Spring is Here at #3 !!!

The time of awakening gardens has arrived, and none too soon for me!! With all of the heartache, violence and anger in the world right now I have found myself yearning for the peace and realistic perspective that always comes to me when I am outside working in the garden. We have had a lovely amount of rain this spring and it is finally starting to warm up. Every day I see new signs of the return of old friends as they lift their heads above the soil and push the leaf cover aside to greet the sunshine. Many of my perrenials that have been limping along , have finally decided that they are happy in their homes and have spread and emerged newly invigorated. Above you can see my unfurling Bleeding Hearts. I love the intensity fo the ruby red of the still to open blossoms.

The Pink Impression Hybrid Tulips are back again and stronger in number and look so at home beneath the weeping Cherry tree.

Here are my absolute favorite garden treasure, a true pass-along plant. This is an English Primrose called Hose-On -Hose and each year each plant creates a sister plant. The clumps grow very quickly and love part shade. When it is cool and rainy, the blossoms last for a very long time. You would have had a good chuckle if you had seen the contortions that I went to in order to get these shots. Lets just say a change of clothes was in order!!

We have Gold Finches swarming our thisle feeders and filling the yard with birdsong.

As our winter was relatively mild, the Pansies that I planted in the fall have rebounded beautifully and are filling the yards with their wonderful scent. I love this combo of the orange Pansie with the bright pink Phlox.

Last fall, I planted a large number of Grecian Wind Flowers, or anemones, in clusters all over the garden. These bulbs will naturalize and spread and fill the beds with these glorious corn flower blue flowers. i just adore this color!!!

To end our little garden stroll I will leave you with more shots of these glorious Pink impression Tulips. It really does work to plant the bulbs extra deep, if you want them to return year after year!!!

I hope that the glories of spring are arriving in your part of the counrty. Goodness knows we all need a healthy dose of perspective and grace that one can only gain when one spends time amoung the glories of the garden!!

Painting With Fibers

You have seen this image before. It is from the previous post about my fabulous Workshop with Fiber Artist Margo Duke. These are the samples that we created in class. The poppy piece was meant to grow into a flower garden scene. This week, after helping a friend with a felting project using my Embellishing machine, I took advantage of the setup and did alot more work on this piece.

Below you can see it after I have added several more poppy buds and little blue silk flowers to the garden.

So far I had only used the Embellishing Machine and done some hand needle felting on this piece. Remember that I had started out with a plain piece of water soluble fabric, also known as Vilene. It really looks like a medium weight interfacing but the magic happens when one adds water!!! So to reiterate, I began with the Vilene and then added all of the fibers to paint my garden scene. It truely looks and feels like one is painting with small bits of fluff and fabric to create a wonderful picture! The next step was to do some Free Motion Embroidery with invisible thread. I had a horrendous time trying to get the bobbin wound correctly- it is very difficult as the thread is really and truely invisible (actually a very fine nylon fishing line type of thread). The thread kept getting caught on the spindle and snapping- So Frustrating!!!! I stopped to take a deep breath- it was either that or hurl the bobbin across the room, never to be found again, when I remembered that Margo had told us to use regular thread in the bobbin and adjust the tension ,if necessary, so the bobbin thread does not show!!! Thank goodness I remembered !!!

So below you will see a picture of the back of the piece so you can see that I did do the free motion stitching.

Then it was magic time!!! I immersed the felted piece in tepid water with a bit of soap and voila, the base Vilene was gone!!!! I then rolled the piece in a layer of bubble wrap and shelf liner and rolled away! After changing the position of the piece several times and rolling till my arms hurt, I rinsed and squeezed the fabric several times, till all of the soap was gone. Below you will see the dried piece after wet felting.

I just LOVE this piece!!! It is so very delicate and thin- there is no denseness what so ever. If it were a larger piece, it would have a wonderful drape and be very different from what one would normally think of as felted material. The secret, as Margo says ,is the Water Soluble fabric!!!!

Here is a detail shot!

I am planning on doing some beading, especailly in the black center of the poppy. I might also add a bit of embroidery. Then I plan to mount it on acid free White matt board and frame it in a shadow box frame. I will be using this technique and my fabulous embellishing machine many times over and taking inspiration from my own garden!!

Speaking of gardens, I thought that I might share some shots of what is blooming in my garden right now. These shots have my mind blossoming with embellishing project opportunitities!!!

My wonderful English Primroses are really putting on a glorious show this year, thanks to all of the precipitation that we have had!!!

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I love these little tiny Grecian Windflowers. They are small bulbs and they are supposed to spread like crazy if they are happy. I plan to keep them happy!!

I love my Pink Impression Tulips and they are coming back for a third year as I planted them extra deep!!

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Easter and that you are enjoying a beautiful Spring day!! To those of you Down Under, I hope that your fall weather is delightful and that you are enjoying a nice tomato harvest, YUM!!!!!!