sketching and sewing fabric, a creativity round up for May

 

I love color. I love making. All my life I've loved making. I remember as a very young girl loving the feel of art supplies from crayons, to fabric, to weaving potholders to see a pattern emerging. I took lessons at the rec center in embroidery and stitched on my bell bottoms in high school., I did ceramics and made jewelry with macrame and beads. I sewed all my clothes. I painted and stitched and tried every craft I got my hands on. 

I had no formal art training in school because I spent all elective hours on band.Now I rely on, and spend my happy hours in the studio making....

 

 

This was one of those weeks, not exactly fallow but making this week was often like running through water.

I often wake up slowly, starting the creative day with a sketch or little painting. Inspiration comes on little cat feet, and I make sure to notice when something makes me want to express it in paint

on this morning it was the quote... I grabbed one of the scrap papers made of copier paper and a paint brush, my KOI watercolors and dropped color on it. The paper isn't made for this, so it's absorbed immediately

I used my set of 3 zig markers in gold/silver, three shaped nibs, and looked on DaFont for some kind of idea to make up my own font, and mixed different styles in my way. First the flat tipped caligraphy nib

a black pigma in places, a white gel in places. It's more

another morning I wanted to sketch a portrait, learning by doing, training my eye to see details in a photo/image. I am partial to the 1920's look, and this lovely caught my eye...

I knew the shadows, the hat, the clothing would challenge my ability, plus I often get the proportions off on bodies, and hands... hands are really difficult... isn't she pretty?

Using just pencil makes it another challenge. This is in my sketchbook, so I committed to drawing a bit larger as well. Pencil lines are commitments. 

the other tool used is the blending sponge tip often sold as zentangle blenders. It smears the graphite

This is a mix of quick marks, and slow looking deeply for why something didn't quite work

I must say, I love her... love the shadows that create face definition, subtle and no color. 

on the sewing front, I have been steadily quilting sections of this person sized quilt

this will be the border fabric for the sides

I quilted the top and bottom borders, and attached them to the quilted center sections. The bamboo batting is heavier than I thought it would be, but again, I'm committed to it now.

I now need to hand stitch the seam flap to cover the seams on three areas before putting on the final two borders. It's taking a long time to do this way but with my little machine, and bad back, it's the only way to make a big quilt. Right now this is 47" X 70" and will be 16" wider with the side borders

 

I liked Ricky Tims' new quilt Portal. He's walking us through it on youtube. I'm doing it with my friend Cindy, who lives in another state. We compare notes and both plan to approach this in an improvisational way. I started with orange scraps cut from strips in the scrap bin

this quilt takes more planning than I expected, planning of color placement. Still, I just paired some up and cut, then resewed , actually pretty quickly

My minds eye sees this as a fall forest scene, so I'll add in blue skies, and deep greens, and browns. 

for now I'm using oranges because that's the color of the month at RSC... and it is satisfying to see the glow. Here is the progress so far, pretty good for some random scraps don't you think?

I like the way it's starting to look. His quilt is 7 of those horizontal rows, and much much wider than this is now, so we'll see what I choose as I go along.

 Feels good to use the scraps, reducing patter to colors to see how they blend when viewed

Next week starts ZenStitch workshops through Kate Ward website. Looking forward to learning some new techniques.

Happy arting y'all

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patchwork Sunday   

oh Scrap Sundays

design wall Mondays at smallquiltsanddollquilts

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Midweek makers wednesdays  

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off the wall Fridays   

face off 

peacock party

tgiffriday

finished or not

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