DIY Sewing Machine...

 

Things have been quiet in the sewing room lately. However, I've always admired collage quilts designed by Laura Heine. So when our guild offered a class to learn the methods for making one, I was happy to sign up. That was last Spring when the class had to be postponed due to the pandemic. At last the guild found a large and well-ventilated classroom where a small group could safely meet to have the long-awaited class. I chose the #5 collection in the Teeny Tiny pattern series which included this sewing machine along with a dress form and a pin cushion design. This project will measure about 16" x 24" once complete. All sorts of little fabric motifs are at home in a collage quilt. A quilting friend shared her Singer and sewing scraps for some of them. This project is almost ready to be quilted. But before that, I need to study it for a bit to see if there are any further additions or adjustments to make. What would you add? Collage quilts are imaginative and fun... and fussy. Quite enjoyable all in all.

And I just wanted to show you this unusual visitor to our barn. I've never seen a snail quite like it before, so had to snap his photo and look up some information on it. Mainly I wanted to see if it was toxic to animals since we have several. It's a Rosy Wolfsnail. They are somewhat exotic and are considered invasive since they dine on other snails and slugs and can eradicate the snail population. Have you seen one like it? Florida certainly has its share of unusual creatures.

A Quilter's Hideaway...

 

Welcome to the "Wee Tropical Forest Cottage" made in response to an art quilt challenge titled "My Dream Home." The background got its start in Textile Artists Stitch Club, an online group. It's layered with an assortment of painted and stamped fabrics along with hand-embroidered stitches. Can you spot me floating in the sky above the little hideaway? I'm contemplating all the fun quilts and stitched projects that will come to life in my tiny cottage. I made the quilt in a random free-form shape determined by the fabric edges. That posed a challenge for finishing the quilt edge so I applied braided fiber edging to it which let me keep the shape.

The mushroom roof is colorfully beaded and and the house is tucked away, safe and sound in a beautiful location. I'm pretty sure I'll be stitching happy in my little cottage! This was a fun and creative project which is just what I needed as there are no big quilts underway at the moment. It helped to counter some lethargy that seems to have creeped in lately. Our group has some more fun small projects coming up so I'm looking forward to them. 

Wonderful Watercolor...

 

I'm trying to make friends with watercolors. They are so darn uncontrollable that I get frustrated when using them. But we've become better friends now that I found artist Joanne Sharpe's series of Art Sparks classes. She offers nicely-priced, project classes based on using watercolors and gouache (which was new to me). The fabric covered book above is a concertina style book with a loose and flowy look.

I made it in her Art Sparks 2: Color. Collage. Concertina. Joanne offers instruction for making the basic book and painting in it, and then leads students through adding all sorts of embellishments, including the use of paint pens and addition of pockets. It's a lot of fun.

Small art bits like the flowers and words shown here get glued into the book to add to the colorful fun.

Doodles and freeform color splashes add interest, too.

While it's not fully embellished yet, this butterfly may land on the back cover of my flowery concertina book. Actually, the fun of the book is that it can be added to and embellished at any time... it's never fully "done" as long as there's a new idea to try. "More is more" is the byword here!

This small faith-themed book is one I made in Art Sparks 1: Words and Watercolor. Never a fan of my own handwriting, I appreciate Joanne's encouraging teaching style that keeps me plugging away at writing whimsical style words. I added sari silk ribbon and a handmade boho bead to the spine of this little gem.

"Swimming" color and loose blooms are two exercises we tried out in making our background pages. I've also taken Art Sparks 3: Pockets Full of Posies and am preparing for Art Sparks 4: The Doodle Book. What is it about making books, splashing paint around, and adding fun touches that makes me unable to stop? It's just so enjoyable and satisfying. Another thing I like about Joanne's classes is the number of samples she shows of her own work. So inspiring! I'll be back with a Doodle book soon. 

Stuck in a Corner...

While cleaning and organizing in the sewing room, I found one corner that I couldn't get past without getting busy on a couple of projects awaiting me there. One project I'd been wanting to get to is this journal cover using a piece of original owl fabric made by Celeste Beck of Goatfeathers Studio. I received it as part of our Fiber Art Bee swap of hand-painted or stamped fabric pieces. I love the imagery and wanted to feature it on a cover.

There are a couple of coordinating pieces she made to go with the owl-one is on the back (shown below) and another  may become a pocket inside. Adding the embellishments was a fun task. I still need to decide what type of pages will get bound inside, but at least the cover is now ready for use.

Waiting in that same corner was this little wooden tray. One of our Country Road Quilters members demonstrated how to make these with our favorite quilting fabrics lining the bottom on a recent Zoom meeting (take a look at the guild's beautiful opportunity quilt at the link above- we won't be having our planned quilt show this year so the quilt can be seen there). I can see I don't have such a steady hand while painting so this will need a little touch-up before getting its final coat of polyurethane finish. It's just right for trinkets or small sewing supplies.

 

And look who else was awaiting me in the corner! This fleece cutie just needed his features and some stuffing to take him over the finish line. He's ready to share his love with someone. And I think I'll be stuck in this corner for awhile because there are several more project to share with you once they are done. 

Adventures in Mask Making ...

Because two quilt guilds that I belong to have a call out for masks to donate to various agencies, I went on a mask-making binge this past week. Above are the two styles I favor, along with varying ear pieces. My favorite ear piece is made from T-shirt strips seen in the top two masks. A guild friend provided me with the flat white elastic seen in the middle three masks. Because elastic can be somewhat hard to come by, she was willing to share. That's my second favorite- it's covered in a silky material and is very soft. Some of these are for kids, so I made juvenile sizes and used her non-chafing elastic on them. The mask at the bottom is the three-vent style and has standard 1/4" elastic for the ears. I divided the masks and donated some to each cause. If you are not done with mask-making, and would like a link to the patterns and tutorials I used, you can go to my blog post here. There's further info there on how to use the T-shirt strips for ear pieces as well.

With all this stitching, I found some tools that were especially helpful, so thought I'd share them here. The first is a bone folder seen at the upper right. It's actually a tool for creasing paper when bookmaking, but quilters use it for turning points, too. All of the masks I make require sewing wrong sides together and turning right side out. The curve on the above mask can be a little challenging to press, so I run the bone folder along the inside seam to encourage the seamline to fold and lie flat. You can find bone folders in the scrapbooking area of your craft store. The tool at the bottom is ... I'm not sure... I guess I'd call it a ring stiletto. It adjusts to wrap around your finger and can be used to direct pieces under the machine needle. I found it on the free table, so I don't have a source for it. But it sure is handy because those ear pieces want to creep out from the edges of the mask while sewing. Next, going clockwise, is a floss threader. You can see it looped through the black T-shirt strip and again in the plastic box it comes in, above left. They're from the dental section of the pharmacy, and are a great help when threading thick yarn or strips through fairly narrow holes like in the beads. The floss threader pulls the strips right through, one at a time. The second strip is a little tighter, but it will work. The bead can then be snugged up for a nice fit. And lastly, the beads themselves. Not every bead will work given the hole size, so it took some hunting to find these pretties. More about them in the next photo.

I hunted through all of the beads on hand to try and find ones with holes large enough to accommodate the ear-piece strips. The largest I had were the acrylic pony beads seen on the right. Nope... not big enough. I finally found these large-hole spacer beads on Amazon, here. 

And here's a photo of the ring stiletto in action. There will be no escapees when I've got the strips pinned down with this tool.

Being a gadget loving quilter, what post about tools of the trade would be complete without mentioning That Purple Thang? This inexpensive tool does a multitude of jobs, including assisting with turning and smoothing seamlines in this case. Would it surprise you to know that the internet is full of reviews, tips and hints for using That Purple Thang? I guess it's a "must have" for those who sew! And wouldn't you know it... I found a Purple SewEZ FingerThing while looking for a stiletto like mine! Likely made by the same company, but I don't know that for sure.

The "adventure" part of this post came when Scooter and I drove to meet up with the guild member who is spearheading the mask collection. We met up at a dog park just behind the agency where our daughter Joanna works. She was able to come out on her lunch hour and we took Scooter into the park. We've decided this is a fun get together for us and plan to meet again from time to time. Abby, our other dog, will get her chance next. Eventually, both dogs can go, but first they each need to experience it to see how things go.

Scooter did well off leash. he met a new pal about his size named Vito. They romped and played until Scooter flopped down for a cool-off. He had surgery for a torn CCL last year, but has recovered beautifully. A DNA test gifted to him by Joanna for Christmas revealed that he is part Pit Bull (not hard to come by in Florida), part Jack Russell (can't see it myself), and part Weimaraner! That one surprised me. I thought he'd have Doberman or Rottweiler in him. But if you look up a Weimaraner online, he sure looks quite like one, apart from being brown rather than gray. He just turned 8 and has been with us since he was 12 weeks old and showed up at our barn one cold fall morning. Of course he got to stay and we are so glad he found us!

A Bad Hair Day?

Do you think this angel is having one? I believe lots of us are having bad hair days since this pandemic began! And an angel is welcome here, hair issues not withstood. She's a fun one that began as a little kit given to the Fiber Art Bee members by Celeste Beck of Goatfeathers Studio. Inside the kit we had a pattern and some metal tape for the wings. There was also a face, but I decided to paint one on muslin to use for this project. The angel has a fabric-paper dress and lots of embellishments, many of which came from our free table where we share leftover bits and pieces. She's about 10" tall, and watches over the proceedings in the sewing room.

I haven't been sewing quilts much of late because I've been doing a big clean out of the sewing room. Of course, as I clean, I also find projects set aside for "someday". Someday seems to have arrived, so I take a break from the cleaning and make a little something. This Ohio Star ornament is stitched with embroidery floss on gold perforated paper. There's enough perforated paper to make several more. 

And for another break in the cleaning action, I've enrolled in two online classes taught by Joanne Sharpe- Art Sparks 1: Watercolor and Words, and Art Sparks 2: Color, Collage, and Concertina. I've never gotten on well with watercolors, though I keep on trying. But somehow, Joanne's style of loose painting combined with lettering is a process that works for me. These are a few of the "sparks" painted and collected to use in a small concertina book. It's great fun, and Joanne offers her classes for "a teeny, tiny price". You can follow this link to her site and see a couple of preview videos. I'll share the books when I'm further along in the class. And now for some more cleaning out. It's mind-boggling the things that accumulate over the years!

A Bit of This and a Little of That...

Early in the pandemic, The TextileArtist.org offered a free six-week Community Stitch Challenge. Each week a well-known embroidery artist offered an instructional video and a creative challenge for participants. A dedicated Facebook group featured the work of students who responded to the challenges. I enrolled and learned a great deal. I've always liked embroidery, but this is a step beyond- very creative and inspiring. You can still follow along with those original six challenges which are on the website linked above. This wall hanging/art quilt is the result of artist Anne Kelly's video challenge in Week 6. Anne is a UK-based textile artist who likes to include repurposed textiles and folk art images in her pieces. My collage is designed on a background made from a vintage hanky and a lace tablecloth. It also has bits of lace and fancy trims along with beads and a braided yarn edging. It was great fun to work on, especially because it's a repository for so many little things that were part of my extensive stash of questionable textiles.

One thing that Anne likes to do is over-stitching on textile pieces. You can see in the close-up that I chose a decorative machine stitch in variegated thread and sewed parallel rows over all of the elements in the collage. I must say it took a little courage to do this because I liked the piece before the stitching was done. I was concerned how it might look over-stitched. The dense stitching does mute the colors a bit, but overall I really like the effect-soft and quilted.

You can see more of Anne's remarkable work on her website. She's had installations of her work in Canada, Australia, and the UK. I'll share some of the other projects and exercises in upcoming posts. I've been concentrating on smaller projects lately because I've finally begun a much-needed tidying up of the sewing room. It's taking quite awhile and I'm becoming reacquainted with lots of fun stuff!