Little Things Mean a Lot...

And sometimes little things mean a lot of work! Often it's hard to appreciate all of the work we stitchers and crafters put into our tiny bits of art. This small brooch is an example. I did the stitching and assembling, but even before that, author Cheryl Lynch did the shrink art nest and crow. She packaged it all up and I won the kit on her blog some time ago. Finally, I finished it between other projects. The brooch was one of several featured in her book "Sew Embellished" which I also won. The book is full of information and ideas for unique embellishments for small projects.

Next are some vintage lace, paper, and trims combined into small "scrap cards" as described by Ruth Rae in her Somerset Sew Winter 2011 article. They are oddly satisfying little morsels of all the trims and embellishments we stitchers accumulate over time. These will go into a vintage-style journal that, so far, exists only in my mind's eye. But I'm getting closer!

Speaking of small things, I recently presented a quilt guild program on Journal Quilts. Our local Fiber Art Bee (FAB) is full of talented members who make these small works of art and generously loaned me their work to illustrate the points about journal quilts. Jodi Colvard's is shown above and includes everything metal- from the mesh and wire flowers to the metal beading.

And Miss Smarty is keeping secrets in her cardboard box. She's the whimsical creation of FAB leader Celeste Beck. Celeste and her sister Merri McKenzie also taught the prayer flag and banner class noted in the previous post.

They had samples galore, and inspired students to make banners in a variety of shapes and styles. One student developed her series of banners around an insect theme.

Some of the sample banners were creatively crafted from paper. This one had a very appealing crepe paper flower adorning it.

We were given pattern templates in the shapes above and encouraged to try painting, stamping, stencilng, or crafting a vintage look in our banners. My biggest challenge was to focus on one style because I wanted to dive into everything! Going small can sure be a lot of fun.

Tra La... It's Spring!

It's time to freshen up the garden with flags and banners! At a recent Fiber Art Bee meeting we brought old dresser scarves and other vintage linens and added to them with doodled and inked flowers. Sharpie pens and other fabric markers gave some spark to the pretty but rather dingy linens. I added a sleeve to the back and this is now ready to flutter in the spring breeze and sunshine. The garden needs a clean up first though.

Adding to the fun, I took a class on making banners at our guild's Quilt Camp. The teachers were Celeste and Merri, two sisters from Goatfeathers Studio. They generously shared stacks and bags full of vintage feedsacks and other linens from their family treasures. I was smitten with this pink/brown print feedsack and decided to incorporate it in the pennants for my project. I tried out their giant yo-yo maker for this one.

I call the project "Tribute to Big Mother." That was the name everyone called Celeste's and Merri's grandmother, whose fabric collection we used. She loved to sew, so I added the image of a vintage machine to another feedsack print. It's trimmed in pink glass leaves and seam binding along with a doily piece.

There wasn't enough time to complete the project in class so when I brought it home, I was able to look through my own supplies to find some go-with items like this heart cut from an old quilt piece and the coffee-dyed lace. Ruffles were my other repeating theme, so there's that feedsack again.

We were encouraged to try a woven background for one of our pennants. I added lace, pearls, and more ruffles.

A piece of vintage napkin plus the quilted heart, lace and ruffle combine in this pennant. I stamped some beige denim for one of the pieces. It was interesting to see how some of the students went in an arty direction with painting, stenciling, and stamping bright colors, while others dove into the shabby vintage style.

Here's the pennant displayed on a wall. It will go outside eventually, but must visit our show-and-tell session first. I'll show some of the class samples in my next post.

And one evening we visited downtown Ocala to see the Budweiser Clydesdales parade through the square. This driver handles an 8-horse hitch, and those massive horses were ready to go, feeling quite frisky in the cool air. It's quite a production, and we watched as the ride-along Dalmatian was handed up using his special harness. An impressive sight!

Toss a Tee? Can't Do It...

My favorite tee-shirts are one I buy from Beall's Florida. They are very soft, wash and wear nicely, and have some lovely images with a touch of bling. I've also gotten some nice ones in cruise ship gift shops.

This parrot image I liked so much, I bought two tees, knowing the first one would wear out or I'd spill coffee on it. So now there's one in the quilt and one to wear. But after the tees are worn to near oblivion, I carefully cut out the image before tossing the shirt. Just can't bear to part with these images, so the question becomes "What do I do with them?"

The answer came in the form of a Craftsy online class titled "The Ultimate T-Shirt Quilt" with Winnie Fleming. She offers all the instruction and ideas you need to create a quilt using any size and style of tees. Her methods, formula, and grid system make designing a custom layout manageable. I just pulled a lot of scraps and fabrics from my stash and jumped right in. This quilt is the result, and it's soft and comfy.

So now, those tee shirt images are finally out of storage and my fabric stash has dwindled just a little. Here are a couple of the images included in the quilt. I mixed everything- whether Christmas or not. If it had bling and once graced a shirt, it went in the quilt.

Of course the question then became how to quilt the project which has so many different elements in it. That's where longarm quilting friend Katherine Wohler came in. We discussed and puzzled for awhile, and then she got started. She brought it to me when it was partly done, and we both felt the knit blocks needed a bit more quilting to secure them. However, the glitzy parts were a challenge in terms of breaking a needle and how to quilt around them.

So back home the quilt went with her. She was able to quilt right up to the images while using softer, meandering stitching throughout the rest of the quilt. This is the back of one block. She also found a lovely bronze-colored thread that blended all the colors nicely. The quilt took quite a bit of work to piece all the fillers and try out different layouts, so I may feel able to go ahead and toss any glitzy tees in the future. But you never know!

Does it Spark Joy?

 

 

That's the key question posed by author Marie Kondo in her best-selling book "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up." Perhaps there's no group more aware of the need for tidying up than quilters and crafters! And the supplies found in a sewing room surely spark joy. But there were 44 people ahead of me on the waiting list to borrow this book from the library, so it looks as if tidy is something lots of us aspire to. Anyhow, the answer to sparking joy is yes when it comes to small journal quilts. I love taking bits and pieces of fabrics and trims and combining them to create whatever comes out of my imagination at the moment. So with the inspiration challenge of "orange" put out by the Fiber Arts Bee I belong to, this little doodle-style flower is the result. One thing I like about journal quilts is the opportunity to try out new methods on a small scale. I tried a beaded edge on this one. I'm unlikely to bead the edge of a large quilt, but this was a small enough investment of time to make me willing to give it a try.

I've been following some of the ideas in the tidying up book when it comes to discarding unnecessary items that just take up space. Case in point is this giant binder containing notes, handouts, and samples from the instructional workshop for my once-new machine. But why, oh why, would I still need this? If I haven't figured out how to use the machine by now, I'm in trouble. The author suggests that it's quite easy to look up online how to use or care for pretty much any item. And really, when I consider the last time I looked at this... why, I can't recall when that was. So out it went. However....

Inside that giant binder were a few pretty fiber tidbits that I just couldn't part with yet. So I added some more tidbits I'm fond of, and made another small journal quilt. It commemorates the machine with samples of stitches, and gave me a chance to try out some heavy-weight thread. This is waaaay smaller to store than the binder, and sparks more joy, too!

Even the back of the quilt is a scrap of some decorator fabric I picked up on the freebie table at guild. And speaking of tidbits, I found a repurposing store that had some of the glittery bits shown above for just pennies. The good news is that, after some tidying up, I donated more items than I purchased! So I'm making progress, especially in the sewing room. There's a lot of good advice in that book.
 

How to Deal with a Layer Cake...

Not the edible kind- I know what to do with those munch, munch). This layer cake is the kind that is made from 10" fabric squares in assorted prints from the same fabric line. The set I bought had these assorted blues, and I'm unable to recall the name of the fabric line. But the quilt pattern is one by CrazyOldLadies quilts titled "Liliana". I've named my version "Blue Hibiscus." The rick rack isn't really as wobbly as it looks in the photo, and the quilt also lies a little flatter than it appears. Someday my picture taking skills will improve, but meantime here we are. *sigh*

The pattern calls for a stack-slash-shuffle approach with the 10" squares, rejoining them into an overall random scrappy design. It was quite easy as there are few seams to align. Figuring out the best way to attach the rick rack was the challenge. I finally settled on free-motion stitching, following the zigs and zags. The fabrics produce a bit of a tropical feel I think.

I wish you could see "my" ring up close- it's a Superbowl ring (size- extra large)! It's just stunning. Husband Jack and I attended an open house at a horse facility nearby over the weekend, and happened to meet Fred Stokes, retired NFL player for the Washington Redskins. "Big Play Stokes" was part of the 1992 Superbowl XXVI team. He and his family now live near Orlando where he runs a food enterprise and travels as a motivational speaker. Fred's mission (as stated on his website and autobiography) is to "positively enhance the life of every person who comes across his path" with his "down to earth personality and his uncanny ability to connect with people". He fulfills it, and we really enjoyed meeting him and his wife Regina. To think we went to see the horses, and wound up sporting that ring. By the way, Fred notes there is a time limit measured in seconds for how long people get to wear the ring!

Ahead of the Game...

Happy New Year! Wanting to continue to explore new avenues of art, I signed up for Lenna's Creative Swap for 2016. This swap is closed now, but you can see the details there along with links for her many previous swaps. This is the first swap Lenna has conducted after a break, and she chose collage as our focus. Thirty of so of us will make three 5" collages on watercolor paper Lenna sent us, and using bits she included combined with our own supplies. They aren't due till the end of January, but look- I completed mine already! It was such an absorbing endeavor that I just kept pawing though all the paper and ephemera, grouping the pieces and letting ideas "percolate". I challenged myself to use only black and white for one of the small collages, and this is the result. It includes the out-of-control, swirling playing cards image plus security envelope, lace, fabric elements, shell, and of course the quote about our "plans," which can also swirl out of control at times!

Next, these "old world" images kind of came together. I love the vintage look. I also tried to incorporate some texture and dimension in each collage by using fabric, flowers, or beads. Doing these became an exercise in building collage confidence. I'm not experienced at it, so it's a good stretch.

Between fabric scraps and bits of paper I just can't toss, my sewing room gets wild and wooly at times. It's a lot like those swirling playing cards above. Maybe that's why I was drawn to that image. The Williston Peanuts is from their business card and I've held onto it for awhile just because I like the font, the color, the graphic. Apparently it was just waiting to be combined with images and papers to create this piece.

I was having so much fun (and had so many bits and pieces strewn around) that I decided to make a fourth collage for Lenna as hostess of the swap. I learned a bit about adhesives in making these. Attaching the citrus mesh over top of this collage took some ingenuity, but it's pretty secure. Glossy accents, Uhu Gluestick, and my small Xyron that turns paper into stickers all came in handy! I'll mail these off in the coming week and look forward to seeing what others have come up with.

And to All a Good Night...

This rather dark photo (sorry, poor lighting) is of the "Rodeo Dream Quilt" which has now been completed and presented to our pastor and his wife. He is also a rodeo announcer, so giving it a bunkhouse look and finding the pictorial elements to go with it made the project really fun. Not sure how well you can see, but there are boots, horses, horseshoes, a hat, a cowboy with a rope, and the triple crosses which are a symbol of the Cowboy Church we attend. I just finished it in time to give it for their Christmas gift, or I'd have taken a better photo! It didn't even make it to the guild show-and-tell. You can see it's start in this post.

I also rounded up this crew for a photo before taking them to their Christmas destinations. The women in the crafting program at the women's prison where I volunteer completed all these dolls and toys in time for a delivery to the local Domestic Violence Shelter and Salvation Army shelter.

There's even a lovely mermaid among them!

Frogs, kitties, robots and more- the ladies express creativity in their work, and make such good use of their donated materials. And they so enjoy the feeling of "giving back" to the community in productive ways. They also finished more than a dozen teddy bears which were presented to residents in a memory care facility. So there has been lots of running around leading up to the holidays, but all in the best way possible. To all who celebrate, Merry Christmas!