Second Felt Hat

A while back I wrote about the first hat I made in the Dawn Edwards felted hat class, my rainbow tree fungus hat.  

During that class I also had time to felt another hat, but not to shape it.  Finally a couple weeks ago, I shaped it and finished it.  I was mostly tired of it being almost finished and unwearable!  I got as far as this during the class.  I felted it just like the other one I made, but it gave me a chance to learn to make cords and seed pods, additional techniques.  

After sitting around like that for months, I finally shaped it, with water and steam and pins.  It's meant to have some sore of folds in it, and I just wet it down and pinned it in place on my hat block.  I steamed it some, but my hat block is an inexpensive synthetic one so I couldn't steam too much.  But it worked and held it's shape so that was good!

The last step was to stitch peas into the seed pod.  I was supposed to have little felted balls to stitch in the two seed pods but I forgot to make any, so I used these two wooden beads instead.  The seed pod was fun to make, with lots of different colors of wool inside it.

And here I am wearing it!  You can't see the danglys very well in this selfie,  they're sort of wrapped around my neck.  It fits very well and is quite comfortable.  I think it's more wearable than the rainbow tree fungus hat, and I love the seed pods.

All in all my first forays into felting were successful and I learned a lot.  Enough that I think I can incorporate a bit of wet felting in my work if it seems necessary, but it's certainly not going to be my primary focus.  Unfortunately, between these two felt hats and the wonderful knit hats given to me by friends, I have more winter hats than winter to wear them in.

I Like #91

Well I know this is a things to like post, but it's been a bit of a stressful week.  Blue broke out two more times and now the dogs have to stay inside the house until I can get a new fence.  That means lots of people out for bids, lots of new expense, lots of stress for the dogs etc.  Alas. 

Anyway,  some good things too this week:

1.  I made another tree for my quilt, this one an apple tree in early fall.  It was fun!  I also knitted some more, but the socks are just getting slightly longer so they don't look any different.

2.  I don't care for the time change since it means it's dark before I leave work which makes my brain think it's bed time.  However one of the few benefits is that for a little while at least, it's light during our morning walks.  There was a beautiful sunrise earlier this week and I managed to get a quick picture before Blue dragged me off to pee on something.

3. I haven't had any birds this year, and before winter I need to clean out the bird feeder again, just in case they decide to come back, but I was outside the other day and noticed that the remnant birdseed had sprouted, making it look like a sad little impromptu terrarium.  It made me laugh!

 4.  My beautiful Sam bush has dropped all its red leaves and now has the really pretty red berries (presumably poisonous).  They feel very festive to me!

5. Nothing in our work jungle is blooming, but it makes me smile every time I walk out to get on the elevator.  This is just a small section of it....

I hope you guys are having a good week.  Link up with LeeAnna!

I Like #90

Welcome to another week of I Likes!

This week I was privileged to get to spend quite a bit of time working on my sewing and crafting projects, so yay!!

1.  I made some progress on some of the details for my illuminated quilt, here are a couple sets of trees I've been working on.  A pinon tree and some aspens!

 2. I made some more progress on my socks!  I have about two inches of cuff now!  I'm loving the yellow with the speckle, and I'm really getting more of the hang of purling.  I'm glad I picked a pattern that required purling since I know I'll need it on my next project.

3. My dorky snuggle-muffin didn't break anything this week (win!!)

4.  I watched the whole extended edition Lord of the Rings Trilogy, which is about 12 hours long.  I had it on while sewing and knitting and quilting this weekend.  I loved the books as a kid and really enjoy the movies.  I hadn't watched them in a long time.  Aragorn makes me swoon.  The quintessential fantasy hero.

I hope everyone has a good week and thanks to LeeAnna for keeping us going!

I Like #89

Getting off to a late start today-  I had an all morning meeting and didn't get organized with my post ahead of time.  This has been a stressful week, but still some things to be glad about.

1.  I like my fall plants.  These are the same as last week only everything is a bit more colorful.  The dahlia is hanging in there,  it got a bit happier earlier in the week when the rain stopped for two days in a row, but of course now it's been raining again for two more days.  My Sam bush and tree are really colorful right now, and my mums are getting more and more blooms. 

2. I like reading new books!  I read these two this week, they're both short funny essays about quilting by Megan of the Bitchy Stitcher.  Definitely made me smile.  I'm also about halfway through the Distant Mirror which is about 14th century France and I'm awfully glad I don't live then/there.

3.  I like starting new projects.  I got going on my next big illuminated manuscript quilt this week.  This will be a long-term project but it feels good to be going.

4.  I like my pups!  They've been crazy this week-- Blue broke through the fence during the morning on Tuesday,  luckily someone in the neighborhood snagged him and called me at work.  Even more luckily, Bentley just stayed home snoozing on the sofa; he didn't care there was a giant hole in the fence.  So of course I spent yesterday evening fixing the fence in the rain.  And poor Bentley had another one of his intermittent seizure episodes in the middle of the night two nights ago which always causes lots of chaos, but he's fine now.

5.  I like fixing things inexpensively.  My dryer quit drying clothes and I was really worried that I'd need a new dryer, but I thought I'd go ahead and clean out the ductwork.  I had some issues in the attic and on the roof, but I did get the ductwork cleaned out for only the cost of a $20 brush from amazon, and now the dryer works!!  Also, there were twelve tons of lint.

Thanks to LeeAnna for keeping us positive!

I Like #88

Welcome to another list of things to like.  This was a fairly quiet week, I spent the weekend mostly cleaning and cooking, but I did have some time for fun stuff on Sunday afternoon.

1.  I like the pups!!  Bentley thought there might be a morsel of cake left on may plate and thought he could sneakily crawl over the end table to snatch it.  I guess I should work with him on manners!  He and Blue are such sweeties.

2.  I made lots of good progress on my knitted socks this week.  I had people over for dinner and movie watching Saturday night and a couple of them sat on the couch snuggling with the dogs which left me free for knitting.  The feet are finished, I got the toes kichenered together last night and am working on the opening to start working up the leg.  Fun!

3.  Folks at work are getting in on the plant action and now we have a little mini-elevator lobby-conservatory.  I love seeing all the different plants.  We now even have basil and peppers.

4.  Fall is definitely here,  it's been super super rainy and everything is disgustingly soggy and muddy, but the last two days have been cool with no rain, so that's good.  My Sam bush is turning it's delightful fall red, and at the moment, the Bullet bush is still alive.  You can hardly see it there in the foreground, it's just a bunch of sticks, but there are green leaves right on the top.  Hopefully it will live through the winter.

5. And finally, nothing much is really blooming outside right now except my fall mums!  I'm so happy the have flowers, they've just started opening, so hopefully there will be more.  My dahlia is covered in buds but it's been so cool and super wet, I'm not sure they'll ever open.

Happy week to everyone and thanks to LeeAnna for linking us up!

I Like #87

Welcome to another week of things to like!

1. It's been raining and raining and raining here, but that does mean fall temperatures have finally arrived (which I love).  Unfortunately, that means lots of muddy dog footprints in the house, and lots of outside activities in the rain, but I'll live.  The pups don't like going out in the rain, but lately they seem like they'd rather do that than miss their walk, so we've been persevering.  No walk in the rain pictures, but here's a snap of Blue who perked up when he heard something he thought might have been a treat.

2. My dahlia is still blooming!  I think it's about time to move my oustide summer houseplants inside, but the Dahlia is still going along well.  I hope it doesn't freeze too soon.  I saw this cool caterpillar on one of my dahlia flowers the other day, unfortunately, I think he was eating it.

3.  I love re-finding things I'd forgotten about.  In cleaning up my office the other day I came across this armadillo pin made my a New Mexico artist Barbara Hansford.  I have a long and storied history with armadillos and some years ago my mom gave me the pin, but I'd forgotten all about it.  I was so excited to find it, and it even matched my outfit that day.  I think unfortunately his ears and the tip of his tail have broken off somewhere along the way.

4.  I love bag making!  We are singing out of several different books in our church choir and my previous choir bag (a super cool sparkly gold lunchbox which was a gift from a dear friend) wasn't big enough to hold everything, so lat week I decided to make a bag for my music.  I incorporated a few details that were interesting or new to me, which was lots of fun.  I especially love the tubular handles and hardware.  Making a new bag is always a super fun puzzle for me

5.  I love music!  My friend and I went to the OKC Philharmonic this past Saturday and it was just glorious.  They played a Prokofiev Violin Concerto with which I wasn't familiar, but which was really remarkable.  The second half was Holst's the Planets which is one I know and was also wonderful.  There's something about hearing things live that is really moving.

6.  New on the blog this week I talked about my most recent quilt finish, the portrait of Bentley I started earlier this spring in a Susan Carlson workshop.  Check it out here, and the in process post here.  It was a really fun project. 

Thanks to Lee Anna for linking us up!

Bentley the Rainbow Dog: Finished

Earlier this week I talked about collaging my Bentley quilt and today I'm sharing the final piece!  I went with a double border of the two turquoise fabrics I'd bought, and I tried them in a bunch of orientations (polka dots inside? outside? inside on half?) and settled on this.  I really like the polka dot fabric it feels like a nice contrast to the tiled floor background.  I had to re-do part of his tail because the end of it was turquoise and it was getting lost in the border, but you'll never convince me there's too much pink.  I quilted it fairly simply since the colors are so vibrant and then bound it in my favorite bright orange armadillo print, some of which is included in his hind end.

Bentley the Rainbow Dog, c. Shannon Conley, 2018 38" x 41"

Bentley the Rainbow Dog, c. Shannon Conley, 2018 38" x 41", detail

I love his face and tongue, but I think my favorite section (mostly because I know how long it took to get it to look right) is his front paws.

Bentley the Rainbow Dog, c. Shannon Conley, 2018 38" x 41", detail

Bentley the Rainbow Dog, c. Shannon Conley, 2018 38" x 41", detail

Bentley the Rainbow Dog, c. Shannon Conley, 2018 38" x 41", detail

I had it pinned to the bottom of my design wall to keep it out of the way and thought I'd capture a quick picture of Bentley-for-real with Bentley-the-quilt.  But now it's hanging in my dining room where I can see it every day.

I love the way he turned out.  I'm not sure he's got a particular rainbow personality, (though it is a very snuggly bouncy lovey personality), but I certainly have a rainbow personality and it suits me very well.  I'm so glad it's finished!  Have any of you made pet quilts?  I've made a few different ones now and it's always fun.  I'd always rather be with dogs than without!

New Quilt: Bentley the Rainbow Dog!

Some of you may remember me mentioning that I took a collage art quilt class with Susan Carlson earlier this year.  I used her approach to make the quilt of Missy for Mike, but I haven't had a chance to share the quilt I actually started in the class until now.  I finally finished it, so many months later and figured that should be motivation to write about it!

I started with this picture of my precious Bentley, I love the tongue- it's really a great snapshot of him!  

You may know that Susan Carlson's quilts feature very bright saturated colors, lots of print and "busy" fabrics, and often non-realistic color schemes.  The bright, saturated, non-realistic colors definitely appeals to my design aesthetic, but I struggled think what colors I should do for him- blue and yellow?  Green and orange?  In the end I couldn't decide and no one should be surprised to know I picked "rainbow".  Basically his brown parts are bright rainbow and his white parts are light rainbow.   Her method starts with an outline drawing on muslin and then you start collaging in with small pieces of fabric.  The goal is to take advantage of your prints to give shading and shape whenever possible.  Here are a few shots of him in progress.

I got him all finished during the class and took him home in this condition.  Unfortunately, he stayed like that from march until I was home at my mom's over labor day when I finally had time to start thinking about the background.

I considered setting him in a field of green grass like the original picture but I worried that he'd blend in too much and that he'd look like he was floating.  Mom and I tossed quite a few ideas around, and one of her suggestions was a tiled floor background.  I could angle it so it would read as floor and if it was mostly grey and white, he wouldn't blend in too much.  I made a quick mockup in photoshop, and decided it would work.

I thought about piecing the background, but I wanted to maintain the rough-edged organic collage feeling throughout the whole piece, so after tracing the lines of the tile onto the background fabric, I just started collaging the background on.

I found these two slightly greyed out turquoise fabrics at my mom's quilt shop, and thought they'd work for the border.   I'll share the finished quilt on Friday, so check back then!