Not Afraid of Color

 

Welcome to this week's creativity round up!  

I am highly inspired by the Index Card a Day (ICAD) challenge prompts. The first week we had 7 prompts and were asked to focus on using mark making tools. The second week has 7 more prompts and we're encouraged to use collage. All my cards are 4" X 6" and unruled. (like me) 

the card above, was interpreting "treble clef" and I used a stabilo crayon and water brush, red pigma pen.That's the card my engineer/musician husband likes best and wants framed in his office... nice compliment right?

meanwhile back to quilt making, and actually finishing the bed quilt of stars... 

It doesn't photo well, but it's done, and the binding is in a lovely vintage purple moda marble fabric. I hand sew the binding to the back when I want to make sure it's all perfectly flat and even, so that was the last big job on this 62" X 70 -ish" person sized quilt.

 I made the colored squares last year for the RSC colors of the month, and the black and white ones this year. It was machine quilted in sections then joined invisibly on the back. Each square has fun, or lovely fabrics specially chosen for them. The batting is bamboo/cotton blend, soft and warm.

I finally tired of dithering and just added a purple vintage Jinny Beyer purple print as borders for my portal piece so it's ready to quilt now.

the working title of this is the quilt with many seams

back to paper art....

Here are the first 9 cards, plus the leafy iris one done for fun, and the bottom right one done as a background for a future one. I got some distress oxide ink pads and began playing with them

I saw someone dabbing a sponge on the pad, then smearing it on the paper, but I just tapped the square on my card... interesting...

I sort of got cofused with the prompt wildflowers, and did a spring flower, but am quite pleased with how the drawing came out. I did it in purple pigma pen, and the rationale is, a squirrel transplanted the bulb in a stick covered field, wilderness + flower

this is the back of the card

Day 1 (sapling) Day 2 (polka dots) Day three (map)

I find it fun to interpret the prompts... that's mother earth planting saplings, and "Soph, with matching hair and purse" and a globe which inexplainably is another thing I'm hearing anti woke people complain about online, and an arrow pointing to one tiny place on the map, the one that means the most to me.

the next 4 days, Day4 (espresso) Day 5 (stripes or zebra) Day6 (wildflower) Day7 (treble clef)

while it's coffee not espresso, my morning coffee is strong. I tried to really see the mug, with it's shadows and light, shape, color. Drawing is training me to see better. 

For this one, I wrote the word first, with my new Fudenosuke pens by tombow. Then decided to try to draw/sketch a zebra as part of the word... The word is the animal sort of. I love his face!

I will save the next two for next week and finish with this off the cuff painting:

I was thinking, black and white with one splash of color! Blue iris. 

 I wrote a poem on the back of this one

all of these are generally done first thing in the morning, while having my coffee and easing into the day... Lastly I'll leave you with color... I noted how pretty these were next to each other... ain't color 

GRAND?

design wall Mondays at smallquiltsanddollquilts

finished or not

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"creativity takes courage"  H. Matisse

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

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

design wall Mondays at smallquiltsanddollquilts

 link party

finished or not

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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

design wall Mondays at smallquiltsanddollquilts

finished or not

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