Facing the Year...

Our Fiber Art Bee had a painting party for our January meeting. The goal was to paint a face on canvas or other fabric and then use it in a project. We were all pretty intimidated since few of us felt confident about painting a face. But we persevered. Here's my whimsy face all painted and embellished with free-motion stitching. It was great fun and we all enjoyed stretching ourselves creatively in a new year.

I brought a stretched canvas to work on because I thought the taut surface might be easier to paint on that fabric that wants to wiggle around. Also, it had gesso on it already which made it helpful when painting. And canvases were on half-price sale to boot. Simple shapes- that was how we were instructed to begin. And we lightly sketched our faces with pencil first and then came in with paint.

She's progressing with her vintage-style rolled hairdo. My plan was to complete painting on the canvas, then cut it from the frame for the next step. 

Her next step is to become a notebook cover. Quite a few of my small projects become tote bags, notebooks and journals. I might as well make something useful with these experiments!

Painting faces is a messy business as you can see from our instructor's table. All of our work areas looked like this. She had several samples to share with us for inspiration and we will have our big "reveal" at next months meeting. I'm sure I can't make just one- more faces coming soon!

This is one of our instructor's samples. She incorporates her expressive faces into tote bags.

 

New Year, New Project...

 

"Use it up" is my motto for this year. I really need to dig into my fabrics and put them to work. That's what I decided to do over the New Year's weekend by making this quilt-as-you-go tote. While I have an abundance of totes, I'm still drawn to them and they are always useful. They seem to be good repositories for scraps, strips, and other smaller bits of fabrics, too. This is side one of The Alexandra Tote, and as you can see, it's not easy to get a good photo of a tote bag.

Here's side two of what is a pretty roomy bag. It was easy to stitch as well because it's a "sew by number" project. I purchased a pattern with a kit that included batting printed with placement lines and webbing for the strap handles. The strip sizes are the same as pre-cut rolls, so that could make the project even quicker. But my goal was to use what I had on hand, so I first cut strips from assorted fabrics.

Here's the pattern view which shows a few different versions. It's always nice to start the year with a quick, quilty finish, and I know I'll get plenty of use from this bag. Now to make more progress in reducing the fabrics and other supplies on hand!