Stitchies Galore...

Is your sewing room anything like mine, with containers of small bits of fabrics and trims? Well a lot of the ones that live here have now found a new home in a special handwork project. Fiber artist Liz Kettle came up with the concept called Stitch Meditations and shares more about it in a video on her website. She is right in saying that making these small stitched pieces is both relaxing and quite satisfying as you watch a small pile of them grow! I started each of mine with a 4" square of light gray flannel and then built on top of the flannel with fabric bits and hand embroidery. I keep a container of elements handy, and then rummage through to find combinations I like.

The process was also featured in a recent issue of Quilting Arts (Issue 101, October/November 2019) and includes many examples for inspiration. The editors also issued a Reader Challenge based on the 4" squares and will show selected winners in an upcoming issue.

Embellish the pieces in any way you like. Most of mine are embroidered only, but I added buttons to one and some cheesecloth, lace motif, and velvet leaf to others (seen below). Pretty much any combo of materials that strikes my fancy goes!

I noticed on Pinterest that artist Lenna Andrews of Creative Swaps was making one of these "Stitchies" each day for a year as her art practice, and posting her photos. She enjoyed making them so much, that she has organized a Stitchie Swap. We will trade three of these small Stitchies which are due on February 1. You can learn more and see the ones I sent her at the link above. It won't be long before we receive our new pieces of art. What fun! And meanwhile, I'm adding to the pile. I'll show more of these in an upcoming post.

Tying Up Loose Ends...

Wrapping up the year in my sewing room, there were a few finishing touches to add and projects to complete. This stitched heart made from necktie fabrics is one I showed previously, but I wanted to make it into a door hanger. So I sewed some split rings on each side at the top, and added a beaded wire hanger. It's now on display where I can see it.

I also kept making the leaf bowls shown earlier. I thought you might like to see them before they are shaped into the final form. These are the back sides cut from a single fabric. And you can see the free-motion stitched veins. The leaves are sewn flat, trimmed to shape and edge-stitched all around.

Each section of the leaf front is cut from a different fabric, fused in place, and then stitched.

Once stitching is completed, each one is steam pressed with an iron which makes it soft and pliable. Then it's pressed over the bottom of a medium size bowl, and another bowl placed on top to form it.

Once cool, the bowl holds its shape and hardens. I'm sure I'll be making lots more of these!

I also wanted to show more details of the whimsical Art Warrior Doll I got in our doll swap in Fiber Art Bee. She was made by Merri McKenzie and has all sorts of creative sayings and thoughts, front and back!

And she is holding a thimble charm in one hand along with the charm containing buttons you can just see in the photo above. I was told that those buttons hold a record of all of the creative ideas in the world. That's terrific because I, of course, want to make one of each! Now I have a reference. She's quite lovely. Here's to many more creative projects in 2020! Happy New Year to you.

Merry Christmas to All....

Merry Christmas! This vintage-style sewn Nativity set was gifted to me by a friend this year. She even made a cute fabric bag for storing it.

And the sewn-and-stuffed swan has donned a sparkly bow tie for the holidays.

Angels watch over all.

And our pets provide the holiday entertainment. Iggy was upside down with excitement about the tree and its ornaments.

One of his favorite places to hang out is on top of my car where he lays with his elbow hanging over the edge of the roof. We joke that he reminds us of a New York City cab driver- "Where to, lady? The meter's running." So our daughter Joanna found this perfect picture frame for our Christmas gift and put his photo inside. He makes us laugh a lot and now, so does this photo.

Thank you so much for reading and/or commenting on my blog posts. It means a lot to me. A healthy and happy 2020 to all!

Meet the Party Dolls...

Our Fiber Art Bee had a fun swap for our Christmas party this year. Each participant made a "spirit doll" to trade. This was after an interesting program on the topic presented by one of our members in the fall. This girl is one that I made to trade. She's fashioned from hand-dyed fabrics, lace, embroidery, beads, silk flowers, and a shrink plastic charm. I call her the Flower Girl.

And this is the doll I received in the swap. i just love her and she will join several other Art Warrior dolls I've made. I'll show some close-ups of the various elements in a future post since this is a photo-heavy post. Merri added many creative touches, front and back.

Our photo recorder took pictures of each doll with the recipient and maker. Mine was made by Merri McKenzie, right, who, with her sister Celeste Beck, taught classes on making these dolls. You can see three of the dolls I made in their classes here, and now the dolls have a little sister! Perfect! Merri also made her fascinator- so festive.

While making the Flower Girl, I also made a second so I could decide which one to swap. I get to keep the Pink Flower Girl, made from ice-dye fabric, trims, beads and embroidery. But she came along for show-and-tell. The dolls are very relaxing to make somehow.

This array of bags was on display while we ate our holiday meal and waited out the suspense of seeing what they contained.

There was such a wonderful variety of dolls. I drew my free-form doll pattern after seeing some of these embellished dolls on Pinterest. This is another one- a mermaid that is heavily embellished. Some members even got creative with the gift bags!

This is the colorfully stamped bag my doll arrived in.

I thought you might like to see the back of the doll as well- not as fancy, but still stitched and embellished.

Blog reader Elizabeth asked about a YoYo quilt I mentioned in a previous post. When taking the doll photos, I placed the vintage quilt in the photo in case others were unfamiliar with a YoYo quilt. They are made by cutting a circle of fabric (all sorts in this case, from silks to cottons to home dec fabric). The quilter stitches around the circle with a gathering stitch and then pulls the thread taut, drawing the edges to the center and forming a YoYo. These are then whipstitched together in rows, forming the quilt top. Of course some do not think of these as "quilts" since there is no batting or backing-rather they refer to them as coverlets.

Here's the back of the pink flower girl.

She, too is posing with the vintage YoYo quilt that was gifted to me.

Downsizing in the Sewing Room....

Downsizing is not happening in the usual sense, though the sewing room benefits from a purge every now and again. This downsizing happens to be shrink plastic! While you may think "Shrinky Dinks" brand when you hear shrink plastic, there are actually other brands available- like Grafix and Shrinkets from Julie Haymaker. I know this important information because I recently presented a workshop for our Fiber Art Bee on using shrink plastic in fun and creative ways. I'll share some of the basics here, in case you're interested in trying it. Shrink plastic is a crafting medium made by stretching plastic into thin sheets that will shrink down by 60% or more when heated in a toaster oven, regular oven, or with a heat gun. It happens so fast, you'll need to be watching! You can buy shrink plastic in assorted styles (clear, opaque), colors (black, gold, white, pastels), and finishes (clear, sanded). And you can buy sheets of ink-jet printable shrink plastic to run through your printer for custom images. Use ONLY an ink-jet printer though- laser printers use heat that can melt the plastic inside the printer. Nobody wants that! The flowers above are doodle images copied onto various types of shrink plastic. All but the pink one were colored with markers prior to cutting them out and baking (on a parchment paper or silicon lined baking tray at about 325 degrees for less than a minute). The pink flower was colored with Prisma colored pencils (suggested because they are softer). I'll explain about the murky look of the orange flower in a bit.

I may have become a bit caught up in (translation-obsessed with) the images of The Ghastlies found on some Alexander Henry fabric prints in my collection. I scanned and printed some of them on the shrink plastic, colored them, and shrunk them down to charm size. As you can see, this is a craft that can have varying results for many reasons. One variable is how much darkness is in the original image. Because colors intensify as they shrink, very dark colors can dominate the design. So use a light hand when adding color. Also, I was interested in finding a finish that would be clear and glossy to apply to the completed charm. I'm still on that quest. I've used Diamond Glaze and Glossy Accents with some success, along with clear nail polish. Some of the finishes can cause the colors to run or become cloudy, and that's what happened to the orange flower above. If you want to use the shrunken image as a charm, punch a hole in it with a 1/4" hole punch prior to baking. Or you can glue a bail on it once it's done to avoid the hole in the image. You may want to round the corners on shapes like these to avoid sharp edges and to help with some of the slight distortion of shapes that happens.

I'm not sure how it happened, but apparently I (and my now-grown children, too) missed the whole Shrinky Dink craft trend of the 1970s. But I'm certainly making up for lost time now! The button, mandalas, and sugar skull shown here were all printed on ink-jet shrink plastic, colored with pencils or markers, and baked. Coating the back with acrylic paint or permanent marker helps to make the color stand out a bit. I used white paint, though other colors will work, too. Copy-right free coloring images are good sources, or draw images yourself. The yellow flower was traced with a fine-tip black Sharpie, colored with colored pencils, cut out, and baked. One tip for this- draw the image on the smooth side of the plastic (easier on the pen nib) and color on the sanded side (it takes the color better and adds an illusion of depth). If the plastic is smooth on both sides, sand one side lightly with fine grit sandpaper. And again, you'll notice that most of these are simple shapes which helps to avoid sharp edges in the shrunken piece. The turquoise mandala is about as pointy as I'd go. Some crafters say that you can use recycled clear plastic that is marked with a number 6 as your shrink plastic. I did not have good results when I tried it though.

You can see some earlier Ghastlie girls I used in this charm necklace.

And some hand-drawn mandalas added to this one. Just a tip for heating the shrink plastic with a heat gun- hold the cut out image in place on a silicon mat with a craft stick because the forced air can blow the lightweight plastic off the work surface. And while it heats, each shrink plastic item will fold and curl in on itself in a way that makes you think it's not going to work. Be patient- it eventually flattens out when it's close to done. I used a pancake turner to remove each item from the lined baking tray, placed it on another parchment paper on the counter, and pressed down on it with a tile coaster for a few seconds just to flatten it fully. By the way, the utensils used are ones I keep for crafting use- not used for food. There you have it- more than you may ever have wanted to know about shrink plastic!

Leaf Peeping, Florida-Style...

It's generally thought that Autumn in Florida is a colorless affair. But that's not true- I see signs of trees changing color here. Not the splashy, deep colors of more northern regions, but greens do turn to soft golden colors on some species of trees. That subtle color shift inspired these fun leaf bowls. The Palm is made using batik fabrics in assorted green-brown-gold prints.

And the Maple has the traditional orange-brown tones. I used a pattern called Natural Inspiration Leaf Bowls. And I used a material that is new to me- Bosal, a heat-moldable fusible product that gives the leaf bowl its shape and firmness. Soft when heated, hard when cooled- the bowl is malleable as long as it's warm. The free-motion stitched leaf veins and the zig-zag edge stitching were completed prior to heating and shaping.

The bowl is constructed similarly to a quilt- there's a backing, seen in this photo; a middle layer which is the Bosal in this case; and a top, which is made using 8 different fabric prints. I printed the pattern pieces on a sheet of printable freezer paper, cut the pieces apart, and ironed them to the various fabrics ready to cut out and place on the Bosal. The three layers are then fused together, stitched, and shaped. The bowls went together pretty quickly, and while I was thinking the Bosal was going to be too much to sew through, it worked just fine. As a former editor, my eye went right to the statement on the package- "Stiffness that permits you to heat the material and shape it into any!" Ummm.... I'm left with the question- any what?

The Palm is a great container for some notions I was given by a fellow quilter- vintage button cards and an interesting buckle. I love the doctor and nurse depicted on the pearlized uniform buttons. I'm guessing these are from the 1950s or '60s. I'm often the recipient of "found" items because people know I have an affinity for these little odd bits they come across. The items often find a home in one of my projects, and I appreciate the gifts! I recently got a large bag containing an old YoYo quilt- badly made but lots of fun fabrics. I wonder what I'll do with it? Ideas are forming already.

Bits and Pieces...

Bits and pieces sums up the past month or so for us. We have been traveling some, I've been sewing and crafting some, and visiting family. So this post is a collection of photos on assorted topics. First off, I dug this crazy-pieced heart out of my unfinished projects bin and decided to complete it. It began as assorted scraps of silk neckties. Once I pieced it together, embroidered accents were added. Then I cut and stuffed the heart shape, finishing it off with a few buttons and a beaded edging. I think a couple more tiny buttons are in order along with a beaded wire hanger. It's just the kind of relaxing hand work I enjoy doing in the evenings.

One of our trips was to Arizona in late October, beginning in historic Prescott. While there, we met these museum docents and their little sidekick strolling the streets of downtown. They were happy to oblige me with a photo. Some of them made their own costumes representing the styles of territorial Arizona- a feat I found most impressive. The woman with the carpetbag had made hers, including the quilted and piped short jacket. These docents volunteer at the historic opera house. 

We drove on to Sedona where we visited a collection of charming shops at Tlaquepaque (think Ta-la-ka-pocky). It looked like Autumn with the lovely gourds and pumpkins artfully arranged in the fountain and throughout the grounds. 

And of course, the magnificent red rocks of Sedona never disappoint. I can gaze at them for hours.

One new stop on our Phoenix to Sedona loop was at Western Spirit, Scottsdale's Museum of the West. There were saddles, chaps, and bits galore, along with beautiful paintings and Native American artifacts. This trompe l'oeil (fool the eye) painting was interactive, allowing us to become part of the scene. The horse's muzzle and pond were painted on the floor where we stood. The rocks and sand continued up the wall behind us. The museum docent instructed us where to stand- Jack is at the front and was holding his hand in the air as instructed. I stood further back and also posed as directed. He then took the photo that has us looking as if I'm petting the mane and Jack is ready to leap into the saddle. See that outlaw behind and above me? No worries- he's no match for me- I've got a badge! This was such a clever display.

 Another trip to South Florida to visit family included a stop at the Morse Museum in Winter Park near Orlando. I've been wanting to visit here for a long time. The museum houses a wonderful and extensive collection of works by Louis Comfort Tiffany and non-flash photography was allowed. Included in the collection is this chapel which was once part of the 1893 Chicago Exposition. Imagine that! It was large and awe-inspiring. There were many other stained glass images, lamps, and paintings as well as introductory videos to acquaint visitors with the collection. Well worth a visit.

Winter Park itself is a quaint small town with narrow brick-paved streets and plenty of unique shops. They even put out a bowl of peanuts for the squirrels! I hope you can see it at the bottom of the photo. Now, I really must get back to the sewing room.