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| 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
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...
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| 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 will be making a few of these this week, to put somewhere!
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| (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!
a couple paintings for the week...
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| 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
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| the prompt was to press and lift the brush, in repetition |
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| 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=t5AyGvJcyoUdesign wall Mondays at smallquiltsanddollquilts
lovelaughquilt.mondays
