Showing posts with label living the creative life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label living the creative life. Show all posts

Saturday, January 24, 2026

Creativity this week in January.... plaid portfolio

 

For this week's creativity round up I present

 "Plaid Coat" about 13" X 14" 

Project quilting prompt was plaid . What's a Scottish Dog supposed to wear if not plaid?

I saw a few renditions of scotty images, and 

I'll share a few pics as I tell you about making it

I often need to transport cut blocks to the sewing table so I like a portfolio with flannel to drive them over  to the machine

lavender flannel on the back
I used the cardboard insert from my recent calendar as a stabilizer this time

I have another one to make a second carrier... 

sewed the pieced block, quilted it to cotton batting, trimmed and sewed   put right   sides together with a piece of flannel (lavender) 
Then sewed around three sides to do an envelop turn finish, turned right sides out and
slipped in the cardboard. 
Then turned under the bottom opening and did an invisible closing stitch to seal the deal
time to embellish! I found a plaid button for his coat, and a shiny button for the eye. The nose is colored in with black marker. 

time for some photos! 

Oh look, a bit of tiny blue scrap piecing also done this week, for Rainbow Scrap challenge color blue

sew small rectangles together into 5 rows 
overlap and cut curves, sew together keeping flat, press and voila!

I think I'm going to make something fun with this!  
now to clean up my plaid and homespun fabric drawer, pull out lake colors to add a row to my SAHRR
dragonflies... one thing at a time even though I want to do it all...




finishing with a photo taken on a walk this week.... that sky is blue blue blue! and looks great with the stone colors in this pillar 
hmmmm learning color theory from a walk.... the stones skew to yellows, (and some blue grays).... opposite on the color wheel which mean complimentary. 

linking with

Saturday, February 24, 2024

Creativity this week: 4 challenges, some paintings, and a workshop



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 paintings on fabric to use took thought

I love both these little pieces, it was hard to commit to using them. They both glisten with metallic paints, now with mylar glitter thread for the free motion quilting, and sparkle of beads hand sewn on.


I put the painted fabric on top of the triangles and stitched around finishing the edges. The two triangles were stitched together after quilting. A backing covered strip of peltex was sewn across the join. The flowers are from the scrapbook section of michaels, made of paper but quite sturdy, I hand stitched them on. The hanger is a scrap of "mother of the bride" fabric.

embellishments not used

I love it, it's going to look pretty on my wall, is about 9" long, about 6 " wide

next up is using the same colors, but paint on paper...

I used my Kuretake impressionist watercolor palette for all three. The bottom one was to clean my brush between colors but I love how it looks like a forest! My kind of colorful forest! 

After painting all the colors as a leaf, to test them, I went around them with a poem

leaves of colors and alive, blooming, feathers of trees that can't fly because they are rooted to the ground. Can trees feel the fluttering leaves of color...

I was listening to a video of a woman reading our daily angel cards, and these messages came through for me... I wrote in different directions, turning the paper, filling in with different pens, until I was spent. Then I over painted in the impressionist paints, and put in a flower and leaves. I love the look of painting in letters, and around them positive and negative space. I like having the messages available in this form, sitting in front of the computer to remind me I am a spiritual entity living in a body. 

Next up is the stay at home round robin for this week. The prompt was "4" VERY open to interpretation

these are my rows this week, on the left and bottom, 4=patch blocks done two ways

I admit I spent more time trying to figure out how to keep my quilt integrated while adding in a 4 patch, I tried several renditions before settling on these fabrics, sizes, and shapes. 


I thought I would insert the green and white blocks next to the sunflower blocks (cut at 2.5") but that white wasn't balanced with the big trellis, so I repeated the center green fabric instead. The green on the white 4 patches repeated from the last row added, keeps it integrated. I'm in love with that white print!

I have stopped short of attaching the last 3 rows to my center, just sort of waiting... There is one more row to go in this challenge, but I had one week to do this row and met the challenge!

finally, I used red scraps this week, for rainbow scrap challenge, and did Joy's Table Scraps challenge to use scraps/ red/ and a heart

I drew in the two hearts with fabric markers!

I didn't want another little quilt, so I decided to make a book to hold hand embroidered works...

I layered a backing fabric, a batting, and two pieced of peltex along the edge that would be stiff enough to be the books cover, leaving a strip along the spine, without peltex, so I can stitch in pages of embroidery as I make them


two little flowers stitched on after quilting

had to include some hand embroidery, right?

a wee button for a closure! Ain't she sweet???

Inside of the book,

pretty threads to use for embroidery pages!

linking with

Sahrr round 5

table scraps 

Project Quilting 


design wall Mondays at smallquiltsanddollquilts

https://songbirddesigns.blog/monday-musings-6-26-23/ 

finished or not

https://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/

Saturday, November 11, 2023

creativity this week

 

quickly while I can download a photo, this is my creative week

Using the Fig Tree pattern "Twirl" 

 

that is a mini size  quilt, I pulled my bag of little fall scraps, cut out all pieces, and then  the making of blocks is fairly fast, unless you get an angle wrong and have to unstitch and restitch! 

which happened !

It was fun to use the pattern and just sew without much decision making. the stems are black fabrics from my scrap bin, the tiniest scrap adds color and line to a block! (RSC)

I finished a pair of  hand knitted socks, and am starting a hat pattern soon

this pattern, but you start with smaller needles on the brim and that makes no sense to me at all! Plus I need to learn a new to me stitch of yarn over knit 2 tog and knitting on the way back.

https://www.plymouthyarnmagazine.com/2010/01/29/royal-llama-silk-hat/

tutorial on yarn over K2tog  

Tutorial: Yarnover, Knit 2 together (YO, K2TOG) - YouTube

no paintings, no drawings, 

my calendar doodle

 I tried out my new pen, kind of watersoluble, marvy LePen flex. thin fiber tip, full of ink

barely keeping our house afloat while DH fights a virus.

 The medical staff said it's not flue or covid, but it must be very virulent. It made it past the masks we wear at all times away from the house, past gloves and mask worn to open packages. It's going on 10 days now and all heavy work, cooking, dog care and laundry falls to me. I have my own ongoing and new afflictions and it's exhausting as I worry all the time and am quite lonely. So... making stuff, even at night, has taken a back seat. 

real leaves, holding on
 I finished two audio books... started another I didn't like (again set in WW2)  and started a third. I play video games, and stare at tv without hearing it. Google has made blogging and computer work disagreeable and I don't have a full answer yet. Any suggestions as alternatives for answers, videos blogging and email?   

It felt good to see the fall fabrics against the blues, and felt good to mindlessly sew a bit, and I'm glad I was able to put some images in this post! It's a big thing, don't know how long it will last...


linking to:

design wall Mondays at smallquiltsanddollquilts

https://songbirddesigns.blog/monday-musings-6-26-23/ 

finished or not

off the wall Fridays

Saturday, August 12, 2023

must create.... a young woman's travel wardrobe grows

My creative week was all about creating a special travel wardrobe for a young woman crossing the Atlantic for her first trip abroad.... I'll share some of her new sundresses. She brought the latest in casual wear, bell bottom jeans, and a halter top, and of course a bikini for the south of France!

but first some mood music... I listened to this video this week while at the computer for a bit

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHE4UTFDlL0&t=4015s

was struck with the sweet young thing on the right, so I attempted to paint her...


using my fine tec metallic paints for the table and wall paper

I used the book, The Paper Pieced Home for the everyday dresses, and these patterns from etsy for the others. The bikini is my own pattern.

so let's start this week's fashion show of new clothing

I was going to hand embroider these but they are so small...


I got to use my little scrapbooking embellishments, crochet'ed flowers  



I had a 5" square of that lush daisy yellow print...

a brocade silk scrap formed this lovely... it's the lush-est shade of fuchia!


how I wish I had this in my size, and a waistline to go with it

can't you see her, in a big picture hat, walking along in her little white kitten heels  at the shore in Capri

blue and green silk scraps
can't you just feel the crinoline petticoats ruffling your legs as you dance with a cute boy
of course every silk dress needs some rhinestones to sparkle in the fairy lights!

speaking of sparkle, a rhinestone coated belt dresses up a plain dress

I had to totally redraft this, what was the designer thinking??? I like her shapes and outlines a lot tho'

so that's what young miss took on vacation, along with a few unmentionables she's too much of a lady to show!!!

I'd love to have that wardrobe in my trunk and each day pick a new frock to wear. What adventures she would have! 

no trips abroad for me.... time to clean up, dream about when I wore dresses like that to uni when all the other girls word cut off jeans shorts... I used to get a lot of attention with my bare shoulders I'll say

creativity is messy

linking with

design wall Mondays at smallquiltsanddollquilts

https://songbirddesigns.blog/monday-musings-6-26-23/ 

finished or not

off the wall Fridays 

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