making progress

oops wrong pic again, the upper one is the landscape, before quilting, it goes left to right - tropical, forest, woodland, mountains, desert.

The Fyber Cafe challenge is making progress, I have gotten the major portion finished. The landscape section across the middle was the main focal point. I started with needle felting some pine trees on wool felt, I used various types of yarn, but they were all too lime green, and too high a contrast. I didn't have much selection in darker greens. I ended up using a medium green wool sliver and some dark green yarn with a sparkly core. I made rounder lollipop shaped trees with the felt also, but they look real clunky, they stitched down ok, but they are not my favorite part. On the left I made a palm tree, with a double layer of olive green fabric with fusible between. This allowed me to cut fringe on the palm fronds that won't come apart. When stitched down I curved the branch and this made it pop off the background in a good 3-D fringe effect. On the right side I added mountains, a mesa and cactus. The cactus are made with a light green felt, stitched with light green rayon threads, and then I hand stitched spines on them with darker green cotton thread. It is very delicate looking, and I added pink vintage rayon embroidered french knots, and yellow chain stitch flowers. Across the bottom I added rocks, sand, pebbles and some greenery, flowers and tufts of grass. I machine stitched it all with matching rayon threads to applique and quilt it.

wrong picture

oops wrong picture, could NOT figure how to delete it once it was in, not even from edit drafts. So here is the right picture, I hope. There we go.. an image of the sky, Angelina and blue velvet.

Working on the Challenge

Work has been progressing on the Fyber cafe challenge, with my sketch finalized I began on the North Pole/Sky area. I used a dark blue fabric with gold stars on it for the top. I am going to stitch on gold beads for the big dipper, after I get the edges done, it is too close to the edge. Next I used a shimmery white fabric and a glittery silver netting, for the "polar" area, it is tucked and textured, and has beads sewn on it, crystal and blue seed beads and bugles and some clear turquoise cubes. I need to finish sewing the beads after I get the Angelina sewn on. I used Angelina fibers in a wide wave for the Northern lights, they swirl across the white area and the blue sky below, I stitched it down with a shimmery silver thread. For the main sky layer I used a medium blue velvet with white areas, but I needle felted cotton ball fibers over the white to give it more texture. It needle felted just great into the velvet, it blends beautifully.