Tuesdays with Elinor

My good friend Elinor Burwash and I have been working through Fabric Embellishment, The Basics & Beyond. My friend got her copy at Houston and I was so enticed I picked mine up at Earthly Goods so that I could join in the fun. Elinor had very generously offered to make me dinner and to lend me one of her Bernina so that I could come straight from work to play at her house. The get-togethers have stopped for the time being as we both concentrate on other projects but I wanted to share with you some of my completed pages. Elinor had made the decision to complete hers with the intention of creating a sampler wall hanging in analogous range of colours which she will no doubt share some day on her own blog pages.

My choice was to make mine into a book and to give my pages body, I used a sheet of "Heat & Bond" between my batting and false backing, cut to within a quarter inch of my outside edge. That is something you do not want to sew through!! False backing...because I want this to be neater and no distraction.

Page 1: Weaving Fabric: A too-far-gone lace tablecloth woven with hand dyed cotton from Cathy Tomm. A channel stylized branch with beading, buttons and seed stitching. The edge is finished with a novelty yarn.

Page 2: Adding Flair with stitches and bits: novelty edges adorned with beaded fringe, bias tape, eyelash yarn, rick-rack and anything else that can be sewn in. I finished the page in envelope style and mounted to stiff black felt with buttons.



Page 3: Crazy Quilting (traditional style) This was my first completed piece of crazy quilting. It should have come with a warning, it is very addicting. Finished with embroidery, beading and buttons. Thank you to Judy Hatt for the beginning centre that I just kept adding to.

Page 4: Crazy Quilting (deconstructed with arc-i-texture cirlces): I used a variety of black/white/red scraps leaving the mother goose visible through the arc-i-texture circle (a technique I learned from my good friend Kim Caskey). Finished with chenille yarn and a traditional binding.

Page 5: Rubber Stamping (with covered clothes cord coils): a warm August afternoon spent stamping and painting in the of shade of a linden tree. Margie Davidson's garden was the inspiration for the fern stamping (what she can't do with a fern is hardly worth mentioning). I loved the texture that the background stamping created and it was only made complete with batik covered clothesline cord made to represent fiddlehead ferns. Finishing included seed beads and an eye-lash yarn edging.

There are more pages soon to be completed and shared.