Monday, August 9, 2010

Reuseable & Recycleable shopping bag

I made this reusable shopping bag  patterned after the brown paper bag and added handles. (next time I'm adding some padding to the handles)  It can even have a brown paper bag for a liner.  Using a paper liner means you don't have to launder the cloth bag as often.  A recent segment on a morning news program discussed the cleanliness issues of using reusable shopping bags, laundering and lining them are a couple of solutions.  We usually have some of these brown paper bags because when we forget our reusable bags we always ask for paper (where available) because I recycle them in the garden (more on that in a minute).  Now they can be reused as liners first and then off to the garden .
Paper bags in the garden:  I put them down as a weed barrier and scatter some mulch on top to hide them.  They decompose nicely after they do their job and we use less mulch this way.  

Friday, August 6, 2010

"Stargazer"

This photo of a Stargazer Lily from the garden was perfect just the way it was.  The only editing I used was cropping it to size.  After printing it on fabric I quilted the surface with 10 different threads. This is my new favorite quilting technique.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

"Petunia"

My first quilted photo.  This photo of a petunia from the patio was altered with a photo altering program on the computer, printed on fabric, and free motion quilted.  Thank you Beth Wheeler for the inspiration.  I bought both books after seeing the preview show so there will be more. 

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Sailing East

Another little convergence quilt.  Quite different from the first one.  A shout out to Leah Day for free motion quilting inspiration and Ricky Tims, king of convergence.