my creative week... one drawing/painting, two quilts and a flamingo rising

 

"creativity takes courage"  H. Matisse

welcome to my creative week's round up of projects... starting with this bit of felt, and my attempt to do a shisha stitch to keep the medallion attached. I have not mastered this stitch obviously but for some reason I really like this little bit to use sometime, probably on a journal cover.

as I sewed this week, the sun shone in through the closed blinds and I caught sight of this pretty shadow

I think it would make a fine image to frame for my studio. Moments rise up, and we notice them or not but I hope I notice more often than not

 each morning as I sip coffee, read emails and see what new horrors have surfaced in the news, I do a little art project... I wanted to do a face and since I just love elephants, I googled images of babies

With my plain paper sketchbook, and a pencil who's graphite smears easily, I did this

trying to capture proportion, shadows, sweetness on a little face. Looking from image to blank page I always get a little catch in my breath... can I do this? Capture a mood or expression? I love this baby

Hard to see on my images here but the bit of purple, gold and gray watercolor drops really add a background with just a few swipes of the water brush... a lesson in not over painting. 

I used my new tombow fudenosuke brush pen to letter in the word that comes to mind when I see babies of any kind

Now for my sewing friends, there was a lot of stitching going on this week. 

Lots of decisions to be made on the portal project... block numbers, proportion, color placement, then being so surprised at just how much smaller it got with the blocks sewn together

4 rows sewn, the bottom to go!

then it was time to match seams of blocks, keep this thing straight and unstretched as I carefully sewed the long rows together. There were a number of needle sticks along the way as I navigated the seams,

SO MANY SEAMS

the next decision is whether to border, how large I want the finished quilt to be (around 40" wide tops, and 50" long if possible" ) then which fabric will finish it off, stop your eye, accent but not steal the show...

I see this as sun shining through autumn trees... so

I liked the leaf fabric here

I loved that old Benartex leaf fabric for the change in perspective but found thru the week of coming into the studio and looking at it, that it takes the focus from the center I worked so hard on so the bottom fabric still fall like, might be the one. Plus a skinny black binding... I'll show you when it's done. 

It's gonna be a bear to quilt on my little domestic machine, oy

Thursday evening I got the grand idea to start this month's table scraps quilt... due on Friday! I got out the box of orange scraps for RSC color of the month and chose some pretty but thin strips to sew together to make another bedside table topper

trimmed to ~13" X 18" ready to quilt

I appliqued a cute homespun strip, love the glow this has in person, but it was very frayed. No worries, I appliqued it to the strip set and let it fray to it's heart's content! I like texture! I haven't done this before either, and always seek to try some new thing to any challenge quilt. 

there is a mix of straight line quilting, and curvy free motion work. I used orange cotton thread by Metler, and this mylar thread by superior for sparkle and glisten

I pulled lots of fun flamingo fabrics to use for backing

but chose this fun one, and LET myself cut it out of yardage!

why flamingos you may ask? I LOVE flamingos and my plan is to hand embroider a flamingo to the front... I googled coloring pages and found this (LINK here)

the leaves are from a Zen stitch teacher's gift to us

so this is how it will go... but I haven't figured out how to transfer the image yet, (probably trace over soral yellow chalk paper) and whether to do the bird in black perle cotton or purple.

I'll use outline stitch, an overlapping straight stitch for feather edges, and chain stitch for neck at least

I was rushing to finish this by Friday night but after the contortions needed to groom the lovely Milo, my body spasmed and all sewing went out the window. sad. 

I did a speedy binding, sewing a 1.5" strip of fushia to the back of the quilt, bringing it around to the front, folding the raw edge to the quilt, then flipping that finished edge to the front for machine topstitching with the glitter thread, twice. 

it looks so good, with the two rows of top stitching on the 3/8th inch finished binding, it looks piped almost

and that brings this session to a close... I'll be doing the flamingo embroidery today, and share the finished thing next week I hope along with the finished portal top. 

find your creative happy place y'all

https://superscrappy.blogspot.com

table scraps challenge May 

patchwork Sunday   

oh Scrap Sundays

slow stitching Sundays

design wall Mondays at smallquiltsanddollquilts

 link party

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

Midweek makers wednesdays  

http://www.myquiltinfatuation.com/ 

https://confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com/ 

off the wall Fridays 

face off 

peacock party

tgiffriday

finished or not

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