Christmas Art

For the last couple years I have been trying to do some kind of artwork with a Christmas theme to use on the yearly Christmas card.  The artwork is also usually a reflection of the type of art I have been doing that year. It could be paper collage, fabric collage, digital art or something else.  This year I have been doing or doodling with watercolor and topographic lines or drawn patterns so I started to try to create something along those lines with a Christmas theme.

These are some of the practice pieces I have been working on:

They were not coming out the way I imagined but they are interesting and I still have a couple more to work on just for the fun of it.

I also though about a doing a tribal design for the tree drawing:

I also think this design could be used to create an interesting Christmas quilt.

But in the end I decided to go with a simple splattered watercolor Christmas tree 

and I digitally enhanced it some in PSE13 after scanning it.  

I even found a cool paint splatter font to use for the text.

 

Thanks for reading.

Aileen

Leather Blank Books

I'm back to doing book making and this week I made two.

1). A 2' x 2" mini memento book. 

Some leather patchwork and a pretty little key.

An interesting X's binding stitch.

And a few pages printed with mini photos of family members.

2). And a rugged looking  5" x 7" leather blank book suitable for a guy.

A simple and sturdy long stitch binding.

A mix of papers for the pages; white, color, graph, line, and maps.

Thanks for reading.

Aileen

Still Sewing

I'm still sewing. I don't usually sew this much in the summer but it's been so hot and sunny I like spending time in the craft room in the cool basement. 

So I made another table runner. This one was an experiment in doing a simple row by row tribal design. Not much planning went into it, I simply did each row differently as I went and tried some different ideas. It helped that I had a bunch of coordinated fabric on hand from a previous project idea that I never did. Now I have used up some of that fabric, made something useful, had fun doing it and most importantly, the cat likes it!

But now if I could just decide what to do next on this collage. I started it several months ago and stopped mid point, not sure what I wanted to do next. And I have been looking at it everyday and still haven't had a sudden impulse to do something else to it. But I know it's not finished. 

Thanks for reading. 

Aileen

A few finished quilts things.

So I was motivated to finish the Jungle quilt for two reasons. I didn't want to add yet another unfinished quilt project to my already large pile of unfinished quilts things. And two, I wanted to practice some more machine quilting on a larger project. So this is the finished jungle quilt. 

And before I did that I made a few small quilt pieces for tops of things. I like to have every flat surface covered with a quilt and I'm trying to make them to exact sizes. 

This one was just an experiment in using very large scale prints cut up into smaller blocks. 

These next two are for the tops of a couple chests I have. 

And each day I delay posting this I finish something else.

 I finally quilted and finished this pieced table square I made a few years ago.

Thanks for reading. 

Aileen

In the Jungle

This last week I impulsively used up some leftover fabric from a long ago project. I had an idea I just had to try.  It was just suppose to be some quick little project. 

Well 8 days later this is what I have:

It's 36" x 52" so it will be a nice size child's quilt when finished. I'm just not sure when that will be or what I will do with it when I'm done.  

Oh Well, I guess I should try to stick to my primary project list and avoid doing impulsive, spontaneous side projects.  Why do I do that? But this is just a hobby after all and if I can't be impulsive and spontaneous now and then what's the point?

Thanks for reading.
Aileen

Odd Projects

I've just been working on a few small things. 

I wanted to feel like I was getting something done so I machine quilted this little scrap quilt.  I guess that's the plus side of having a pile of unfinished projects.

And, of course had it Cat approved. Thanks Cassandra.

 And did some more topographic line doodles.  It's sort of meditative and easy to sit a couple minutes, often talking to someone, and just draw lines. Hills, valleys, lakes, rivers, mountains, shorelines, islands, cliffs and whatever I imagine.

This is another of the pearl cotton hand quilted pieces I work on when I'm watching TV.  I finished the edges of this small piece and plan to use it as the cover for a small book.

And this is the 'ugly' experiment completed.  I wanted to try a 'stack and slash' patchwork technique but didn't want to use any of my 'favorite' fabrics on something I might not like so I picked out of my stash 6 of my least liked fabrics, the 'uglies'.  I've see some really impressive and attractive stack and slash quilts and it looks like a fun technique to use but I didn't find it to be any less work really and the end results don't make me happy.  My vision/brain craves at least order and loves some symmetry with that and it would be nice if my favorite colors were involved. Maybe this wasn't a good test. If I liked the colors and prints in the quilt I might be able to overlook the disorder of the whole object.  Maybe.

This is one of our sleepy bees hanging out under the marigolds overnight. With their help I'll have all the seeds I need for flowers next year.

Thanks for reading.

Aileen

Mosaic Scrap Quilt

How does that pile of scraps keep growing? Am I really doing that many projects or are they secretly multiplying at night after I go to bed. Either way it's annoying to me and at some point I just start sewing them together into little mosaic blocks. At least at that point they are no longer a pile of scraps, they graduate to a pile of quilt blocks. Then I can decide later what to do with the blocks. Last November I posted about this.  Well now I've finally got around to sewing those colorful blocks into larger blocks and then into strips and finally into sections large enough to try and machine quilt. 

Three sections to machine quilt and then join. 

Now all I have to do is make the quilt layers and machine quilt it. 

And I thought it would be awhile before I did that when I started writing this post. 

But then I took a couple days and finished it and didn't bother to stop to take photos. 

I tried two different methods of quilting and joining sections. (Method1, Method2). Both methods worked but both have different drawbacks. Personally, at this point in my experience, I think all machine quilting methods are challenging in some way. No wonder so many people are paying others to do it for them on the professional quilting machines.

For now I'm still trying it out myself. There are a few other methods out there and I haven't yet dared to try free motion quilting.

And now the cat testing commences. 

Looks like I have a 100% cat satisfaction rating.

What else matters?

Thanks for reading. 

Aileen