My creative week... includes a finished quilt, blocks, paintings and book binding

   

Mandala hearts  14" X 18"

Welcome to my creative round up for this week... which includes a finished Valentine quilt, more blocks for my stay at home round robin, some paintings and a hand bound book to in which to draw and paint. 

(remember to click on any image to see it larger)

let's get started with the Valentine quilt for this year, shall we? I have made one for each year DH and I have been married, some are bed sized, some are tiny, some are wall sized. I used to show them all in a lecture I did on working in series, and showed a few of them on Thursday's "I Like" post (HERE)

This will be my table scraps for this month too, M for Mandala and V for Valentine. I used pink scraps as well, and it lives on my bedside table top!  Link here to everyone's quilts: 

https://thejoyfulquilter.blogspot.com/2023/02/february-2023-abc-table-scraps.html

I started this by playing around with the hearts to see possible layouts and backgrounds, like this

but in the end I decided on a layout that would allow me to turn it into another bedside table topper

This year's offering is a calm, mandala of hearts. I had these hearts  with fusible on them in my fusible scrap bin. Of all the years, this year we needed the meditative calmness of a mandala setting... even, orderly, calm...

I fused the hearts, and in the quilting stitched around them with buttonhole stitch, did free motion on the background, and a programmed stitch of spirals on the little border. Then bound it with a soft pink and white stripe, and added in a couched sparkly white thread..

I had always planned lots of hand stitching for the centers but for a month now I've had painful and blistering hands and that made all art work difficult. 

after it was quilted I fell in love with the star formed from joining the hearts! 

I ended up couching the hand dyed (artfabrics) thick thread in sort of pistle like shapes as a start. 

the thread comes in hanks, that I put on old spools. The tiny pink iridescent beads would be added next to French knots. I had to rely on my left hand for pulling the needle, and found the machinger gloves (thank you Cindy for saying I needed these) to be perfect to grab an embroidery needle! 

here are some close ups of the French knots and beads... making me think of a flower

I love how the hand dyed threads look in Knots with the color variations

It was getting more interesting but I still longed for some chain stitch so I added in little yellow daisies to each heart

It may look very simple now, but when you make it up as you go, there are so many decisions to be made. At the end I had one clump of beads I ended up cutting away... it's not over til it's over. It represents calmness, order, strength of repetition that we need in our lives at the moment. 

 Next up is my Stay-At-Home-Round-Robin additions for the week...

Hourglass blocks from seasoned homemaker

out suggested block for this week  is an hourglass block and we decide how to add that into our quilts in progress

 I'm doing a scenic quilt for Spring, and chose to mix some sky blues into my hourglass blocks. I chose 5 fabrics...because more is better

used this pattern to make a couple more bunnies to go somewhere

I will be making a few of these this week, to put somewhere!

(the watering can came from the book I shared last week

)

I likely won't use this background fabric for the sparkly lavender bunny but it makes me smile when I come into the studio and see it!
 

 

 

 

 

 

so here it is so far... each addition has been fun to figure out.

 a couple paintings for the week...

I learned to make this sketchbook, and used an old painting cut in half to be the covers...

my little hand made sketchbook

My painting had some motifs drawn on the back, which might give me ideas when I draw in this

and I forced myself to actually draw/paint in this even though I just made the pages out of copier paper

the prompt was to press and lift the brush, in repetition

the prompt was to make watercolor blobs then draw over it

In honor of Valentine's day, I have to make a pitch to reject hate, division, and intolerance and turn to LOVE. (please) This video gave me joy... hope you like it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5AyGvJcyoU

 

SAHRR 

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/