A few years ago I

spent a lot of my time painting on fabric. Here are some pictures of some of the many many tote bags I painted . I hope you like them. I
haven't done much fabric painting in the past few years, but did keep busy when I was doing them. I painted quilts, table cloths, wall hangings, etc. Looking at the forest trees I see I incorporated some rough edged applique into the bag as well, although the large trees were definitely painted. I used acrylic paints with extender when I painted on fabric. Shirley

My miniature quils\ts

are so much fun to make. Here are two more that I just finished- the others have been posted in previous posts. I had a beautiful piece of my hand dyed fabric and decided it would be great for a sunset.

As you know from previous posts, I love Mt. Rundle so did one for myself.

I am getting ready for the Big Sky Retreat which will be held at Old's college next weekend. It is an annual retreat and some of us have met every year since 2001. Two weeks later I will be going to the Western Retreat at Sylvan Lake. It is great to meet old friends and make new friends each year. Both are lots of fun and I look forward to attending each year.

I am also finishing a larger quilt that I have made for the new WELLSPRING house, which is being built by Carma Developers, here in Calgary,I believe - it is opening the middle of June and will be a great asset here. Wellspring is dedicated to the support of cancer patients , survivors and
families and caregivers. It is a wonderful place and I am honored to be involved in helping them out. One of my wall hangings will be featured in one of the rooms in the new house. I was honored that they asked me if I would contribute to their new home.

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I am hoping to do a wall hanging of the house which is featured in my header- It was the first house we bought and our children spent the first part of their lives there. It is Vancouver where we were stationed with the Canadian army in the 60's - I have such happy memories of this little house. Chris (a member of the learningfa group) is teaching the group how to 'build' a wall hanging of our house. The class is underway now but I won't be able to work on mine until July or August. Some of the houses are beautiful. She asked that each of us do a house that means a great deal to us and this little house has such great memories for me.

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It is so nice to have lovely sunny days here at last. finally.
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My best wishes go out to all the people in the United States and Canada who have lost their jobs, or homes, or have other problems caused by this recession. My prayers are with you all. Shirley

Our first home -see header

-we purchased a little house in Vancouver in the 50's. Pat (my husband) was in the Canadian army, and up until then we lived in Army quarters. This little house has not changed except for the skylight, in all those years! My son took a picture a couple of month's ago. I loved Vancouver - the picture shows the house in autumn and this scene brings back
so many memories, as during those years we got very little snow but lots of rain. There are lots of maples planted along the road in front and I planted a maple tree in the front.

One of our learningfa members who is very talented, Chris in NJ is teaching a class on how to do a wall hanging of your house. I have decided to do this one, as I have so many happy memories of this house when the children were small. I planted the trees and shrubs and they are very large now. I am hoping to do this one for each of my kids but we will see how it goes. When Kelly, (my son) sent it to me , it sure did bring back some wonderful memories.

Fabric Painted quilts

We have been having an interesting discussion on learningfa about painting on fabric as well as other methods of coloring fabric. My first quilts (in 2000) were painted quilts. I started my first quilt with the help of my friends at the park in Arizona where we spent our winters, and carried on from there. Here are some of the quilts. I used acrylic paints with
textile medium and two are still in use on my bed - others were given away, sold or given to charity. I went through a period of Southwest work and most of my quilts were done during this time. I painted most of them on muslin or fairly heavy thread count cotton -

I loved doing the southwest 'little people' especially the borders with the children.

I hope you enjoy these. Shirley

HAPPY MOTHERS' DAY

to all of you - I hope you have a great day and spend it with your families and loved ones.

Shirley

12" x 12" landscapes

I have been doing quite a few of the little landscapes on heavy timtex - I just finished the underwater scene a few minutes ago.

I am really enjoying doing them and it is a nice break from the larger wall hangings, which are much more work. I mailed the water fall to the winner today.

I went shopping today to find some gifts for the two secret sister swaps I have joined for the June retreats.

Older work

Here are a couple of pictures of some of my older work. The first shows the greeting cards, I taught to a class in Arizona in the 90's. The cards were on display at our 'Art Show' that is me on the right. The second picture was from the New Zealand Women's weekly magazine in l971! I did copper tooling and usually the subjects were the
Maori faces, which are tatooed(?). The
one I was working on was a well known
Maori Chieftain, from when the treaty with the Maori's was signed many many years ago.
I did commission pictures and my husband framed them. We went back in the late 80's and many of my friends had copper pictures of mine on the walls. As you can tell from my dark hair it was over 30 years ago! It was an honor to be featured in their magazine.

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Another beautiful day today- I am heading out to do some shopping for the two retreats I am going to this June - need some goodies for the secret sister gifts. I am looking
forward to them both.
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I worked on another timtex picture last night - I made an underwater scene and what fun!
I am really enjoying making small wall hangings, and they take so much less time.

I think I might do another underwater scene so that I will have a pair.

Well, it is time to head out. Talk to you all later. Shirley

2nd anniversary prize - Learningfa

We all visited in the chat room on Saturday night and Lola Watters won my l2"x12" wall having. I just finished it and it is ready to go in the mail. Here is a picture of Lola - the new header is the wall hanging I made for her. It is called 'Water fall" and was thread painted and appliqued on heavy timtex. I am enjoying doing these smaller scenes.

I hope you like it Lola! Shirley

here is another crayon project

done by Michele on learningfa. I think I will try this out with my 5 year old grand daughter so she can make a little wall hanging or a pillow for her mother's birthday. She loves to color and I think she would enjoy it. I used to paint my quilts but they were a bit fragile to use on my bed - although I have touched them up a couple of times in the past 9 years.

We celebrated our second anniversary in the learningfa chat room tonight and Lola, one of our members won a wall hanging - Now I have to do it. I think I will do a l2" x 12 " (the header picture is one of them) - I do them completely on timtex and do a lot of thread
painting. I will put in a picture when I have it done.
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Here is my latest wall hanging 'Moose Country" I still have to bind it and will do that tomorrow. I am not sure whether I will donate this one, or the one with the bear to Wellspring - whichever I do, the other will go on my wall. I love doing the rockies. If you are interested in the quilting click on the picture.

Talk to you tomorrow

some interesting work

is being done by the members of our learningfa group.

I want to post a few pictures of work done by our Learningfa members - these have not been class projects but other work. I especially want to show you Judith's,. She did some lovely wax crayon blocks and made a couple of really nice projects. The first is a table topper and the 2nd is a lovely quilt. Judith found subjects from coloring books, transferred the pictures onto fabric and used wax crayons to color them until they were the
intensity she wanted. She then removed the wax by ironing (I think on paper towels?) until the wax was removed and only the color remained. As she mentioned, this would be a wonderful way to teach a child to make a little wall hanging or a quilt. I think they are beautiful. I will be posting more of the work done by our learningfa members quite often.

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I am currently finishing up another wall hanging - I have decided I want to keep one of them for me, and the other will be donated to Wellspring. I have it all quilted and am just putting the backing, sleeve and binding on it. It is much like the one I finished recently. I will put a picture of the finished piece tomorrow or the next day.

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We have sun!!!! - the forecast is good so finally we might see some spring. As our summers here in Canada are not long, we are sure ready for some warm weather.
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Our learningfa (fiberarts) group is celebrating their 2nd anniversary so we are quite pleased. I started the group on May 1st 2007 and we have nearly 450 members. We have given lots of free classes and needless to say, we are happy that it is going so well.