Easter in Florida

When I made the knitted bunnys, I new my daughter would enjoy them but I didn't realize how much the little ones would like them. We put them in the hallway near the back door and the boys bedrooms, every time the boys went to bed they would give the bunnys a kiss. It was so sweet.
The only type of dying I did was Easter egg dying. The kids loved it. (mom took off all their shirts so they would not dye them).
On Sunday afternoon we had a big egg hunt, they were so cute looking for the eggs.
And finding them.

My Easter textiles

I knitted this basket full of bunnies to take to Florida for my daughter for Easter. She has four boys, so I made four bunnies. This is a free pattern on the internet www.heartstringsfiberarts.com/bunny-pattern.shtm
This is how they look individually.
I'm not a very experienced knitter so if I can do it, its easy. You knit this 6" square and two ears. the instructions tell you how to sew it together and stuff it. Then I wrapped the yarn around my 2 fingers and made a small pom pom for the tail.

This was my first experience with natural dyes. I picked different little leaves and wet them, then layed them around raw eggs (not blown out). Then, I took a square of nylon stocking and wrapped it around and put a twistie around the back to hold the nylon on. I then dyed the eggs with onion skins, I also dyed others with blueberries, cabbage etc. These are my favorite, their around 14 years old. If I shake them I can hear the hard yolk inside roll around. Every year I wipe them off with vegetable oil to bring out the color. After I tried this my girlfriend Deb dyed muslin fabric with a stone inside and the leaves on the outside of the fabric. She did get some print on the fabric. This was the beginning of our adventure into natural dyeing.
This is a commercial pattern but I don't remember the name. I appliqued it using my natural dyed wool.
My friend Deb sent me this basket one year for my birthday, I fill it with different textiles for the seasons. My grass is yarn dyed with Navijo tea, the eggs Deb made me 14? years ago with hand dyed fabrics and my rabbit is a antique reproduction.
I wish all of you a Blessed Easter, my husband and I are going to Florida to spend the holiday with our kids and grandkids. I'll see you March 28.

Rain Forest quilt

Driving all over the island there are these huge tall trees in bloom, I'm not sure of the name but this is a close up of the flowers.
This is the tree.
After we went on our hike to the rain forest I drew this sketch in my book. When I came home I was still so enchanted with the rain forest I decided to reproduce the sketch with fabric.
This is the beginning (still just pinned to my design wall), I've put in some of my favorite parts, snail, butterfly, lizard, flowers and coque. Puerto Rico has this little brown frog that is very small yet it is very loud, it sings all night long, their called coque. There are petroglyphs of coque the native Taino people drew hundreds of years ago. They will be a lot of embroidered details in the quilt and I'm beginning to play around with the boarders.

This picture did not show the detail like I had hoped, its inside our kids house, the textile Alka's parents brought her from India, it's hand embroidered wool with the little mirrors sewed in. (maybe if you double click on the picture it will show better). There are a pair of the antique pillers on either side of the doorway also from India.

This piece shows the detail much better, it's all hand embroidered with the little mirrors. The piece is telling a story but I can't remember what it is.
These are swans from Thailand, their a very heavy metal.
I promise this is all from Puerto Rico but I did feel another rain forest quilt inside of me (I love every type of woods), yesterdday I designed it and started cutting it out, when I get it pinned up I'll post it.

A little more of Puerto Rico

This is our son's "toy" it's a 1968 Ford Bronco. He has it all set up for off road driving. We went two tracking" at this local beach.This is another local's beach (no tourists), it had a wonderful natural rock cove great for snorkeling.
This is a view from the top off the rocks.
Our son grilled our lunch on the beach. It was so much fun, the other people there had their Carribean music playing. Even though Puerto Rico is a United State territory I felt like I was in a foreign country, all the time. It was wonderful.

We took a local ferry ride (1 1/2 hrs.)to another island Calybra. It has beautiful turquoise water with a coral reef to snorkel around. Theres also a campground right along the beach that we're going to camp on next time. They rent out Jeeps to drive around the island.
Different parts of the island from the ferry.

Back in Puerto Rico we went to a Japanese garden. It looked like rain but it never came.

I loved this bonsi growing on a rock.
They had about 20 of bonsi, these were a couple of my favorite.
This was the view from in the gardens, a beautiful villa.