MILLYPENNY

I'm a member of a small contemporary quilting group called "Genesis". I had the idea of each member taking it in turns to give out small swap bags at meetings filled with various different items. The challenge will be for all members to produce something for the next meeting using items from the bag. For our 1st Swap Bag challenge, I came up with the swap bag contents - which was a pieced of hand-dyed screen-printed fabric, square of metallic fabric paper (from an Arts & Craft Shop) and a stick-on magnet. Finished items are due at our next meeting on the 6th March. I Last weekend I had a go at using up the Swap Bag contents - ended up making 3 items from the contents. I embellished my fabric strip with thread, pieces of the metallic fabric paper, tiny squares of dyed (and used) colour-catchers. Also put the piece under the embellisher to add bits of organza, ribbon etc. When I had the fabric embellished enough I decided to make a fabric cuff - I have thin wrist...

Here's the 1st fabric postcard that I've finished for the IPS "Branching Out" Fabric postcard exhibition. The postcard is made from fabric paper, two scraps of screen-printed fabric and a hand-dye. The screen-printed fabric is actually a piece left over from my Branching Out quilt - which is still in the construction stage! I have a few more postcards nearly completed - all I have to do is add the edging. Hopefully, I'll get them done over the weekend.

I finished this messenger-type bag over Christmas. Used a pattern from a Japanese craft book: ISBN-13: 978-4834729467 Made most of the bag out of a long Japanese fabric panel that I got at FoQ a few years ago - decided I might as well use it up. The bag of the back uses most of the panel piece - almost prefer it to the front.. The

This is the finished journal with the leather-effect cover (actually made from a brown paper bag). The pages in the journal were all recycled from various sources e.g. business envelopes, unused pages from old copies etc. The alphabet letters on the cover are made out of grungeboard. I've had a pack of them sitting in a drawer unused for about 3 years, so it was great to finally getting around to using them. They did make the cover a bit stiff though, so I'm going making a 2nd journal but leaving the grungeboard letters out.

Didn't made any New Year's Resolutions, but probably should have made a resolution to post more often on the blog! Didnt realise it had been so long since I last posted....eeek.... Will try to post at least weekly if I can. I had great plans to make loads of stuff over the Christmas break but didnt get much done - had a nice break though! Got 1 bag finished - will post photos of it in the next few days. Also I started making a few journals using the instructions in the last issue of Cloth, Paper Scissors - create a leather effect cover out of a brown paper bag. I made 1 journal following the instructions in the magazine - 2nd journal is a different sized journal but made using the leather-paper technique. This photo shows the crumpled-up paper ironed onto pelmet vilene: Paper after being painted with brown acrylic paint

I've just finished my quilt for the upcoming Hands Across the Border Exhibition. The theme for the exhibition was "Dream-catcher". The exhibition will be on Jan-April in the Armagh County Museum, and in September it will be on display in the Phoenix Park Visitors Centre. For this quilt I used all hand-dyed cotton fabrics. On the purple fabric, I used 2 thermofax screens of a dreamcatcher and Indian imagery. I used discharge paste and thickened dyes on the fabric. The right-hand side of the quilt (pink fabric) was machine quilted with more Indian symbols (2 circular patterns). Once the quilt was finished I thought the quilt was lacking something, so decided to roller gold acrylic paint on the circles. I've wanted to add paint to a quilted piece for ages - the Kemshall's use this technique a lot and it looks fabulous! Quilt had to be handed up at last Friday's guild meeting, so I was frantically trying to get everything finished in the last few days. Label got s...

Finished another quilt top 2 weeks ago. This one was made from a Jelly Roll, and the pattern was from the book "Jelly Roll Quilts" by Pam Lintott, pattern was "Pandora's Box". Think the top was made over a weekend and then it was put away for about a year! But seeing as I'm on my UFO-busting streak at the moment - I got it out and finally finished it. This photo shows the back of the quilt. The backing was a dark brown fabric which I've had in my stash for a good while. I used the left-over scraps from the jelly roll to make the strip in the middle and around the label. I always seem to forget to sew on the label, so this time I sewed it on before I had the binding finished. I may have overdone the quilting just a little bit, I planed on quilting it in a fairly large squiggle pattern, but found myself doing a fairly small squiggle quilting pattern instead (couldnt help myself!). Even ran out of thread half-way through quilting it and had to go to...