Grow your Blog 2015

Good day , my name is Sheila and I have been blogging here since 2010 , welcome to my blog and welcome to Vicki's Grow your Blog for 2015 . For those of you visiting for the first time let me tell you a little about myself . I love to sew , I love to quilt and I love to create , all of these things make my heart sing but above all my family is most important . I have three wonderful sons and seven adorable grandchildren and a husband who supports my love for quilting . I live in beautiful rural Nova Scotia where I was born and raised .
 I have dabbled in most crafts over the years and started out making garments before the quilting bug struck but once I was bitten there was no turning back  . I love to do scrappy quilts , love the old fashion look of them and the fact they are so frugal and can still wrap someone in love .
 A number of years ago I read an article on making fabric postcards and I joined a yahoo group for postcard exchanges so a new addiction was born , I have had so much fun making and sending postcards for the past four or so years and often will organize a swap here on my blog infact we have one in the works right now , a Valentine swap so if you have ever had the desire to make a postcard stay tuned for future swaps . Here is a collage of some of the many projects I have done over the years ,

A challenge of any kind is also something I enjoy , I love BOM's and sampler quilts and making something using recycled fabrics . If you read my previous post you will see what I mean . My dear Dad passed away two years ago in April and my Mom gave me a few of his ties so I had been trying to come up with a plan for a while now and this week I came up with a plan . My dad loved my work so I wanted to do something I felt he would be proud of and he was intriqued with my landscape work so that became my plan . Now this was indeed a challenge in many ways , first the fabrics are difficult to work with and required me to add a fusible to stabilize them and secondly they didn't look anything like a landscape .  Here is a photo of the ties I used , I should have taken the picture before I had cut them up and used them .

I want you to take a look at the brown tie in the right hand corner , ugly huh , well beside it you will see the back side of that same tie , hmm , what can I use that for .  The tie I used for the sky for two of them is in the upper right hand corner and since you are dealing with bias and a space limitation another challenge arose , not enough to create all three but no fear I came up with a new plan , remember the ugly brown tie , that will become my sky , want to see what I created ?

 This was my first one , my Dad was born in the Highlands of Cape Breton and this what I was trying to depict in this little scene , see the ugly brown tie ? The mountain on the far right is made of the reverse of the tie used for the mountain on the far left . The gold is also the backside of a tie . I loved that greenish one I used for the water , it just naturally has movement , the brown I used next to that as the land did not work so well , when I stitched it the threads between the fabric showed through as white . New plan lets try making them tall and narrow .

Landscape #2 , still using the same tie for the sky , see the blue line at the base of the sky that is part of the fabric and worked well as water , I did have to straigten the line by stitching . Now for #3 I no longer had the width for the sky in the original tie I had used so on to plan #3 .

The ugly brown tie to the rescue , see that lovely sunset it has produced . This one is not yet stitched , I was just auditioning it in the frame to see if it had worked and I quite like it .  I must create at least one more for my Mom and I'd like to have one for myself so more work to do but it was the most fun I have had in a long time , I was really in the zone as they say . Where is your happy place ? Mine is definitely doing something like this , , I hope my sisters and brother will like what I have created with Dad's ties . Do you know what else was special while doing this ? I could smell Dad's aftershave , he was beside me all through the process and I sure hope he was smiling . 

 Thanks so much to Vicki for hosting another Grow your blog, be sure to hop on over to visit with Vicki to see who else is growing their blog , you are sure to find lots of interesting blogs to read and possibly make some new friends . I hope you will take a few minutes to look around and if you like what you see will come again often I would love to have you join me .Thanks for taking the time to stop by for a visit :-)

 Hugs Sheila