Olympic National Park (continued)

The ranger station on Hurricane Ridge has a spectacular view!

The road continues a bit further up the mountain, and ends with a parking lot where you can continue further on a paved trail, which we couldn't resist!

Besides the gorgeous views, we chose this time of year to visit because the wildflowers were blooming.      At this altitude, the spring / summer is quite a bit later and much shorter than we have at home.

It's such a beautiful place to visit, I'm already looking forward to the next trip!!!

Quilt, then paint - progress!

My fat quarter quilts now have color added!  Since I'm experimenting, I've treated each a bit differently.  For the sunflowers, I mixed fabric paints with Decolorant and used a sponge roller to work it into the surface, mostly from the top to about 3/ 4 of the way down, blending it out as I went.  I didn't want the  same colors at the bottom, and wasn't sure I liked it, because the bottom was lighter than I wanted it to be.  I mixed and diluted some Dye-na-flow fabric paints and brushed it onto the flowers in vases, leaving some areas a bit lighter, and darkening the mix so that I could make some areas even darker.  Since I liked the color, I decided to go back to the sunflowers and use the Dye-na-Flow to darken the light areas that needed it.  Here's where they stand right now, although I haven't pressed them yet, and when I do, the sunflowers should do some color changing with steam, because the Decolorant will be activated, which will lighten up the fabric color while setting the paint. 

Little Watercolor Paintings

Still practicing watercolor painting! 

These two are still a work in progress:

with this one being a bit larger.

Olympic National Park

Saturday, my husband and I took a road trip to Olympic National Park!   We took a scenic highway that followed the Hood Canal for part of the way, headed towards Port Angeles, and then into the park and up to Hurricane Ridge!  We stopped at Switchback Trail, and took a short hike, before continuing upward.

View from the pond at the bottom of the trail:

There are lots of springs coming out of the mountain here!

My husband said I had to pose for a picture to post on the blog, so here's me at the ranger station at the top of the road to Hurricane Ridge.  We drove a bit past here and then went for about an hour and a half hike at the end of the road.  As you can see, views from here are gorgeous!

These pictures were taken with my little pocket camera, but I also took pictures with my little video camera, as well as another camera, so I'll post more as I get them uploaded to my computer and edited.

Watercolor Practice

I've been practicing my painting skills (more like learning by doing), and have been a bit slow to post the pictures that have been hiding in my camera, so here are a few:

As you can probably tell, I'm painting things in my kitchen, because I'm painting IN the kitchen:-)

Painted Floral Quilts

These two little quilts were begun when I was at Quiltworks NW, demonstrating the Grip 'n Stitch disks, as I wanted to show the shop hoppers a more interesting quilting than just the little doodling, that just showed how to use the disks.  First I used chalk to draw circles around my drink bottle, scattering them across my sample, fat quarter, quilt sandwiches.  Once the flower centers were filled with quilting, petals were added, and then I chalked the stems and leaf placement.  I didn't stop until the whole quilt sandwich was covered with quilting!

For the second fat quarter quilt, flower heads were quilted in the circles, and then I decided they would be placed in vases, so I added a few more chalk lines.  Switching between chalking a few outlines and quilting, I worked until there was no more room for quilting! 

 Of course, the next step is going to be painting in the quilted designs, although I'm thinking I might like to try a wash of color to make the background more interesting before starting on the flowers.

Trip to Olympia, WA

This past weekend, we took a little road trip and then extended it with a drive to Olympia.  Fortunately we happened to pick a wonderful weekend to visit, as the weather was beautiful, and they even had an event called "Sand in the City" going on down by the harbor!

It was impossible to get the full capitol building in one picture, as I only had my little pocket camera with me (my phone doesn't take that great of a picture), so here it is in pieces:

The grounds and view from the capitol are gorgeous!

And the sand sculptures were amazing!