Happy February!

It's 71 degrees here today and it shouldn't be. It should be between 30-40.  I miss winter. 

But it is still February so instead of painting Christmas trees and snow I painted a bunch of Valentine Hearts.

 

And now It's also 2023 and I haven't posted an update in a long time so this is a quick bullet summary of what I did in 2022, besides grow marigolds.

So what did I do last year?

Some crochet: Another Project Linus Crochet Along blanket.

Some more crochet: This time tiny baby aliens with my own mods. I ended up making 4. They are a lot faster to make than their big brothers.

 

Started a new quilt: I saw these Plaid-ish quilts all over Instagram and loved them. The pattern is free and I have more fabric than any one person ever needs. I did finish piecing the top but I still need to quilt and finish it, hopefully this year.

 

Gardening: Lots of porch gardening, in addition to the feral marigolds.  The Celosia is my new favorite flower. They bloom and they stay 'bloomed' for months! I named this one Groot. It's just too obvious. Right?

Lots of different color Coleus, several Celosia of different types, Red vine, Morning Glories, and a Poinsettia.

Lots of watercolor art: Experimenting with paints, brushes and methods.

 Swatching all the watercolor paints I have.

 

Some bookbinding: Call it an art journal or a junk journal? I'm not sure? But it is just a collection of papers I'm painted.

 

 

But almost every day just filling this giant book with abstract acrylic art.

This is the first 100 pages of that big book of acrylic painting experiments.  There are also videos for the other 200 pages on my YouTube channel.

That's it for today. Not sure when I'll be back.

Thanks for reading.

Aileen

What year is this?

Still here. Still well. Still busy. 

Hello from me and my friends.

Just checking in here. I post photos of stuff I do more frequently on Instagram @aileenbiser

I do some kind of artwork every day, mostly acrylic painting lately. I took a long break from sewing in 2021, mainly because I spent months rearranging, sorting and reorganizing my craft/sewing/art room. I do almost all my hobbies in that room except for crochet or drawing. Crochet is a sit on the couch and watch TV activity and drawing can be done anywhere. 

So I did more crochet in 2021.

Another Project Linus Crochet challenge quilt. Lots of fun new stitches to try out.

And my first attempt at a crochet sweater. This was the practice sweater to test the pattern for fit and shape using an inexpensive acrylic yarn.  I may make it again with a nicer yarn.

And I finally got back to doing some sewing in October and made another Project Linus quilt top. Not sure when I'll finish it.  It's on the To Do list.

 This is the room where it all happens. A place for everything and everything in it's place.

 I do plan to post more often. We'll see how that goes...

Thanks for visiting.

Aileen

A Month of Bookbinding

After spending more than a year buried in quilting projects I decided to switch gears and catch up on a pile of unfinished bookbinding projects.

These are pocket size notebooks with hand painted canvas covers and several different types of  papers for pages.

And a few mini notebooks with painted canvas covers.
 

 A pile of mini long stitch leather books.

I spent some time learning how to do a French Link bookbinding stitch in different sizes using some heavy drawing paper.

And made a couple map paper junk books just for the fun of it, also with painted canvas covers.

Finally I had a couple more leather projects that were a little larger to finish and I wanted to do something different for the binding so I tried this neat criss-cross stitch. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, I just had to map it out on paper and in my head before I started.

Thanks for reading.

Aileen

Other stuff I did in 2019 and 2020

I had on my To Do list last year to write a blog post in Sept, then it became Sept + Oct, then it became Sept + Oct + Nov, etc..... So here I am in February 2020 July 2020 to summarize the last 6 11 months.

More art, lots of art, acrylic painting, watercolor experiments, some sketching, and there was sewing, lots of sewing, cutting, piecing, quilting, bookbinding, gardening, crochet, etc. ...

Here are some photos of my projects and much of my artwork is already posted on Instagram.

Christmas Card Art - Dec 21019

Scrap Queen Bed Quilt - July 2019 (just for the practice)

Queen Bed Quilt - November 2019

Project Linus Challenge quilt top - October 2019

Queen Bed Quilt - April 2020

Project Linus Crochet Challenge - May 2020

Coptic bookbinding - old construction paper - May 2020

Painted Canvas booklet - May 2020

Thanks for reading.
Aileen