Cara's Leaf

We're grandparenting this weekend, normal service will eventually be resumed after I've recovered... Today, we took Cara to gymnastics, then had lunch out, wandered round a garden centre, followed by Serious Cake for Cara and Grumpa (who knew a child that small could eat that much meringue...?).  And then we topped that off with a play park, in the Kinneal Estate.  On the way back to the car, Cara really wanted a leaf from one of the many trees surrounding us.  Grumpa obliged (Granny did try to put her off til autumn, but with no success). 

So, I thought, what can I do with this?  Pressing it, of course, would have been a possibility, but I've never really got my mind round what you do with leaves that size once they're dry.  So... I drew round it.  My initial intention was to let Cara colour it in, and I will still do that (she's pleased with the idea), but I'm thinking, applique.  I'm thinking cushion.  Or memory quilt (though there would need to be a lot more memories than just one leaf to make a quilt...maybe it needn't be all that large,though...).  Or just a singled blocked applique quilt.  Yes, okay, I'm wondering what got into me, too, it's so not my kind of thing....clearly the granny genes are kicking in...

And here it is.

And that's as far as it's likely to go, this weekend anyway.  I'm exhausted already, and there's a day and a half left... so won't be playing with the idea any time soon.  I'll keep you posted.

Finally, thank you to everyone who was so supportive after my last post.  I really appreciate it.  Blogging is a bit like talking to yourself, sometimes, hearing other people talk is lovely.

Following The Plan...

seems, on the surface at least, a reasonable thing to do.  So I did.  I made green and brown transfer dye papers, because I needed to for a project.   I needed two or three.  I ended up with nearer twenty.  Oops.

All of them were supposed to look like  this;

I'm going to make some leaves... the blue isn't really blue, honest.  Or I hope it isn't.  In fairness, about half a dozen of the papers do look like this; one has some red added, another, yellow, just for fun.  Mostly, though, they're brown and green.

And because I wanted to use up the leftover dye, the small amount that was left in the bottom of the tubs I was using, after I had put the excess into sealed containers for next time, I thought I'd do some mark making. And ended up with lots more papers than I had intended, and had to take some dye back out of the sealed containers... well, you know how it is... when you're on a roll, you're on a roll...

This is what I ended up with.. at least, a sample of it.

I really enjoy working with transfer dyes, though admittedly don't enjoy the heat transfer bit, but we can't have it all...  It'll be interesting to see how these look with added stitch... Evolon here I come...

I'm glad I didn't follow the plan.  Amongst other things, it reminded me that I don't like to be too tidy, too calculated; another reason to go upstairs and sort out Even More Fabric to get rid of.  If you are on Facebook, and want to join my stash busting group, click here .  I'll be starting with FQs of commercial fabric, and progressing through the hand dyes, and then, I think, will probably add some small pieces of work.  Mwhah.