Sunday, December 27, 2009

Starting







Just starting to think about Maya's leaves pages which is my January one. Have decided to use coloured fabric and different embroidery stitches and the shapes of different leaves. Hope it works! Here's some stuff I might use and also what I think is the start of the page, very crumpled as I just dumped it on the scanner!

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!



I hope all of you have a wonderful and safe holiday season!

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Caught Up

I am now caught up on reading the blog. It is almost 5 am so back to catching up on reading e mails. Dreaming Quilts : ) Carmen

Sunday, December 6, 2009

The sea


I sewed some exercise pages for the first book page of this project with the theme
"The Sea". I found quilting exercises at 365 days of free motion quiltin. On the pages tagged easy the motives are waves, sea algaes and curvy key. The curvy key is not really a motive of the sea but I think it looks like the water on a day without wind.
First I thought about making a fabric book with all the exercises. But perhaps I will make a hanging.....

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Thinking about TREES


It is not so much for its beauty that a forest makes a claim on men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air, that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit. Robert Louis Stevenson.
When I read this quote by Stevenson, I am reminded of the feeling of reverent awe I have when I walk through the California Redwoods. The hush and majesty of these old trees always calms my heart. Somehow, I intend to use this photo as a starting point for Ruth's page. I'm starting to gather fabric and threads, but I'm glad I have over a month to pull it all together.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Castles

I have almost finalised my design for Carmens page with 'Castles 'as the theme, now I have to make a decision on what techniques I will use , that will be the hard part I think.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

New Badge for Everyone's Blogs


Liz W. has made this wonderful badge to go on every one's blog. I've sent you all an e-mail with the file containing the badge. Let me know if you haven't received it yet. Just follow the instructions in the e-mail and you can put the badge on your own blog and then others who are reading your blog, can click on the badge and they will be "magically transferred" here. So spread the word and add the badge to your blog! Thanks Liz for all your hard work on this project.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Made it.

I think I made it and have signed up on this blog. Hoping by the time this starts Life will slow down just a bit. I am looking forward to working on pages.
My name is Carmen, I under estimate the time it will take me to do things. Bear with me this may be my New Years Resolution. Trying not to take on more than I can realistically do. I have a Husband who is very busy getting our crop acres in. Two grown boys who sometimes need their parents. They each have the most beautiful girlfriends that I already love dearly. I have started on Christmas presents.
My Theme was Castles. Anything associated will be fine. I just picked it out of the air. Relax and have fun creating. Dreaming Quilts : ) Carmen

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Request from Elizabeth

I had a request from Elizabeth to put the schedule and information about the swap on the blog. The way I've done this is to put the list of all the participants and their themes at the very bottom of the blog page. I didn't think it was good idea to list every one's addresses etc. because of security reasons. You can figure out the schedule by looking at the person below you on the list, that is the person for whom you are making a page for the first month. The next person down is the following month etc. Once you've reached the bottom of the list, you go back to the top of the list to complete all the rest of the participant's pages. So you can use the list at the bottom to figure out your schedule if for some reason you don't have your written copy right at hand. I hope that makes sense and if you have any questions, let me know.

Getting started

Hey, I'm so impressed with all the prep work everyone's doing! I've just cut out my templates as the material I want to use had been folded and so needs flattening out. As I did it I thought to also cut out a 'negative' of the shape so that if I colour/dye/patch/whatever some backing fabric for a page I could use that as a frame to choose the right part of the 'pattern' to use. I've found that really helpful before. Also I cut the template out in the shiny paper packaging that printer paper comes in so I can iron this onto fabrics and cut round and re-use. I think there's some proper stuff available but we don't have here.
While I was sitting thinking about the pages, I decided to try to use as many different techniques etc. as poss. I did a foundation C&G course in the UK before I retired out here and learned so much that I don't use so I got my books out and ended up with this list:-
Hand & Machine embroidery, Patchwork, trad and crazy, Scrunched brown/tissue paper, Silk paper, Wet and Needle felt, Silver foil,plastic packaging etc, Metal, Resists of wax,PVA,gutta, Applique and reverse, Stamping, Crayoning to colour, Transfer crayons and of course dying of all kinds.
What can you add to this?
Also when you're doing my pages I'd love for you to try some unusual techniques or materials as well - jsut looking at some of the mixed media work on different artists' websites etc. makes my mouth water and my brain hurt sometimes!! So creative!

Monday, November 16, 2009

The tree of life

What do you think of this Cobi?, i love the shapes and the mixture of shapes he has used.

Looking at Klimt

Gosh those designs are looking good Trillion, I have been doing some thinking about my first page i have to make and i have had some inspiration from Klimt, I am hoping Cobi you like Klimt, maybe you could let me know if you don't before i go too far with this. I love the shapes and colours he uses

A Request

I think that it might be a good idea to have a place on the blog to have a master list of the rotation schedule and the themes and addresses for each participant. Inevitably questions will arise and it would be very handy to have it on file and accessable thru the blog so we can all get to it!!
Just a thought!
I hope that everyone is having a good Monday!
Best Regards!!!
Elizabeth

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Brainstorming

My first theme is "The Sea". How to start? To get my ideas sorted I draw some quick ATCs:
You can look at the sea from different points:
1. you can look at the whole. That means
- the sky above the water with sea birds,
- the surface of the water with ships, boats, lighthouses, swimmer,
- the animals under water like fishes and jellyfishes,
- the live on the bottom of the sea with mussels, snails, crabs.
2. you can look only at the surface. That means at the structure of the waves or the colors of the water.
3. you can concentrate on the fishes.
4. you can only look at the bottom of the sea.

I am not yet sure which possibility I will choose.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Goddess Research


I've made a notebook to keep everything together and I've started on my research for my first theme for Johoanna which is "The Goddess Within". I always like to look up the symbolism and some good quotes as well. Here's a quote from Shakespeare, "Go to your bosom; knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know."


I also found this very cool photo online of a "tree goddess". And another quote about reaching within ourselves by Edward Hopper, "Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world."

I have some ideas that might work for my page but I don't want to give too many hints as it is early going yet. I have a tendency to think of several ideas and then finally go with one. This part is so much fun though, coming up with a variety of ideas and then letting everything rest in my brain for a while and then out pops the final plan.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Getting Organized?

Hi, all.  It was so exciting to get the guidelines and the lists for this swap.  Once I saw the list of themes I couldn't just do nothing!  So I started thinking about how I could keep a handle on all these ideas, addresses, deadlines, etc.  Yipes!

indexcards

Answer?  Index cards!  I made a 4x6 card for each month and wrote the recipients name, theme, and particular likes or dislikes.  I also wrote the country they live in so the overseas pages can be mailed a little early (maybe?).

As I go through magazines, blogs, and generally around town, I will grab photos and/or thoughts relating to the themes and stick them on - or with - the index card.  You can see that I have a few already. 

I'm thinking this is pretty brilliant for someone who is as scattered and dis-organized as I am.  LOL!  Time will tell if it actually works, however!

What are the rest of you doing to prepare?

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Swap Information E-mailed Today

Hi everyone! I e-mailed out the swap information today. If you didn't receive it, please let me know. If anyone hasn't introduced themselves here or shown photos of their work, we'd love to hear from you. I'm excited to get started and I might not get any pages going before the holidays but my little brain is swirling with ideas!

Friday, November 6, 2009

We Have A Winner

Poll

Everyone has voted for the page shape we will use . . . and this is how the results look.  A template will be distributed with the swap guidelines before long.  We can start creating soon!

P.S.  There are 13 votes because I planned to vote only to break a tie.  But I like this choice!  LOL!

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Some of Elizabeth's work!


I have already introduced myself in a previous post but at that time I did not have a chance to share some of my owrk. The tree's above and the floowing group of pictures are projects that I ahve been working on to deliver to a local gallery , here in Virginia, for Chirstmas sales. Except for the green batik tree at the front, all of the fabreics atht I am using on my trees is of my own design. I print my fabrics using acrylic paints and each one is a unique monoprint.


I made these trees using a very tattered Swedish Linen dish towel from my grandmother's home. We never had paper towels nor a dishwasher, so these towels played a very important role in my grandmother's wonderful kitchen. I will be making more of these as gifts for family members. These trees are for my personal Christmas collection.


I made these heart ornaments using scrappy fabric that I made with fusible web and free motion embroidery. Then I added some quick hand embroidery and beads and sequins and backed them with a wonderful red vintage silk fabric.




Here is one of my Fabric/Paper bird ornaments. I fuse all sorts of vintae text and tissue papers to fabric and then cut and stitch ornaments form the collaged piece. I wired on a real twig and added some leaf beads and berries.




This small collage falls somewhere between an ornament and a very mini art Quilt.
The back ground is a baby wipe that was used to clean hands during a fabric painting workshop. I have a hard time throwing serrendipitous art backgrounds like this , away!!! I added a stamping with one of my hand carved stamps, a quote and then embellished with some monoprinted fabric scraps that had accumulated around my sewing machine. I finished it off with a few beads ( MUST have beads somewhere!!) and a hanging string. I backed this piece with more of my monoprinted fabric!


The following group of pictures are examples of some of the fabric book pages that I ahve amde in the past for various swaps. The criteria for many of these was that they be 6x6 squares, with various themes. Blogger has insited on posting some of these pictures on end so I do appologize for that!!




The theme for this piece was Nature and one of the color choices was green. I used some fo my sunprinted fabric and hand dyed trims for this piece.


This piece was for a gal who requested that we work all in white. I used various vintage white pieces and included a quote from an old dictionary that I stitched behind tulle and trapped some pearls and white beads in the pocket.



I finished the back with white damask linen and added a tag with some beads and mop buttons. This is how I generally finish my page backs.




This page was for an Ocean themed book. ( Sorry that it is on it's side) you can click on the pictures to enlarge to see details, if you want to.) I used some bleach stamping on batik , added some vintage lace for sea foam and used sand paper for the sandy waters edge. I also stiched on some sea shells from my collection and added more sparkly beads for water droplets!

The following two pieces are pages for a different swap. They include both fabric and paper and stampings with my hand carved stamps and OF COURSE, MORE MOP BUTTONS AND BEADS!!



By now I think that you can tell that I love buttons and beads!!!!

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Another Introduction

My name is Johoanna and I live in Orange, NSW, Australia. I'm 37 years old and totally addicted to craft. I've been making and creating since I was small. I grew up in a family where my mother crocheted and sewed, my aunt painted, and my granny knitted.

I love using thrift shop finds in my artwork. I'm forever looking for that something special to add to any current and future pieces.


The pictures to the right are examples of some of my skills. I spin, knit, crochet, embroider, and sew. I also loved working with mixed media.
My theme for this swap is "The Goddess Within". I believe that each woman is more talented and more special than we are led to believe from others. For too long we have accepted the place we have been given in society, but it is time to rise up and acknowledge our beauty, and our value.
I am looking forward to working with all the ladies on the swap.












Hi,

my name is Trillian. In real live I have an other name but in bloggerland/blogosphere I like to be Trillian. Called after the lady in the Hitchhiker written by Douglas Adams.

I like hand crafting as long as I can think.

Knitting and sewing I learned at school. In the past I liked to knit more than to sew. At the moment I prefer sewing.

In February this year I started to make fabric postcards and to swap them. Therefore I started my blog.

I haven't made fabric book pages before. So it is very exciting for me to start this project.
My theme is Fairy Tales. I have chosen this theme because I was in a fabric postcard swap with the same theme and began to read fairy tales. They are so interesting. And I like the interpretations of the stories.

Hope the next year will be full of positive surprises.
Looking forward swapping with you.

Hello

My name is Mandy, an ex-teacher (Primary School) in my mid fifties. I am very lucky to live in the heart of the old county of Cheshire in the UK.

A self-taught textile enthusiast, I love to play with threads, fabrics and wool. I make felt (the wet, messy way), quilt, knit and enjoy free machine embroidery.

(This piece is called "Tree" - free-machine embroidery over scraps of fabric on a home-made felt base.)
Never having made a fabric book, I am very excited about working with this interesting group of people. I know I shall learn a lot in their company.
My topic for this project is "The Sea". Living a distance from the sea, I really love to go and watch the waves whenever I get the chance. I love water, its sounds and movement.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Samples of my work

This is a book I made at college for an exam, it is based on a place called Spurn Point which land that juts out into the North Sea. It forms a complete circle and each page has a different technique on it.

A stocking made with crazy patchwork and SRE, I love this work.


A small envelope bag using Scumbling

Friday, October 30, 2009

Hello

Hello.....this is Maya or Embellisher. I'm in my early forties and I live with my husband in Bangalore, a city which has been transformed from a pensioners paradise to the Silicon Valley of India. The transformation continues unabated, its chaotic and dynamic but I thrive on it.
I'm a textile designer by training and qualification and I've worked in the craft sector and I get called in to teach basic design and colour at a Fashion Institute from time to time.I also embroider and make silk scarves.
My interest lies in embroidery, knitting, crochet, patchwork and weaving but I do indulge in bead work- no training just following tutorials on the net, dyeing - I love shibori
I've only made one fiber book ever and it was completed just last week. I'm simply ecstatic.

I try to live my life with the above saying as my mantra. (page for July in the Take it Further Fiber book)
I like cross stitch and beads and sequins. ( page for May in The Take it Further Fiber book)

Journaling is something I do too. Interesting labels, ticket stubs, stickers on fruit, and feathers find their way into my journals and diaries. You'll find leaves and flowers between pages of my books. Before the advent of fiber books it was paper and journals but i must say fiber books are fantastic and I'm so glad that in following my bliss the exploration of this format and medium is going to be furthered. This book of The traveling Pages is going to be very special.
My chosen theme is leaves. Shapes, colours, medicinal properties, myths/legends etc about leaves are all welcome. I have no preferences or dislikes of what should or shouldn't be on the page you create for me.
Have a good weekend tricking or treating. Halloween is in India too, that's globalisation for you.

Introduction

Hello to everyone my name is Juliette I am 62 and I live in the North East of England on the Coast, so my book will be about the seashore which i love. I have lived alone for almost 20 years now and have learned to enjoy my own company. I have 3 children and 6 Grandchildren. I took a degree in Fine and applied arts 8 years ago and have various City and Guilds Qualifications in Embroidery , Stumpwork , Patchwork /Quilting ,Teacher training etc, I am still learning and just now am revisiting machine embroidery and mixed media, you could say the eternal student. I used to teach adults in City and Guilds at my local college but am now retired.
I belong to my locaol Embroidery guild and we have lots of wonderful workshops , the most recent last week was called 'Dyeing and getting plastered ' Yes I know very funny. I do enjoy working in mixed media and this was fun using plaster etc.
At the moment I have some knitted blankets on the go for comforters for my grandchildren to use up the mountain of wool I have, I need to downsize somewhat. The machine is always out and just now working on samples for college.
I am so looking forward to these pages we are undertaking I have made several books in the past both fabric and paper and it is always good fun.
Good luck to everyone
Regards Juliette

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Cobi

Time to introduce myself. My name is Cobi, I'm a 48 yr old single mom. My daughter is 22 and lives with me. We have 2 cats. I live in the Netherlands, in Leiden, a city in the west of my country, not far from the North Sea. I've been ill for over 8 yrs now and its impossible for me to have a job. So I devote all my time to fabric, thread, needles and shuttles. I love crazy quilting and I try to learn more techniques all the time. I do stumpwork, Brazilian Ebroidery, ribbon embroider, needle lace and beading. I don't hesitate to paint on a block. I participate in rr blocks all the time. Right now I'm planning on learning Mediterranean knotted lace. I've learned to tat only to be able to add edgings and doilies/motifs to my cq work. I also make art quilts. I belong to an art quilt group that meets in my home town once a month. We do lots of swaps, exchanges and rr's. I cut my own stencils and stamps. I work with heatgun and soldering iron. I love to play with organza and solufleece. I dye, paint, stamps, experiment with shibori and glue resists. I use a lot of flowers in my work. I swap fabric ATCs, AA's, fabric book pages and fibercards. I participate in cq rrs, complex cloth rrs and art quilt rrs and challenges. I even paint my own thread if neccessary. I belong to the local stitch & bitch group and try to go there every Wednesday evening and knit, crochet or whatever I fancy or am working on. I love to wear stole's and I must have knitted and crocheted over 20 of them, lots of them for others, but I do have one in the right color to go with most of my outfits. I love lace knitting, cables and freeform knitting and crocheting. I enjoy crocheting lace curtains, motifs and Irish crochet. Recently I discovered knitted and crocheted tea cosies and instantly fell in love. I have to finish 2 freeform handbags before I can start exploring those. And dd has asked for a big size knitted blanket, preferrable with cables in dark grey. Here is my blog. And here are pictures of the various techniques I enjoy:

stumpwork aloƫ

Flower Fairy rr block, all embellishment by me. you can see the beaded ribbons I love to stitch and the pink butterfly at the top is a BE motif from a book I had just purchased. Angelina for the fairy wings.

this is a piece I made for a swap at our art quilt group. the theme was poppies.

here I first crocheted a fan, sewed it down onto fabric and applied gesso and paint and finished it off with a shiny pearl colored paint. I made it into an ATC

I love mushrooms, my yahoo name is paddestoelengek, which means "crazy for toadstools"
I take their pictures, identify them if possible and love to search them.

hello! this is me, with my 2 cats. Minoes on the left, Casper on the right. the yellow patch on my shoulder is his cloth that he needs to suck on. he's such a big baby. a mug of tea in my hands, as always. the sofa is my workspot, I have everything around me: threads, needles, books, paint, soldering iron (yes, I do that on my sofa too) beads, ribbon, you name it. cats usually throw over the carefully piled stuff, driving me crazy. used to have rabbits too, have always dearly loved them.

a sample of my tatting, shown on hand dyed fabric.

a stamp that I cut. this is Jugendstil/Art Nouveau

this is a fibercard in stained glass style. embroidered and painted. the motif is from the Arts and Crafts movement, by William Morris. the A & C movement initiated the Jugendstil.

this is a little quilt I finished. stained glass quilt made from a real stained glass pattern. adapted it for fabric and made my own 'lead' in purple because I didn't like black to go with these colors.

my handbag in freeform knitting with a crocheted flower, silk ivy leaves and the handle is handed down necklace.

One of my knitted stoles, this one is knitted from a pattern in the Estonian Lace book.
So my subject for the fabric book pages is Art Nouveau/Jugendstil. I have searched the internet for pictures and put them into this album. Hope I won't get trouble with that. Use the slideshow option, that makes Webshots less annoying to use. You can google Jugendstil pictures yourself or go to your library and look for a book on the subject. I admire the artists William Morris (Arts & Crafts movement) and Mucha.

Changes

Hi all! I made some changes to the look of our blog. I hope you like it. The background is a freebie from Shel's Scraps and I just picked one that I liked. Go take a look and see if there is one you like better. The neat thing about it, is that it can be changed easily. The one I picked is an autumn one. We can change seasonally if we like or just keep it the same all the time. Her backgrounds are free but she asks that she gets credit. That's the new "blinkie" on the bottom left of the sidebar. It was simple to change so if any of you have blogs and want free backgrounds, I would suggest you check it out.

Some of my stuff

Hi again, here's a link to photos of some of my stuff http://www.flickr.com/photos/9950358@N03/sets/72157608269235989/

These are mostly gifts that I made for friends, so I had to record them; plus some flower photos I took hoping to use as inspiration. Hope you like them, Kath

Hi All, Elizabeth here!

I love the fact that we are doing this with a blog versus a Yahoo group! This is going to be such fun.
I thought that I would jump in and tell you a little bit about myself. I live in Virginia (for the past 4 years) in the US with my husband , two kids-17year old son who is a High School Senior and a 12 year old daughter who is in 7th grade. I work in the home as a full time Mom and I am also working hard as an artist selling my work on Etsy and at a Local Gallery. I have also recently started teaching seminar style classes in my home studio. I also teach beading and mixed media classesa t Artistic Artifacts in Alexandria VA.
I also love to work in my garden and I am passionate about having a chemical free organic garden. My garden is a continuous source of inspiration and color theory lessons for me!!!

I love working with lots of different media but started my creative explorations as a small child with needle and thread and yarn and fabric, I always have fiber projects going on no matter what else I am involved in!

I think that it might be fun if we all posted pictures of two recent projects that we are really proud of. That way we could see each other's recent work and get a good idea of everyones style and choices! What do you all think!!!
Got to run to a Dr's appointment, then I can have some coffee and feel more human!!
Have a wonderfully creative day everyone!!
Smiles !
Elizabeth

P.S. How could I forget???? We also live with two dogs, Buddy and Pepper. Buddy is a Rat Terrier and curls up behind me in the computer chair whenever I sit down to work. Pepper is a Rat Terrier mix and alot bigger than Buddy so she does not get lap dog status and wishes she did. Not sure what I would do without my wonderful pets!!!!

Hi

Hi, I'm Kath Walls from the UK but now retired to Crete, Greece. I've lived here four years this time (another period I lived here for 5 years) and still love it. We live in the village of Amari in the beautiful Amari valley just south of Rethymno and have a large garden where my partner grows our vegs and I try not to get too involved as I really want to concentrate on sewing. All my life I've worked in offices but usually doing a night school in some craft or art. Really I was born too early, the art college in my home town of Scarborough opened about a year after I started work and, at that time, was really for the super-arty and the sensible thing was to earn money! So I did, then marriage and family came along plus all the other diversions that life throws at you and my hobbies remained very much that. Mid-fifties, unattached and wondering what to do in retirement (but not thinking I'd return to Crete on my own) I started a more serious nightschool in Creative Embroidery and was lucky enough to have Anne Gibson as tutor; she had been at the very prestigious Manchester University teaching but cut down her workload for personal reasons and so we were given a glimpse into the modern world of (really) creative embroidery. That set my mind off and on retirement I enrolled for a City and Guilds course, again in embroidery because that included a little machine embroidery, felting, paper-making and art. Again we were really lucky with our art and embroidery tutors as they treat us like sponges, threw everything at us with the instruction to yell when our brains were full!!! Anyway, the foundation course lasted 2/3 of the year then we started on the first year proper. By this time I'd accepted a suggestion/invitation to return to Crete which was opportune as the course then foundered under funding cuts. So - here I am, lots of techniques somewhere in my brain and in various notebooks but with not a lot of practical experience. Hopefully this discipline will help me to overcome this; I intend to try lots of the techniques and have already been looking at many other embroiderer / textile artists' work as inspiration. Thank you all for having me on your team, I hope my pages stand up to the rest of you

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Joining In


Hello all. I'm Liz and I live in Northeast Kansas with DH and two spoiled dogs! We have one son who recently retired from the Navy (how did that happen? I'm not that old!!) I retired almost five years ago and I have spent the time since then getting my basement work room fitted out to be my favorite space! I do try to get down there for a bit every day. Before retirement, I was in a left-brain job (computers), so I have been giving my right-brain a workout since then!

Although I call myself a doll maker, I do a lot of different crafts and arts. One thing I really love to do is "fiber collage" where I cut up fabric, fuse it together in different ways, stitch all over and then embellish, embellish, embellish! I have recently started looking into making books using some of those methods. Although the books I've actually finished (!) don't use much collage, I am hoping to make several more that do. So becoming a part of this group is timed just right for me.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Getting to Know You

Hello to all of you!

I'm Gayle Schipper from Redding, California, USA. Redding is a small city of about 100,000 in the upper end of the Sacramento Valley. While it's mighty hot here in the summer, it is a beautiful place to live. We are surrounded by mountains on 3 sides, and are in driving distance for lake activities in the summer, skiing (not me!) in the winter, and a still active volcano (last erupted in 1919) with geothermal areas to hike around.

I am a newly retired (big grin)elementary school teacher, most recent and favorite grade level was fourth. I still miss the kids, and am working on a deal to do some tutoring. I'm keeping quite busy with this and that and am playing more music than I had time for while I was working. I play flute and piano, mainly in the church setting, although I have played in community orchestras in the past. My DH and I have 4 children, 7 grands and 2 great-grandchildren between the 2 of us. They are a total joy.

About 13 years ago a friend asked if I wanted to go to a silk ribbon class. I asked, "What's that?" and she said, "I have no idea." That was the beginning of my fabric addiction. I am mainly a crazy quilter, learning different techniques for embellishment. "Musings", the result of SharonB's Take It Further Challenge was my first fabric book.

One of the things I am looking forward to in this swap is branching out into some new areas of fiber art. As I look at the blogs of the others members, I can see how different we all are in our approaches. Do whatever you want with my theme "All Creatures Great and Small." Anything goes - land, sky or sea critters - from Ants to Zebras.

BTW, my Flickr name is Stitchintime www.flickr.com/photos/stitchintime

Joyfully,
Gayle

Welcome


Hi Everyone! I would like to welcome you to The Story of the Traveling Pages blog. In the next several weeks, participating members will be introducing themselves and showing photos of their work. In January, we will begin our book page swap so keep your eyes peeled for some beautiful books. In the meantime, you can click on any of the links in the sidebar to see what our members are up to.

To introduce myself, I am Ruth Lane from Kalispell, Montana USA. I began my fiber art journey four years ago when I learned to make silk paper. I then discovered felting and various woolly goodies and have been addicted to fiber ever since. I like to create pieces that combine my love of felt with other techniques such as free motion machine embroidery, hand embroidery, collage, surface design and anything else I can think up! My pieces have loads of texture and my inspiration comes from the vast landscapes and wonderful natural surfaces of western Montana.