Autumn Explorations, A New Venture

It all started with an online course with Susan Sorrell called "Doodling Designs". This class encourages you to enlarge on your doodling. I still haven't finished all the lessons because I got hung up on Lesson 2 which suggests students use magazine images to create doodle designs. One makes a collage of magazine images and then you trace the shapes that you like and then you embroider these shapes.

I started using the collages and then experimented with family photos, so between that and making more zentangles and framing them I havent finished all of Susan's lessons. I will get back to them after Christmas because there is still more embroidery that I want to try.

Here are the collages. I haven't done this before so I'm sure anyone could make much better
collages.

my first fabric Zentangle

Thought I would try a Zentangle in fabric.
I drew the zentangle on cotton with a Micron pen 05
then I embroidered the face and a few lines on the checkerboard. Then fused it onto
a pieced, fm stitched background , satin stitched around the edges and applied the whole
thing to a canvas wrapped frame.
This was all a first attempt at the possibility of making Zentangles on fabric. Think I might
try a few more.

"Dots and Dashes" and "A Bright Sunshine;y Day"

These two small hangings are my attempt at stamping.
The dots and dashes background was painted, then stamped and embroidered and fm stitched.
Background of bright sunshiney day was a commercial fabric , stamped, fm stitched and then
hand embroidered here andthere.

Wild Garden

Wild Garden has been sitting around for a long time waiting for a decision on how to finish it.
The background was done by stuffing a fat quarter (or larger) into a tuna fish can and dumping
any leftover paint over it, whenever I was painting fabric. This was left for a few weeks and
then taken out and pressed. I was quite pleased with the result and thought it looked like a
good background for a garden of some sort. shapes were cut out for leaves, flowers on upper
right were stamped cut oranges. others were some fake flowers cut up, white ones were shapes
cut from crocheted doilies. tulle was placed over this and a lot of fm stitching done. left part
is covered with cheesecloth and then fme. /Butterflies were cut from a christmas stocking.
I really enjoyed working on this piece.

Zentangle Card a new interest

I have discovered a new thing. doodling making various patterns called Zentangles.
I think I am addicted. Anyway its a great times passer when one is too tired or too sore to
sew.
Usually they are done with black on white. I thought I would do white on black for a change.
Here is my first black card.

Framed Postcards

I decided to cover a small gallery wrapped canvas with fabric and place a postcard in the
center. My friends seem to like receiving my postcard efforts so thought I would try to dress
them up a little for a Christmas gift. These are the results

This piece started out as a practice piece using water
soluble crayons and using flowers as my inspiration. I wasnt too impressed with my work but
when my daughter Shannon saw it she thought I should do
something with it so I did some threadpainting, and quilting
and used a pillowcase method to finish the edges but
then what to do?? I decided to paint a wrapped canvas stretcher
and mounted the piece on it with a lot of little thread ties
through the back. It's certainly a little different from anything I have tried before.