Try-angle Trees and Cutting Tool Clouds

Can you see I've been having fun? Imagine yourself skiing thru the fall colored trees and looking up to see the clouds forming shapes?  Perhaps you should keep your eyes on the ski slope while skiing!

Went to the Sewing  Quilting Expo at the Dulles Expo Center this weekend.   I was so fortunate to be a passenger and I wanted to get my "stitching on".  So at 8:30am Saturday realized I needed some handwork to take.  Found the Scissors sunprint in my "altered fabric" box and fused it to some felt (oh yes, lime green!) - then looked at the shape of the scissors - in the class last week, I really saw how repeating elements helps the piece and thought , hmm - applique of a scissors shape was, well, kinda blah and I don't do blah very well.

So started looking at the fabric, where the blades open there is a very nice triangle. and there is a second triangle in the opening area near the handles.  So glad I decided to open the cutting tools - the largest one is actually a tin snip from the garage.

First I wanted to be able to practice some outline sewing - for the 3 scissors left to right- running stitch balanced, running stitch with longer thread than gaps, and backstitch. I liked the backstitch best so repeated it for the top scissors.  Added triangles at bottom, at first my thoughts went to "cutting the grass" so laid them out in a grass-like, organic order.  And did some free-motion applique with YLI thread. 

Did I mention that I love quilting... Not piecing, not applique, but taking a needle and thread and scribbling all over fabric at high speeds... At quilt shows I absolutely love running the longarms and just playing!  Yesterday, an energetic vendor was talking to me while I sewed some spiky flame shapes... She asked "what are your thoughts?" in a kinda getting me to open up about my intentions to purchase (it wasn't overtly pushy, but still doing her job)..  but I heard a question about what thoughts I was having - and I answered honestly - "I'm not thinking".  There is a methodical, meditative groove I get into when machine quilting (I know, it's drudgery to some).  If I could only do one of the steps of either piecing, applique or quilting - I choose quilting!

So thanks to one friend I had time to sew in the car, thanks to my other buddy, I was given the vision of skiing  thru trees and seeing shapes in the clouds... She insisted I see these stuffed koi fish in one of the vendor booths.  AND - I do love making me some three-dee objects, and fun to see what others are doing.  In the booth I was chatting up the sales person and behold, the topic of quilting came up - shocking, huh!  She had this steering wheel - but kinda square and shaped like a very blocky capital C. And she was no sales person, she was the Gypsy Quilter herself, Lanette Edens. Liked her right off - even when I thought she was just a sales person.

Love. LOVE, L-O-V-E the tool, it' really does live up to it's name "The Fabulous Fabric Glide", the feel and motion is really close to that of the long arm and the control is amazing.  Before this tool, I would wear the white Micheal Jackson like grippy gloves - better than barehanded - but not that comfortable.  I was able to do some ridiculously tight quilting - see in a nice turquoise Robison-Anton thread "Marine Aqua" - I do love the 40 weight Super Brite Polyester - one beacuse I have it - two cause it has a nice shine and the poly is stronger than rayon so can also be used in come construction.  Note to garment sewers - never ever never never use rayon to seam a garment - top stitching is fine, but seam construction in rayon can lead to unfortunate wardrobe malfunctions. 

Thanks for letting me go off on a quilting and thread tangent!  Back to the project at hand!  Here is a needle-eye view of my Fabulous Fabric Glide - hanging right behind the machine I quilt on.

Before I did that quilting I fused on some appliques.   The second shape in the scissor was the oval handle loop - so instead of circles, I cut ovals to and cut "triangles" out of the oval flower-cog...

flower-cog-oval...
flog-val? 


My goal for this project was not to make art - but to experiment - so tried different stitching on the flogs - no two the same.  I can use this as a reference for adding handstiching to flowers. And if it was for a project I thing I would have done the same stitching inside each one - I think some variety is nice, now that I see it.  Maybe in future do a few styles of stitching - on purpose!

I love the bottom one with the V's and the single french knot... Never would have come up with this stitching pattern if I had not done the others.  And I didn't undo or go back - in the left of this photo the one with the single bar on each pedal is not my favorite, but that's the one I did that led my to the V's.



Here you see it hanging in our powder room, the walls are the same mossy green as the flogs, not yellowish as it looks here. 

And that raises two questions
Question number one
- Should I be providing "powder" if I insist on calling it a "powder room"?  Or it it BYOP?

Question number two
- What is "a scissor", singular?  The 2 handled tool is called "a pair of scissors" or a scissors, plural...

Just saw this in Wikipedia.  It's a bit odd...

"In New Orleans, some believed that putting an open pair of scissors underneath your pillow at night was a sound method for sleeping well, even if one might be cursed."

I don't recommend sleeping with scissor open or closed under your pillow!

Seasons of Sewing

cool mornings, warm days... makes me wonder which way to go!

I've got 2 traditional quilts that need binding and I'm looking forward to some handsewing time under a warm quilt.

As the earth revolves around the sun, while rotating, I think of my evolution as an sewing artist too... Birthday month introspection!

Throughout my school days, I doodled echo lines around words.

Later, I sewed garments, curtains, reupholstered furniture, machine embroidery... then I fell in the rabbit hole of quilting...

quilts of my own design (didn't know the term art quilt or traditional quilt) it was just play!  This was a slow design process, but oh so enjoyable...  Love the bike close up in the center with the Kermit leg, and the Vanna White posing Kermit!  No pattern, just drew it!

 
traditional quilts following traditional patterns made it faster and got me to hone skills, piecing, binding and machine quilting - repetition is great teacher.  Tried lots of techniques like this small stack and whack












took classes, like this one at Bears Paws West (no longer in existence in HoCo) made art quilts following patterns,

playing in three dimensions, the garment sewer in me loved this, shaping, using my Marks pinking shears (my oldest pair of scissors), following patterns but adapting them.





Here is Professor Moskovi of Duck U.  I wrote a whole little back story for him.  One of these days I will get all my ducks in a row (I've made at least 6, all but 2 have flown the coop!) 

Felt Doughnuts, love working in felt by hand!

Sewing the sprinkles on the pink one was laborious, but fun!

 stretching a technique, here's watercolor background, broderie perse dog, and freemotion zigzag applied black eyed susans. Inspired by a good friend's dog "Daisy" so it's "Daisy in the Blacked Eyed Susans".  I spotted this last week at her house.  It's the first piece that I ever sold, not for money, but for a steak dinner... mmm

art quilts of my own design - these 3 were created in Ideas for Art Quilts class with Deborah Boschert.  Looking forward to this Saturday as I'm taking her class, Small Art Quilts: Designing in a Series.

and now having fun with surface design (dye, ink, paint, beading, needle felting)...












Like the earth revolves, I get back to a different season of sewing, a little older and wiser.  I've got ideas of for a garment and a young neice asking to sew with me, hmm...

Contrast and Commonality

In Quilt University's Playing with Paint online class with Lyric Kinard  I've been having a lot of fun and learning some good painting techniques. The painting on silk reminded me of a book, that I saw once.

I use my phone camera as a memory tool, so I looked in my photo album to remember...

On Reveal Day 12 I wrote "But is there some contrast and commonality I ask?".Reading Kees van Aalst's blog for July 1st, I see the terms cohesion and variation while discussing color and the need to have some balance.

Some of the fun I had painting thru the Playing with Paint included, learning that the back of what I'm working might be more interesting than the front.  Here I loaded the brush with multiple colors ala Donna Dewberry's One Stroke painting.

reverse

front

Plus if you don't like something... add more paint.

I like step 2's sponge painting addition to the mix.

step 1

step 2

Somethings you need to take with a little grain of Sodium Chloride. 

wet color wash

wet color wash with salt

It's fun to play with your food!

thanks for having fun with me today!