What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

 

I've been intrigued with faces for years, so I try to interpret them in lots of ways. I saw a female face  online this week, 

and just loved her... my paints, simple waterbrush, and flip notebook were by the computer so I painted a version. I wanted to not draw hard lines first, no sketch, and to provide all features with shadows only

I liked her, her lace dress, her features but something was off. Just like in real life, hair color makes a difference. I went back and added darker brown paint, which suits her skin tone...

Imagine ...

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I learned this week, that some times you fly with creativity and sometimes you need to compensate for injury yet find ways to still express yourself. 

It was that kind of week for me. Physical limitations meant I couldn't use a rotary cutter, couldn't sew with machine much, had trouble painting as sitting at the table hurt.

We have a mama bird sitting on eggs in the gutter just below Milo's perch. When I joined him in window watching this week, I looked down into two little black eyes blinking up at me, begging me to stop ...

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It's been a difficult week... but even so there are a few things I was able to do creatively so I'll share them here today. 

The first is a sketchbook painting, a self portrait of sorts. 

If I was Queen, you've all heard that phrase. I tried to paint someone sticking out their tongue in disgust. 

ever feel like that? 

I had a very painful week, making sewing difficult so I sort of planned my feathered star hoping next week I can sew at the machine

I sewed on a border or two on this

I sewed ...

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For rainbow scrap challenge this week, using pink fabric scraps, I made a block with english paper piecing. This means for my non quilt making friends, that you cut the exact shape you want, from paper, then sew the fabric around the shape and later remove the paper. 

I did that then laid out the pieces on my portable design board, the way they'll be sewn together into a whole.

so I can carry it around and try out background fabrics to applique it to... I cut the pieces a bit big when cutting the kit to carry downstairs ...

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This week I was distracted by physical pain, but I managed to compete this wee pin cushion! 

There are videos of people teaching versions but none gave me a pattern... I found one on line

SunCatcherStudio.com

at first I cut it out large since it was drawn to scale. Too big for a pin cushion but great for a box... so then I cut it out as shown. 

I used pink felt scraps since the color of the month at rainbow scrap challenge is pink! yea! It looks wonky in these photos but it's a precious little sturdy ...

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 The Guardians 

a painting, just a quick painting to see colors dance with each other on paper, moving, spreading, blending and creating lines. 

I might be superfluous in the process

I lift the paper, let water guide the lines as it will, amazed at the life in a painting. I think of how life moves and blends and resists too, how the colors so pretty on their own, look when next to other colors and that each living thing has it's own colors, and how each living thing changes a bit when it's near another.

will they blend ...

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this week I made the yellow feathered star block for rainbow scrap challenge... used more yellow scraps. When it was finished I noted the center yellows looked too similar so I got these out

copper paint, tested on a yellow scrap, perfect! Dab paint on with sea sponge

then went over with gold paint on the test scrap... maybe... I like stenciling a lot

these blocks are paper pieced (foundation) from this book

 so stenciling was easy with the paper backing. Iron when dry makes it permanent. I also shaded that one with brown prisma color pencil

the four colors ...

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I have two main projects for rainbow scrap challenge this year... the EPP project shown above is one of them. I'll be doing one each in scraps from that month's color, this month it's yellow.

got the idea from https://thecraftycreek.com/2023/07/16/owl-and-hare-hollow-hqal-2/.

I really enjoy english paper piecing...
 

four epp circles done... haven't decided what color to put them on yet

here are three yellow scrap pieces I'm working on at the same time... the design wall is sunny! 

I'll be sharing them as they grow larger and more complex ...

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this was actually a full week of creativity for me...I'd like to invite you into my world, my happy studio space. I love my sewing machine...  

When I'm stressed I like to sort fabric scraps then take the smallest of them to the machine and make order out of the chaos. My scraps are all shapes, all sizes, all color values and patterns. The focus color of April is yellow, so I pulled out the yellow scrap bin, and started sorting. 

In my bin was a bag of blocks, improv starts, left overs. A treasure chest! I ...

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16.5" square

I'll start with this month's feathered star block, done in purple scraps for RSC.

I like the mix of purple prints and tones, and from the scraps from making the block

 (scraps from scraps)

I made this 5" X 7" something...

5" X 7"  so far...

here are the three colors so far...

I like how the tula pink background blends together

I use a foundation paper piecing pattern from this book

For this month's Table scraps challenge I used scraps from last week's PQ irish chain quilt

I layered them on a ...

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whew! completed 4 challenges, painted a bit, and took a workshop on writing/ illustrating a novel. 

It  required all my creativity!   

Click on images to enlarge them

Let's start with the Project Quilting piece. The prompt was "hourglass" and we had one week to design, make and finish it. Here is my finished project

It will hang in my studio, reminding me of the speed of time (tempus Fugit ) that artists are happy when they are creating

I started with cutting two triangles of peltex stiff stabilizer, covering them with backing brought to the front

choosing which of my ...

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pattern from the book,Precisely Sew

 I'm getting faster at piecing these large blocks (can't remember, they may be 16.5"

and it's fun to dig through the box of scraps for a variety in red prints and solids. I was surprised that with all the fabrics, the star just looks red from a distance!!

On both the red, and green one I chose to repeat two fabrics for the center to be more graphic. The tula pink fabric I chose to use for background (I use plain white for foundation piecing around the feathered star points ...

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I have a few things to show you in today's weekly creativity round up... 

I've had a grand time painting, drawing and inking some Valentine paintings this week...

I tore watercolor paper into 4ths, and tried a different approach with the 8 small sheets. Some of them were from videos from the multitude of generous artists who share their techniques. Some from my own heart, and I'll share the rest of them next Saturday, closer to Valentine's day

all of them done quickly, while waking up and drinking my coffee in the morning. I sketch painted ...

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 LOTS!

clockwise from top left: round robin center block, project quilting finish, RSC feathered star, RSC EPP block, and my mantra these days

calendar page from years ago

I went from languishing and uninspired to having several ongoing challenges and projects going at once...

spinning dishes

remember this trick from the Ed Sullivan show? (I'm ahem, of an age) 

plus, I hope to also do Joy's table scraps challenge, and a friend and I are working on our drawing skills by doing prompts together.  It feels good to be creating again!  

My goal this year was to focus ...

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I've been trying to catch up on the things I wanted to do this season,..

we are just about  cleaned up from the long illness although DH is still coughing, and I am just feeling safe to turn my head to art again! 

quick sketch

 I missed you! 

My paints paper brushes and ink pens have been used, starting with 2 tutorials (beginners)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRxRkMx3etA&t=43s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3Q8tObxPF0&t=931s 

Surprisingly the best I felt was when I was painting... here are some Christmas card inserts for  friends ...

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sitting on the easel on hall table already!

light neutral scraps sewn improv fashion. Raw-edge applique bird, machine quilting, and hand beaded around the edge.... I call it Quiet Tweety-bird   and am entering it as my offering into Joy's Table Scraps for this month! 

I talked about this last week, that post is ( here...) including the inspiration for the bird

instead of batting I used peltex which is stiff but easily machine quilted. I put binding on the bottom edge so it can sit well on a mantel or easel. Then I used size 8 perle cotton to do ...

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I finished up the painting workshop and although I didn't do all lessons, I feel like I learned so much.

(quilters, the fabric art is near the bottom of this post in case you're wondering! Lots to show)

The painting above was inspired by Tamara LaPorte. She urged us to let go the idea of perfection and acknowledge parts of ourselves we might believe to be undesirable. 

I chose to interpret on this whimsical bird, these three things about my body, plus a roundish shape.

Big Feet... I grew up in the top percentages for height til I ...

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this creative week was mostly focused on paint, ink and binding a finished quilt

I had two free workshops plus Inkktober prompts this week, which means very limited instruction time in which to take lessons

The little lamb above was challenging for me because I had to work with acrylic paints. hard for me to mix and use as they dry so fast here

I have a small set of acrylic paints in tubes, and I painted the background with a palette knife. 

I thought it was too harsh til I looked out the back door at our sunset one ...

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there are many finishes when making a quilt... finish the design, finish sewing together the top, finish layering the top/ batting/ backing and baste, finish the quilting, and finish the binding to finish the edges... finish putting on the hanging sleeve on the back and hang it up or put it on the bed!this week I finished quilting this big quilt, wrestling with it under the arm of my little old machine. I mostly used mylar sprakling turquoise threads, purple threads, and a YLI variegated fall color cotton thread to do that. Mostly used my walking foot, but along ...

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welcome to this week's creativity round up! I finished up the painting workshop with two portraits. I feel I learned so much and like both my paintings a lot. Thank you to our teachers!

this was a lesson of layering. It's a version of Gaia... and I love it. It reminds me of paintings on the plaster walls of Herculaneum in Italy, and I only hope I can remember the steps to try it again. I took some screen shots of the process, so... I like the color blending, the way her shirt looks, the stenciled flowers in ...

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