Tulips in green

I love tulips. They have been blooming here in Bergen, Norway, since the spring of 1596. There even is a tulip that only exist in Norway, named Tulipa norvegica. So it was natural for me to make my personal theme for 2015 Tulips. And the group-challenge this time was green.

I am so fascinated by variety in the shapes of the flowers, they are so elegant.

I decided to use this sage-green fabric I had hand-dyed, as my background.

I made squares with oil-sticks, and in these frames I embroidered the tulip-heads with free-hand machine stitching, and added some stems and leaves. Then I filled the background with machine and hand quilting.

All in green, apart from the flowers which have a mix of black and very dark green thread.

Some close-ups:

My Space Your Space Our Space

My first thought when I saw our theme SPACE, were of those wonderful pictures NASA and others have given us from the outer space. Just like some of our hand dyed fabrics, especially some of the ice and snow dyed ones. But of course I needed something more.
In April, my daughter and I had a weekend in London and Manchester. She wanted to go to the Backstreet Boys concert in Manchester, and I wanted to visit the Harry Potter experience at Leavesden.
Well, we went together on both places. And of course, there were a bit of shopping!
Walking in the streets of London, the idea suddenly came to me. This was her space, and mine, and we had them together, so this trip ended as our space.
I decided to use photos I had taken at the concert and during the studio-tour. Transferred them to fabric, cut the in strips and bonded them to some fusible wadding. Unfortunately, the photo transfers were not so bright as I wanted, so I put a piece of blue organza on top to give it a bit more colour. I then finished this part with some stitching on top, running stitches and french knots.
The background fabric I had chosen, emphasizes the colours of the photos. For the quilting, I went for machine-embroidered lettering, inspired by Laura Kemshall. Because of the size, 15"x15", I could not use too bold letters, but I think I found a font that suits the size. And to give this background a bit more life, I put in some running stitches in some of the letters with the turquoise from the pictures.
Instead of bonding the photo-part to the background, I wanted it to have more depth, so I finished it with a blind fold and attached it loosely with stitches from the back.

and a close-up:

Where I Left My Mark

Margy's theme 'Leave Your Mark' has been a very special challenge 

as we all leave our marks every day and in many ways.

Beside the mark we make through our children very few of us will leave a mark 

that will survive even through few generations. 

I have tried to capture mankind's ephemeral presence on earth in my quilt 

by leaving my fingerprints on this pond.

Technique: Procion MX dyed cotton with stencilled acrylic paint.

Machine embroidery with tulle and machine quilting.

Other designs can be seen on my blog.