Happy May Day!

My stint on Jury Duty began yesterday. One of the nice things about living in a smallish community is that when called for jury duty, you often see some of your friends in the pool as well. There were about a half dozen of us there together, so we kept eachother company most of the morning and then again after lunch. However, we were then all interviewed by one of the Assistant DAs and the Defense Attorney for one case. Two in our "group" of six were chosen...I am delighted to report that they did not want me!!! But, that process did take ALL day yesterday.

So today I was "off" or "free", and boy did I appreciate it. I have been trying to figure out a way to mount some of my pieces on foam core, and this gift of a day gave me time to experiment. I began with this piece:

I had printed these leaves in a class at Campbell, and have always been rather partial to them, so I thought I'd use this piece as a guinea pig. It is mounted on the foam core in this pic, although it really doesn't look like anything more than a flat piece of fabric.

Here's a closeup of my leaves, all stretched on the foam core:

So then I summoned up all of my courage and attacked "the bird"! After all of the thread painting I'd done on this sucker, I didn't want to screw her up and cut or sew in the wrong place! Here she is, finished!! WooHoo!!!!
Here's a closeup of one of the bottom flowers:

Essentially, all I did was sew up three sides like a pillowcase, turn it right side out, sew two eyes (like the hooks and eyes of old) down about a third of the height from the top on the back, blind hand stitch the front to the back at the bottom, and then thread some hanging wire through the eyes on the back for hanging. You see, this piece is for a friend, who didn't want a quilted wall hanging, so to speak. So this is a bit different. It still has the stitching, and there is batting, but it is mounted on a solid piece of foam core. I must give credit to both Joyce and Nellie for pointing me in the right direction with this technique.

While I was slaving away in my sewing room, I had lots of company. I should have taken a picture of Barker. He slept on his little rug all day long, since I had tired him out when we took our early morning walk on the golf course. There was a wide and varied assortment of feathered friends who stopped by at my feeders:

three male gold finches in their mating plumage. Aren't they handsome!!!
"Big Blue" walked by along the shoreline several times, looking for snacks.

Above is a nuthatch on the left feeder and a house finch on the right feeder.

And there's one more gorgeous gold finch!

PEACE Y'ALL!!!!