Spring

Am desperately trying to convince myself that spring is on its way, despite today's relentless rain, hence making this brightly coloured daffodil card.

The background is silk-painted interfacing (the fusible kind as it's easy to iron onto card) with felt and foam flowers and machine-stitched stems.  In retrospect, the grass is maybe a bit overly green, but I'm pretending that's just wishful thinking for a sunny spring.

Shadow quilting

Another recently finished practice piece from my C&G course: shadow quilting.  It's similar to normal quilting, but with just two layers: a base layer of relatively sturdy fabric with a top layer of sheer fabric and other elements sandwiched in between.

In this piece I used ribbon, jewellery chain, a sequin (oddly without a hole) and a "fake shisha" ring (a blanket-stitched ring which is tacked on top of a mirror, avoiding the need to do shisha stitch).  I'm not 100% convinced about the effect - it's a bit flatter than I'd expected, and the chain looks a lot less chainlike behind the sheer fabric, but may be worth trying with some slightly more 3D objects in the sandwich.  

Sheer colour

Finally made something which I can post - been doing lots of tweaking and mounting portfolio work, dull but necessary.  So, it was a relief to spend a happy couple of hours at my City and Guilds course last night, cutting up brightly coloured sheer fabrics and laying them over each other.

OH referred to them as 'neon', which isn't quite what I was aiming for, but he does have a point.  I was more aiming at the rich colours of Prinkie Roberts' work, but guess it's always good to have something to aim for.