and though she isn’t perfect, she is better in every way than my last  large painted mermaid quilt. What do you think?

Mermaid’s Reef (completed in 2006)

and Queen of the Nereids (completed this week )

All that’s left now is to keep my fingers crossed that she does well in competition!

But that’s OK…plenty of other things to do.  For example, I spent the morning burying threads on the “Queen” and painting the fabric for the binding, and printing my label.

After that, and some housekeeping chores, I took out the knitting.  I have really not done much knitting the last few weeks, so it was nice to get back to it.

You may remember, I’m working on 2 lace shawls…both red; both the same pattern.  One is lace weight merino that I’m beading as I knit; the other not beaded and with Aloft yarn (a lace kid mohair/silk blend).

They are both about 36 inches long now.  I work on the beaded one during the day because I need to sit at a table to do the beading  part; and the non beaded one at night.  I like both of them!

OK, photos..beaded first

and the non beaded one

different but both nice, I think.

I ALWAYS clean my table and carriage tracks and machine wheels before I start to quilt…to make sure there is no lint or loose thread boogers in the tracks or wrapped around a wheel. Usually I do this during the 3 minute machine warm up.

Except today. I got distracted and then forgot.  Guess what?  There was a blob of loose thread wrapped around one of the carriage wheels.

So all those wobbles…caused by the thread caught in  the wheel. What took just a couple minutes to do, took almost an hour to pick out…ugh!

But, at least it wasn’t micro stitching!  And the other good thing is, it gave me a chance to re-evaluate my thread choice AND to make a better one. So starting over can be a good thing.

Definitely like this color better

And then done with that section

Yep, it all worked out for the best.

And a couple corals that I finished detailing…red

and purple

Not a bad days work after all!