Icicles in March Meshness!

Mother Nature decorated a pine tree in our front yard while we slept last night. It appears she worked all night hanging the conical shaped little ornaments more commonly know as icicles.  Well, I hate to be the one to inform ya Mom Nature but you are a few months behind or ahead of yourself.  Could have used these free decorations around December.  These shots were taken this morning March 25th. 







On a more warm and inviting note, things have been progressing along here in my well lit studio.  Seems the new lighting Dave installed out there has given me more energy to get drawing up some patterns.  Or maybe it's just that I can finally  SEE what I am doing without the Ott Lamp hovering over my head!
In the photo below I am working on transferring a pattern onto linen.  The rug pattern is one I designed called Mary's Garden.  Mary actually requested that I design and make this rug sometime last year I think late summer.  Well...... as you can see I'm a lot like Mother Nature.  I tend to ignore what season it is and when the creative urge strikes that's when I finally get around to doing my creating.  But to be truthful it's probably due to procrastination more than anything.


The material I'm using to transfer my pattern is soft plastic drywall mesh.  It has a nice self adhesive backing and you can see through it.  I purchased it on Ebay about three or four years ago.  The seller I purchased from is no longer selling it.  I checked the local stores here that carry building supplies and would have had to special order it.  But you can Google (life would end without Google, no?)  drywall mesh and find several places that sell the rolls.  The size of my roll is 38 inches by 150 feet.  I just cut the amount I need and lay my paper pattern underneath and  trace onto the mesh. Peel it off ( nothing sticky or  anything remains) and stick it on to your fabric backing.  Trace away.  It's way better than red dot tracer or anything because it holds your pattern in place and stays there. Then you can keep your pattern and use it over and over and over and over.....
Thank me later if you ever try this stuff.  If you do finely detailed rugs it may prove a little more difficult for the finer lines because of the density of the mesh.  But you could go back and fill those in free hand.  


I hope this is useful information for those of you that do a lot of pattern designing and transferring of patterns.  It has made that task for me a little less daunting.  But sad to say it hasn't helped the procrastination side of me one bit. 
Cathy G