"sweets" for candy

I'm terribly late, but this is the last of the original Receiver's Choice blocks I designed and made for an exchange with the Sparkly Chickens Yahoo Group. This one is for Candy T., who decided to choose a theme as sweet as her nature and her first name ("Sweets"). Her favourite colours are pink & orange, so is it any wonder I included them in the piece?




Fused applique, bead embroidery, a few daubs/splashes of acrylic paint, hand embroidery and angelina fibres. The fabrics are a combination of batiks, hand dyes and a small pack of fossil ferns that had been gathering dust for years. The sky was made by dabbing on white perle acrylic paint and then letting it dry. The white sky looked a little too stark, so I added a layer of misty fuse, some pink angelina, covered it all with parchment paper and added heat with the iron to fuse it all together. Fast, easy and very effective!




Ice cream sunday mountain, sherbert hills, lollipop trees, a candyfloss sky and a cherry on top.... How perfect for my sweet little friend!



This block makes me smile!!! How about you?


The project is going on hold for a while! I'm still missing a couple of blocks in my own theme (botanical), so I think I'll wait for them to arrive before working on my own block. Stay tuned!!!

hot & cold - made by moi

Tada!

Two more original blocks to show for my Receiver's Choice swap over at the Sparkly Chickens Yahoo Group. They're very, very late, but certainly not forgotten! The first is for Liz who's chosen theme was "Fiesta". What the heck did I know about fiestas? I got the colourful part, but some of the well known images had already been used by other participants. I toyed with the idea of the image of a crisp white cotton skirt, complete with colourful embroidery and rickrack. Then I thought of those crepe paper flowers we used to make in high school. Rejected both ideas when I couldn't get my head around them laying flat on a 9 1/2" unfinished block (in my head, the skirt required movement and the flowers needed to be 3-D). I agonized and procrastinated until that brilliant light bulb moment when I realized that the sun was an integral part of the whole fiesta experience. How could I resist? After that the block worked up quite quickly. Fused applique, combined with free motion machine stitching and hand embroidery.





Working with Cheryl's "Winter" theme was a much cooler experience (if you pardon the pun). No angst, just pure pleasure!! I live in Canada and although this winter has been unusually gentle, it's quite easy to remember the effects of the cold. Naked trees are a favourite image of mine (to stitch, draw or photograph), so if one is good, then seven of them are even better! The technique I used for the trees involved free motion embroidery, using two colours of rayon thread (royal blue and purple) in the same needle. Yes, you CAN do this! The bonus is that you get a lovely blended stitch look, with only half the time and effort. To add to the icy image, I added fused spiky triangles of purple to the top and bottom of the block. A little more free motion stitching, some hand embroidery and the block was fini!




Only one block left to go!!! I've been mulling over Candy's "Sweets" concept and I think that I'm ready to take the first stitch!! - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -