Can you see hedgehogs?

Last weekend was almost entirely a sewing weekend!  We had our branch meeting on the Friday night and on Saturday a workshop playing with layered organza with Arlene Shawcross.

My favourite part of our meetings is the branch show and tell and Loretta and I shared our progress on the reverse applique project we started at the IPS sewing retreat the weekend before.

Loretta used solids on top and batiks on the bottom and to frame my shot cotton version, I went with the blues in the end.  It's quite subtle and I think this is definitely going to be a cushion.  We decided if I quilted it well it would be sturdy enough to survive Wilbur.  Fingers crossed - I'll let you know how I get on!

 

I showed my Big Bear, Little Bear quilt attempts and explained my design fail with this one with the paws disappearing into the busy fabric.  For some reason quite a few people didn't see bear paws at all, but hedgehogs.  I didn't get it!

 So, I showed my solids version and voila, bear paws but they seemed to like it better upside down!

I hadn't thought of the difference seeing something vertically from afar makes versus seeing something on a bed.  The design is supposed to have the petrol blue colour drape over the bed with the center green on the bottom corner of the bed and the pillows be covered under the blue too!

Having a look the following morning I still couldn't see hedgehogs and it became a running joke on the day of the workshop.  So yesterday I played around with colour and shape and can kind of see them now! What do you think - paws or hedgehogs?

Our workshop involved a piece of art created using organza and blending thread and fabrics to reflect a line or image from a piece of poetry or a story.  We all had fun reading things into the shapes and colours and no, no hedgehogs on Saturday either!

Arlene's piece that she used to demonstrate her method was based on the image of a woman in a red dress lying on the green grass on a bright sunny day!

Mine was meant to be inspired by Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, with the lines "There woods are lovely dark and deep" and " The only other sound's the sweep of easy wind and downy flake".  Trouble was, I don't think I was feeling dark and deep on the beautiful spring day that was in it!

I eventually got to evening sunset through the trees - haven't added a tree yet but there should be one on the right hand side stretching across my sunset!  Arelene told me it was very abstract and to keep the tree simple i.e. don't ruin it now!  She suggested a childlike tree but I'm thinking spooky branches!  We'll see when I get brave enough to come back to it!

This was our show and tell table at the end of the day and it was filled with beautiful colour and texture!

I loved this detail in Louise's piece.  We all swapped organza bits and Louise used some of the selvedge of a piece of yellow I had to make Daffodils and then added some bling!

These are some of the examples of Arlene's work shared with us on the day!

And the other things I found really pretty were the baskets of thread that Arlene had brought to sell.  I am totally drawn to the warm colours and did have a case of thread envy when I saw Tracey's collection shown on the bottom right.  One day, maybe!
Thank you Mid-West branch for a great sewing filled weekend!