Sunday, December 28, 2008

Two Finished in December 2008

Here is Sarah's quilt. I designed the quilt and cut all the pieces of fabric from my 2006 stash in a kind of double-charmed style (2 triangles of each piece of fabric in my stash). Recently, the pieces were sewn together by my mom, Sarah's mother-in-law, and her mother. Pretty much this quilt would never have been finished without help from these ladies. I got extra-wide batik backing from Sewbatik on the internet and shipped the top and back off to a quilter to be long-arm quilted with variegated thread since the thing is king-size. My mom graciously agreed to handstitch the binding.
I finished this Puzzle quilt today, binding finished. This is one of my favorite quilts so far.

Puzzle quilt

I have finally finished the binding on this quilt.

It seems like binding always takes me forever. And here is detail on my favorite quilting motif. I need to have someone show me how to properly adjust the tension on my machine.

I'm still working on my Art/Gratitude Journal in December. I'm getting the ideas on the page but embellishing them is another story. Here is another one I like. I affixed a strip of lovely fabric to the left side, then drew out the rest of the design, expanding off the strip inspiration.

Saturday, December 20, 2008

More Flyes

I'm having fun with these butterflies. I did a few using watercolor, but they didn't have the same color intensity. I'll do it again once I get a brush suitable for watercolor. I should take some kind of course on brushes. I've got about ten different brushes, all good brushes, but I think they are more for acrylic and I need one with a finer point that can hold all the water that loads up onto the brush when I'm doing watercolor.

Sunday, December 7, 2008

More ART, fish STAMP, and BUTTERFLYs

12-06 (this is an awesome photo of Sophia at the zoo - I love her carefree-ness):12-05 (one of my favorite poems, a Robert Frost classic):
I carved this fish stamp out of a pink eraser (very pliable, moreso than the linocut stuff I had been using - pink eraser is my new favorite substance for carving). I got this idea directly from Geninne's Art Blog, who is very creative with stamps and has a lovely tutorial. I have wanted to make more stamps but generally feel stumped as to what to carve, so I found a fish on her site I liked and drew one like it on the eraser, then carved away: And another butterfly (I love watching the process by which these little guys come about - it's probably the first thing I've ever made where I actually like the product better than the process or the idea, unlike most every bed-quilt I've ever made, where I usually hate the thing by the time I'm halfway through, which either has to do with the loathing of the work aspect, or the creating a sense of hate towards it so I can bear to part with it when I'm done aspect):
The butterflies are quite homely until their final stage of creation: the black ultra-fine sharpie marker over the colored pencil color. It turns out you can go through quite a few sharpies this way, as the wax in the colored pencil seems to destroy the tip of the pen.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Butterflies!!!

So I've started drawing butterflies in the last few days - wild and crazy colorful butterflies. And then I use them in my collages, and on envelopes that I'm mailing to people. What fun!