my creative week.... Fun with Dick and Jane, SAHRR challenge met and some paintings

book cover, Fun with Dick and Jane  9" X 12.5"

the Project Quilting prompt this week was to interpret a favorite book...I remember the magical moment when I realized the alphabet I'd been singing and writing was the key to reading. The spark grew instantly. I came home and said, I CAN READ! I've never stopped!

As I pondered what to make in one week, I thought of our 1st grade readers. 

I thought of the other books that have also marked a time period  for me

Jessamy a story of a young girl who visits and aunt and time travels through her bedroom closet of her aunt's turn of the century home. I read that one many times, once in the last 5 years. Then there was Watership Down, The Thornbirds, Outlander, and so many authors I've come to love. 

When we lived in the DC area, we used to go to the Library of Congress's Nat'l Book Festival yearly, and listen to many many authors speak. 

I found a fat quarter of fabric with kids from that era, and cut motifs to collage into my "book"

I visited DaFont for a retro font and chose Fifties Movies. Printed the title out on paper to size

it was too small to cut letters out so I traced them on white fabric with ink, cut that out for the book title, and colored it in with prismacolor pencils in ocher and pink. 

I collaged and quilted and finished this into a book cover... 9" X 11.5" opened up

you can see the collaged fabric motifs, the quilting, and with peltex instead of batting, it's firm. 

note I did repetitive lines of quilting along the spine so it could expand to hold more pages and fold easily. I did the binding on machine with many rows of metallic gold stitching it in place on the front. Reminds me of the Little Golden Books I used to love as a child.

It was my desire to start keeping track of quilts I made each year. I tried spread sheets and written lists and never kept up with them. Now I plan to capture one of my images, and fill in details like size, month/year finished, challenges. If there is any other fact I'll add that in. I could not figure out how to format this orientation so I just cut out the image, and the typed info and glued in on. 

So far I am enthralled when I look through it! I feel like I've been published! Haven't decided if I want to attach the "signatures" or groups of pages and they are all laying quite straight and flat so... no rush

Once again, I love what I made with this challenge. 

click on image to enlarge it

 At the start I wasn't sure how to pick just one, as I love being lost in a story, of reading history, of learning through words in books. But like the magic of reading, there is magic in inspiration too. 

Next up is my Stay-At-Home-Round-Robin blocks/row for this week:

the block prompt is to use "flying geese" and you know I love improv geese and add them into lots of my work. But.... I'm making a Spring scene this time... how to use the repetitive triangles in a scene? 

 I drew out the idea for a butterfly... two sets of geese, one of them more narrow, could be wings.

picked out some fabric scraps to use...from the batik bucket, of course with spots on there!

How pretty! Shall I cut into these? YES! I even used the cutaway HST units to make a small butterfly after that! No waste!

four HST sewn together for each side

I had used a pink scrap in the butterfly for the RSC color this month, but thought... geese... how could I include more? I fleetingly thought make improv worms, nah. Got out my pink scraps and found these

oooo that might work. It's all just a twinkle of an idea on the design wall at the moment anyway. I quite like the pink under my lavender bunny block, like it's leading my eye to her.

gosh it's fun! I like a challenge, I like making something work with a parameter to work around. 

So far it was the center, spool blocks, star blocks, hourglass blocks and now geese. 

Last up, two paintings from this week. I go in spurts with art mediums... and am engrossed in fabric art at the moment but in honor of Valentines day...

I tried to learn a layering paint technique from this video, didn't do very well but it was fun

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SW0_3nXJCm8

and this one from a video tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgIABNOO6FQ

I totally missed the mark on it but again I was trying to learn illusions. Gotta keep trying... 

linking to these parties: 

SAHRR 

Project Quilting

https://superscrappy.blogspot.com

 slow stitching Sundays

patchwork Sunday    

https://kathysquilts.blogspot.com/   

oh Scrap Sundays

design wall Mondays at smallquiltsanddollquilts
lovelaughquilt.mondays 

http://www.inquiringquilter.com/ Wednesday wait loss

Midweek makers wednesdays  

http://www.myquiltinfatuation.com/ 

https://confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com/ 

off the wall Fridays   

peacock party

tgiffriday

finished or not

https://myblog-lunchbreak.blogspot.com/