The Quilting Begins

Remember all those drawings that I made on fabric with Inktense pencils waaaay back in November? Well, I've finally gotten back to them.  The holiday season always throws me for a loop. I also find it hard to work with other people in the house, as I feel like I should be doing something for them. Do you have this problem, too?  Now the Husband is back to work, and the Curly One is back at school, and I am digging my way out from under.

This is the stack of 30 quiltlets all layered up and ready to stitch. Each one is about 6 by 9 inches. (Do you like the tray on the wall? It's an old TV tray from , what would it be, the 1950's?)

 

I tried to get bunny approval. Here you can see Jensen looking at the stack suspiciously.

He approached, sniffed, and kept right on going. Buttercup kept her back turned the entire time I was presenting these. It seems the little quilts are not up to bunny standards yet.

I guess I'll have to try harder during the quilting phase if I want the nibble of approval....

I Bet You Are Wondering

if I managed to finish out Art Every Day Month. Well, amazingly, I did. Even with some travelling thrown in. Luckily this project was nice and compact, an easy one to carry along. I was able to sit at The Southern Daughter's table and play while she cooked!

Thank you all for the nice things you said about the last batch of fabric pictures. As a bonus, one of my brothers even left a comment. That really warms a sister's heart. Also, I'm so happy that shell and RG think the one of shell looks like her. I wonder if I will ever get to the point where I'm not surprised that someone recognizes what I've made?

Here is the final batch.

Day 20

More positive feedback. My husband recognized that the fish was supposed to be a tuna.

 

Day 21

 These guys look like trouble....

Day 22

See Jensen hiding in this one?



 



 Day 23

I have no idea how this one with a large reptile happened. I'm not really a reptile person.

 

Day 24

This one was done after spending an afternoon with shell and the Buns. 

 





 Day 25

My Southern Daughter says this will be her house some day. She loves a porch. And horses.

 

Day 26

The owl showed himself in some splotches of paint on the fabric. 

 

 Day 27

Another llama appeared, and I think maybe those women are the faces of Fate. Or maybe the Triple Goddess. Or both.

 

 Day 28

Took a long trail walk with the family and dog, and saw a bluebird. That's not a bird that I get to see very often.

 

 Day 29

My goofy dog, aka my Knight in fuzzy armor..

 

 Day 30

A catbird to finish off the month. Some summers we have had catbirds that would follow us around the yard, scolding us if we picked their berries. 

 

That's the lot. I have already done a little stitching on these. A "red thread of connection" has been sewn across some part of each one. Now I need to layer them up with batting, and begin the actual quilting. The hand stitching should be a good stress reliever as Christmas approaches. I am definitely not ready for it. Are you?

One last thing. I want to offer apologies to Mr. Mick for only getting his likeness onto one piece. I promise to make amends for that shortcoming in the near future. Maybe I should send him some rum, too. Think that will do the trick?

More Pencils on Fabric

Well, I haven't been good about posting for AED Month, but I have been doing the artwork! Here's a round-up of what's showed up.

Day 8

Shell on her recycling bin goat. 

 

Day 9

Silly bird. 

 

Day 10

Going nuts. 

 

Day 11

Space mouse. 

 

Day 12

Owl.  The sheer fabric did not cooperate with the camera here.

This looks better in real life. 

 

Day 13

Spooky cat. 

 

Day 14

His Majesty. 

 

Day 15

I had a squiggle on the fabric, and someone asked if I was drawing a stick figure.

 So I did. Sort of. 

 

Day 16

I was thinking about a hawk I had seen that day.

May need to revise this if it triggers Jade's inner 10-year old. 

 

Day 17

A fine day.

 

Day 18

Started with paint blobs, found a polar bear.

He was golfing. 

 

Day 19 (Today)

Made some squiggles with the pencils, sprayed them with water,

 and let them spread. This is what I saw in the result. 

  



This drawing project has turned out to be lots of fun. It's hard to believe that so much of the month has already passed! Since I prepared my fabric pieces ahead of time, I've managed to keep up with the drawing. I like several of these more than the others, but that may change once they are stitched and quilted. Do you have a favorite?

Playing with Pencils

So November has rolled around again. I imagine a number of you out there are busy scribbling away on your novels for NaNoWriMo. I don't know how you do that, especially with the holidays approaching! Maybe someday I'll be brave and try a novel, but once again this year I have decided that Art Every Day Month sounds much more doable. The use of Derwent Inktense pencils on fabric has interested me for a while, but I have never made the time to actually try them. So for November, I'm playing with pencils.

We have already reached Day 7, so here are seven small 6"x9" pieces that I have worked on. Besides the pencils, I am also using collage and paint on each piece. After November is up, I plan to go back into each of these with hand and machine stitching. So now, here we go!

Day 1

Of course, I had to start with a bunny.

 

 

Day 2

That weird little creature in the middle? Don't tell anyone, but it started life as a badly drawn chair. You can see on the flowers where the pencil color spread. You can activate the pencils with aloe gel or water. You have much more control of how the color spreads with the aloe.

 

 

Day 3

In a weird coincidence, the random number generator that I used to choose a number to paint chose the same number as the day! 

 

Day 4

 

Day 5

My Wonderland bunny looks like Ginny.

 

Day 6

The lioness is showing how I feel about political phone calls.

 

Day 7

 

 

I've seen some wonderfully subtle quilts drawn with these pencils.  As usual, there is nothing subtle about mine! But, I think I'm starting to getting the feel for using the Inktense pencils on fabric, and that's what I hoped for. To see more AEDM work, check the Day 7  links at the Creative Every Day blog. Have a great weekend everybunny.



 

 



Rabbit Approved. Barely.

Before I went away for a little trip, the weather had cooled off enough to be able to stand having a quilt on my lap. That meant I had to stop procrastinating, and I finished the binding on this quilt.

 

That also meant that it was time to have the quilt rabbit-tested. Buttercup and Jensen got together, and consulted on the criteria.

 

 

Jensen took the time to explain to Knight about their rating system.

 

 

Meanwhile, Buttercup got serious about the testing process.

 

 

She even checked out the back of the quilt.

 

 

She and Jensen talked over their findings. The discussions went on for a while, and I started to get nervous.

 

 

Finally, Buttercup informed me that they had decided to give the quilt their Paw of Approval. She also told me that too much dog smell on the quilt should have disqualified it, but they took pity on me as I had taken so long to get this done.   

 

I was grateful, and promised to try harder to meet their standards next time.

A Bit of Progress

Made some progress on my llama this week, but not as much as I had hoped to. Sometimes the hands just don't want to cooperate with the hand stitching.

 

Now here is where I was going to show you photos of Jensen, Buttercup, and Knight at Speedy's Pirate Party, but I haven't been able to get the camera back from Knight yet. He was soaking wet and growling about darn rabbits when they came home. Then Jensen said Knight had looked good with eye patches over both eyes. Both rabbits hopped away snickering, and I'm pretty sure that I heard Buttercup mumble something about a long walk on a short plank. Guess there must have been a lot of rum consumed....  

 

 

So the Restart is Very Slow....

I really did intend to post more regularly. And I have written some amazing blog posts since the last one. You just never got to read them, because they never made it out of my head, down my arm to my fingers and onto the keyboard. Trust me though, you would have been amazed and entertained.

Another activity that has languished over the last year is quilt making.  Not that I haven't been sewing. It's just that my quilting has been more about using traditional patterns, and using up fabric. During this time my creative muscles have been exercised by taking art classes, and learning to use a lot of different art supplies, and techniques. Last week I finally found myself wanting to get back to creative quilting. Here is my first step, drawn with fabric marker. The crow is a stamp.

 

Next, I added some paint. The red was applied first, and heat set. Then the green and blue were added. I like painting on fabric with a white-on-white design, as the paint really makes the design stand out.

Next came a little bit of fabric collage, and some more drawing with fabric markers. That creature is supposed to be a llama, but I got the head wrong. It came out as more of a horsedog. What can I say? It was my first ever llama. Of course I didn't practice first before diving in with the markers. That would have made too much sense!

 

This was followed by more stitching, paint and collage, and finally the beginning of some quilting.

 

I'm enjoying this. I haven't decided yet if this piece is interesting, or just a big mess. But at any rate, it feels good to get back to creative sewing. That's all for now. Hope to see you again, sooner.

Tiny Quilts

How are you on follow through? I'm pretty bad at it, which makes me wonder why I started this new project. Starting with my birthday last June, I decided to make one tiny quilt each week for the next year. Not sure what the heck I was thinking, but I'm hoping for once to make it to the end of a project!

So this is the deal. These quilts are mounted on 6 inch canvases. I'm trying to use a lot of the mixed-media techniques that I've been learning (see my sideboard for the LifeBook class info.), so they all have collage, paint, some incorporate paper, and of course a wide variety of fabric. I'm also doing a lot of reading on Symbology, so I've been exploring personal symbols with these little bits, too.

This was the third TQ. There is a vague tarot reference with the diamonds here, and the acute triangles which are masquerading as swords. The rest is obvious.

 The latest finished TQ is below. It includes part of a handkerchief that I doodled on, and some fused bits of scrap thread.
 Here's a detail shot where you can see the threads.

 

 

 

This is an almost finished Work-In-Progress. That reddish square has some writing that I did on other piece of hankie. The writing is cryptic, as it goes in two different directions, one over the top of the other. Did not intend the blotchy effect, but the red marker bled, and I kept it because I liked it. I also did not intend the unibrow. I guess I need to plan ahead on the thread sketching if I'm doing people! It's all a learning process....

 

And finally, the very beginnings of a new piece. The next step is some paint, but I haven't made any decisions yet.

 

It looks like this is going to be a fun journey. I hope I make it all the way through to my 52nd birthday. Have you ever tried a year-long project? Or are you doing one now? What are you learning from it?

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I enjoyed your comments on my last post. Brandi, I'm sheepishly admitting that you are right. I tried to hurry Jensen and Buttercup along too fast. Jade, he doesn't just take the greens off her plate. He rips them out of her mouth! Bit of a bully, my Jensen. And if you are on FB, you know he is having a bit of a stasis issue. We are not out of the woods yet, but he did "produce" a little. Poop is a wonderful thing!