THE ICE BLOSSOM PRINCESS

The first thing you should know about Ice Blossom is that it is cold where she comes from. She is not having a bad hair day; she is wearing an fur hood (faux, to be PC), Arctic fox dyed to match her ensemble). She's not fat, I mean fluffy, she's bulked up in layers for the freezing climate! To Ice Blossom each snowflake is a unique and magical flower. She was made as a gift of friendship to teach her new owner to make bouquets in the wonderland of winter instead of pining for spring bloom.

Ice blossom was created for a holiday friendship doll exchange within the International Crazy Quilt Group. Guidelines stipulated she must be pieced and embellished CQ style with an emphasis on beading.

GETTING READY FOR SCHOOL

These are batiks I bought yesterday for Michelle Verbeek's Cat Sack, an online class at Joggles. The class is already on Lesson 2, so I'm eager to get started. The project is a quilted handbag and uses non-fused applique or layering and FME (free motion embroidery) in the technique. Here's hoping I'm not in over my head!

As if I wasn't fretting enough already, a supply list for another Joggles class came the other day. I signed on for Mai-Liis Peacock's Healing Art Doll session. I picked up a couple of batik fat quarters for this, as well.

Both supply lists called for batiks or handdyes. I was shocked to discover how few I had in my stash. I will address that problem forthwith!!!

TAST 41 & 42: Lace Border & Twisted Satin Stitches

I wasn't that thrilled with the lace border stitch. Instead of working up light and frothy, Ithought it was an awkward stitch and probably wouldn't be put off if it were called something else. I had difficulty with consistency and felt my stitches looked sloppy compared to others I viewed that were tidily rendered. Still I wouldn't discard it from my repetoire.

I started the horseshoe shape with #5 cotton perle, trying a curve and variegated heights. The half crescent at the bottom was my attempt to slant the stitches. The vertical squiggles next to the to that I just loved with it was just the perle, sort of a freeform zigzag by altering the sides.

Unfortunately I realized it was the lace border stitch, but a ziggy zaggy coral. I attempted to

remedy by going back with the metallic, but without good results. Had I tried this with an even line of stitches it might have worked. I tried to repeat the zigzag look above in lace border just with metallic. Unh. Not crazy about it. Back to the horseshoe (kinda) shape. I used the metallic to work the back side of the curve and was satisfied; however, later I tried to fill in with an the metallic worked over the inner curve.

Since there was still space I chose to fill in with this week's Twisted Satin stitch. I liked this stitch and will likely use it often. I found the metallic a little hard keeping tension; I'm sure this wouldn't be a problem with another thread. I used long and short stitches for the motifs. I tried an extra wrap with the longer ones, but abandoned the idea. For the beaded version I did the same with pattern. Again, maybe it was the thread, but I don't like how the beads move around, especially on the longer twists. Maybe a second bead? I really meant to try placing the bead on the straight stitch before the wrap to see if there would be more stability. Maybe this is was what we were supposed to do and I misread. I'll go back and check.

BREAKING AWAY

BREAKING AWAY
Originally uploaded by Fiberdabbler

PINK FOR THE CURE! After receiving an invitation to join
www.flickr.com/groups/passionatelypinkforthecure/
I decided this picture would be especially appropriate to submit. Consider it breaking the bonds of breast cancer. Since the shisha
"mirror" is actually a coin, let it serve as encouragement for others to donate for the cause.

Uploaded by Fiberdabbler on 20 Sep 07, 11.54AM EDT.

DRAGON FIRE

TAST 33 - Scroll Stitch

TAST 34 - Portuguese Knotted Stem Stitch

TAST 40 - Linked Double Chain

I gathered cotton perles and flosses in shades from peach to burnt orange, added a spool of sparkly peach ribbon (2mm) and went to work on a piece of craft felt. My only intention was to make lines of textured color utilizing missing TAST stitches. Honestly it's just an abstraction, although I admit I thought of flames and feathers, a swan, a dragon, even a shrimp. I also thought of underwater plantlife and dried grasses. I resisted temptation of depicting anything and just kept following my initial line of knotted stem with some deviation here and there for interest.