Is It Time For New Beginnings?

     Now that all deadlines have been met, rejection letters and acceptance letters received, sewing machine back in place, I'm ready to march into Spring with new growth. Before I show you my newest idea, here is a finished one that was a lot of fun. It was to honor the penguins of Argentina and my cat, Opus, who is always with me in my studio. I've named it My Pingüino (Penguin in Spanish).

My Pingüino

It's only 9x9. I found that small size very difficult to work with, but it was the size designated for a challenge. 

     Now onto the new things. Years ago, I discovered leaf skeletons in my forest and wanted to use them in my art somehow. I created several pieces like this one.

painted leaf

I painted the leaf skeleton with fabric paints, painted fabric to match, covered the leaf area with tulle, pieced, quilted it, and placed it under a mat and onto foam board. Then I thought I'd try to sell them on ETSY. Over the space of 5 years, I sold one. I sold a few others locally in gift shops. So decided to take them off the ETSY store awhile ago and I'm going to revamp the store completely. If, by chance, there was anything you saw in my Etsy store you were thinking about purchasing, contact me before I decide to cut them up. :)

     This week at our art meeting we had a "garage sale" and I picked up some nice sheer fabrics that coordinate with my leaves and had an idea. I took the mats and foam board off of them and dug up some other fabrics I had and laid out three of the leaves on top.

with sheers and other fabrics

I'm going to play with making a long scroll with three of these hanging down vertically with some of these fabrics around them. Better than having them sit in storage or throwing them away. All the colors of Spring and new leaves popping out have inspired me to play with nature's designs.

     I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on the artists' posts so that they know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.