Thanks everyone for your encouragement. It feels as though my quilting journey has taken a new direction. I started some art type quilts to learn free motion quilting, and I am having so much fun learning the different aspects of making art quilts. I just can hardly wait to start my next project, which will a portrait of my honorary granddaughter on her grade 8 grad. I hope it turns out good enough for me to give it to her.
Someone asked what class at Craftsy. It was Thread Art by Loa Jenkins. She walks you right through the entire process. In all honesty I did not know if I would like the process, so I did not invest in the colored pencils. Well I did sort of. I used the Laurentian pencil crayons from the toy box in my home. I did purchase the textile medium and the blending pencil. I also did not have heavy interfacing to stabilize so didn't use. As Lola promised, the piece was wavy, so when all the stitching was done, I ironed on two layers of heavy interfacing to flatten the piece, and all the excess I gathered into the sleeve of the blouse. It makes it somewhat three dimentional, which is what I was going for in the first place (that's my story and I'm sticking to it).
I hope Gwen who lives in Saskatchewan will send me a private e-mail so we can connect. It is always good to meet other quilters in the area. You learn something new from every quilter you ever meet.
Thanks again for your kind words of encouragement. Onward and upward with this new quilting direction I seem to be taking.
amh