Applique is my Passion

I finished the quilt that I showed the beginning of last July, on December or January 2019.  Essentially I tried to explain the thought process involved in making up your own design while using some of my techniques.  My direction came from the quilt which was telling me what to do next.  You can see from the beginnings photo how I added strips of hand dyed wool fabrics going round in log cabin style. The techniques I used and explained in the pattern were felted applique, couching of wool yarns, 3-D leaves and lots of hand embroidery. Now, as soon as I finished this Doodle quilt, I started on the second one.  It is much different than the first but continues on in the same techniques.

  You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.  -Maya Angelou

This is the finished Doodle quilt which I completed in maybe Jan.2019.  The whole idea is that I let the quilt tell me what it wanted to become. Boy, that is FUN.  There is no plan, no idea what the finished quilt will look like.  Apparently, that concept is really scary for most quilters.  I LOVE playing with colors and textures.  

My world has turned upside down when Paul, my dh, fell on his head when setting up a show in MD the day before Thanksgiving 2017.  He has had so many setbacks, it isn't funny.   He would get better, and then something would happen.  He broke his pelvis falling out of a wheelchair at the second nursing home.  He had an operation to fix that.  He spent a week in intensive care.  A doctor actually asked me if he should have a feeding tube!  I wouldn't make that decision.  Paul said "No way!"  He has been in three different hospitals and two different nursing homes several times.  Finally June 1st he was released from the nursing home.  Now he has been released from home health care and PT, only to find that he can't start outpatient neurologic physical therapy until August 7th.  I called the home health care and asked to have him reinstated.  They now need to get new papers to have him covered for the next two weeks while we wait.  The family doctor isn't availa

My first experiments with ponchos I am wondering if I need to add a button at the wrist. My goal is to make the colors blend like watercolor paintings. I've been hand dying jacket weight wool fabrics for a few years now.  I use them in my needle felted appliqued quilts.  But I've had the urge to expand into ponchos and other simple jacket shapes.  Maybe there also needs to be an appliqued animal or two.

How many of you think beading is tedious?  This bug shape is from our Beetles pattern  I punch needled the blue and green threads to a piece of white cotton, and then added the beads and then appliqued it onto the sleeve of a white wool jacket.  The hairy legs are small bugle beads.  I made this around 2006 when I was testing out alternative techniques to applique.  I eventually gave up punch needle because my left wrist started to hurt, holding the hoop that held the cotton taut.  I own a Morgan hoop now, but the other issue was that it just took too long to see a finished result.  Needle Felted Applique goes faster, filling in an area. I started doing needle felted applique in 2007 when I found the tool that I use now: Clovers pink felting tool with three needles.  My first felted quilt/pattern was the Crazy Sheep . and it was started as  machine applique quilt and grew into felting and there are even some beads on the quilt in the centers of the flowers in the crazy quilting.