Block Quilt and ATCs

A lap quilt using some of the blocks I made last year based on designs from sidewalks in Spain.

More ATCs- Series "Postage 1."
I used canceled postage and added, "Send a letter the old-fashioned way, you might just make someone's day."

Paper Paintings

From the Paper Paintings workshop by Elizabeth St.Hilaire Nelson: below is a the half-finished paper painting of a flower. I was inspired by a photograph of a flower that focused on a pink flower in the foreground with light coming through the trees in a blurry background. Paper Paintings are done by ripping colorful papers with various lines/text etc, and placing them down on a surface with gel medium (over an underpainting).

Baby Quilt

A friend had a baby, and I decided to make one of my old school quilts with solid color half-square triangles, sewn together randomly. Here is the back.
And a picture of it folded (I love all the color):

Art Now For Autism

New Mexico clouds, Arizona chilis.
My piece for Art Now For Autism's online auction, titled, "Mama's Garden" - size 11.5" x 14.5". I wanted to interpret what an autistic child might experience being outside in a colorful, lush garden filled with humming bees, singing birds, and the noise of garden tools scraping in the dirt. I used a lot of thread painting and also Golden Fluid Acrylics. I fussy cut a bird and butterfly from fabrics. It's a very busy piece but that was the point - the sensory system of the autistic child is overwhelmed by the environment.


This was a weird bug I found the other day on my porch light - it looks like a leaf.

ATCs + a colorful grasshopper

Here are my two most recent ATCs. I did a batch of each. The Spanish Birds ATC (above) has a little birdie sketch I did, and silver paint dots, with words in Spanish from a magazine. The Words#3 series, below, has various inspirational words and gold paint (I love that gold paint!).

Look at this pretty grasshopper that I found on the back door, aren't the colors pretty? Green, red/orange, and blue.

Art Stuff and a Moth

So for some reason Blogger has decided to rotate all the images I'm uploading. Above is a part of a small painting I did the other day. I love the little fireflies (silver paint pen dots).

This is a linocut I was working on - a fish. I traced a sketch of a fish I had done. Lino is much harder to cut into than pink eraser, but I find I have more control over the tool.

Click on this image if you want to see a moth up close. It has a huge eyeball - at least I think it's an eyeball.

Geese Wheel, Circle Cutter

Here is the semi-finished geese wheel.

And here is a circle cutter I got. I saw it on this video about Easy Circle Quilt Blocks. It was an interesting technique and I wanted to try cutting perfect fabric circles. I got this Fiskars Circle Cutter and adhered fusible web to the back of a piece of fabric (in the video, she uses freezer paper). Then I went to work using the circle cutter and it was awesome! It cut a perfect circle! I cut it with the fusible web paper facing up (you can also see a piece of paper I cut):

Art Quilt

Here is a preview of a section of the art quilt I'm working on lately. You can see where I'm going with this: colored geese (a color wheel). Luckily I have fifty or sixty solid color fabrics from when I worked exclusively in solids. I picked some for a color wheel, then designed the circle and the geese. I'm paper piecing the geese and then sewing the inside and outside curves to the geese.

Cabin Fever

Philbrook MOA

The Philbrook Museum of Art is located in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It's a Spanish style villa with lush gardens, and the villa is filled with wonderful art.

Art

ATCs, bugs, sky

Here is an example from my latest batch of ATCs (I've been doing 12 in a series). I used FMS on selveges and acrylic paint, and the phrase: explore color=new ideas. And check out these green beetles from my backyard. Aren't the markings cool? They were a little bit bigger than ladybugs. When I zoomed in on a macro shot I saw hundreds of tiny little holes on their 'shells'

It's monsoon season, with cool clouds and amazing thunderstorms.

New Quilt

I've started a new quilt. It's a stash buster - I'm using all my favorite fabrics, including a few I haven't dared cut into over the years.
I've been cutting the selvages off the fabrics as I go. All the colored circles look cool lined up together.

Cabin Fever - finished! (except for binding)

I finished Cabin Fever. I quilted it and trimmed the excess. I need to sew binding and attach it.

Here is the back. I've gotten in the habit of piecing in a yellow strip somewhere on each back. I didn't intend for the back to be lopsided (the lines reference the sides) but I guess I didn't lay it down straight when sandwiching it and I quite prefer it this way.

Cabin Fever

I've finished the quilt top - I'm calling it 'Cabin Fever' since it has crazy log cabin blocks. It was fun to make. I've been trying to work out a border - I have one border ready, on the bottom in the photo. I'll add a 2" white strip to the outside and then bind with dark colors. I would LOVE to hand quilt it with embroidery floss but that's not going to happen (the hand quilting) so I'll machine quilt it.

Crazy Goose

I decided to spruce up some of the blocks for the quilt I'm making. I chopped up the panda block and inserted this 'crazy goose' I paper-pieced. It was pretty easy. I started by drawing a layout with Sharpie on tracing paper:

Here is the finished block:

Lisa Call; fabric card; cookies

An ACEO by Lisa Call (Lisa's blog):

A card I made:

Double chocolate cookies (Martha Stewart recipe). I rolled the balls of dough in granulated sugar. I think they turn out better that way.

Fabric Postcard Tutorial

Making fabric postcards is fun and easy. This tutorial shows how to create a quilted surface to adhere to a 4"x6" postcard, and embellish the fabric surface.

First, start with a 4"x6" blank postcard (you can buy them at the art store, but you can also just cut white cardstock to size). You can also use blank greeting cards or anything else you want.

Then, pick a fabric and some batting. I like Warm and Natural batting because it doesn't pill and is smooth and flat.

Cut a 6"x 8" piece of each (or a little bigger if you want - it can always be trimmed down to size):

I use the Bernina 440QE with the BSR foot (stitch regulator). I used red/purple/gray variegated thread.
Do some FMS (free-motion stitch) on it or whatever you like:

This is the finished FMS: Cut down to size. Since I was doing a 4"x6" postcard, I cut it to 3.75"x5.75" but if you want more 'border' on the outside (ie postcard showing on the edges), then cut it smaller.
Here are the paints I used. I like Golden Fluid Acrylics Iridescent Gold (Fine), it flows and is easy to work with. The stuff in the tubes is also very pretty, but thicker and harder to manipulate. If you don't want to paint your postcard, skip this step. Alternatively, you could sew on buttons or beads or put on glitter or whatever you want.
I painted a copper color around the edge of the card since I didn't want any white showing.

Then, I stitched the fabric rectangle to the postcard, using a simple stitch: Then, I painted the surface of the fabric.
The finished product: