Piece by Piece

I’ve finished another pieced quilt top; this one is from a great quilting book, Jelly Roll Quilts. I’ve never owned a jelly roll, but I wanted some fairly simple patterns that used strip piecing. For this quilt, I cut all those fat quarters I’ve had forever into 2-1/2” strips, and used some white-on-white fabric for the connecting strips (cut into 1-1/2” strips).

There were a LOT of seams in this quilt, and so it was pretty disheartening to realize that my 1/4” quilting foot isn’t really 1/4”, and my blocks were off. I was able to trim them and save the quilt, but if you look closely you can see some mismatched seams!

I decided to make this quilt before using the fabric I showed in my last post; I wanted a little more practice on making a pieced quilt, and I thought I wouldn’t mind “wasting” all those fat quarters if it didn’t turn out. I’m actually pretty happy with it. It took a week to cut and piece the top, so I’m too tired to quilt it now, but that will be my next big project.

I’ve enjoyed this “break” from feeling like I have to be creative. It’s been nice to have a pattern to follow, and rote tasks to complete step-by-step. I feel like completing these pieced quilts has ordered and centered my thinking a little, and now I'm feeling a little more anxious to get back to more creative projects.

In fact, I felt a real need to do something free-form and fast and fun. The other day, I stopped by my Mom’s house and saw all the fabric postcards I’ve sent her displayed in her hallway next to the family photos. I realized I haven’t sent her one in a while, so I thread-painted flowers onto silk and turned it into a PC for her:

I also owe a friend in Chicago a postcard, so I made this one from stitched paper:

As I mentioned a post or two back, the pieced quilts I've been making have been “practice” for the queen-sized quilt I want to make for our bed. I’m not sure whether I’ve worked up enough self-confidence to start on that one yet, or whether I need to make one more practice quilt first. I guess I’ll know when I get there!

Paper Trails

For some reason, I've been working a lot with paper. Maybe it's because I took Terry Stegmiller's Paper Quilting class and made lots of fabric paper; or maybe it's because I love scrapbooking paper but not scrapbooking, so I have tons of it; or it could be because paper seems less risky to me than fabric--quicker, easier, less commitment. Or maybe all of the above. Anyway, I made postcards today for a swap and went the paper route.

And, while I was cleaning my sewing table off, I found a couple of completed projects that I forget to show you, so here they are. The first one is a paper journal: the cover is made with painted & stamped paper towels fused onto stiff interfacing, then free-motion stitched. The paper inside the journal is acrylic-painted and stamped. The binding is simply tied fibers.



The other project is a paper vase; squares of paper fused to stiff interfacing, then stitched. I was making real progress on using up some of my paper supply, but I went to Michael's yesterday and there was this BEAUTIFUL paper on sale and . . . well, you probably know the rest of the story.

Socializing

I love that textile & mixed media artists are really into swaps.

As I mentioned before, I'm participating in a fabric postcard swap.

I posted a pic of one of my postcards a few days ago, but these are better. I've finished 1/2 of mine--12 of 24. Only 12 more to go!

I'm also participating in a 3x3 collage swap in one of my Yahoo groups. I finished those yesterday and got them ready for mailing today. I've discovered that I'm not very good at collage, and I really don't like it that much. I like painting, though, so I guess it's not surprising that my mini-collages look more like little paintings than collages.

At any rate, they're done!

Triathlons

As usual, I'm overextended. I think my ADHD side does this to me on purpose to watch me run around in a panic. It seems like the busier I am at work, the more I need to work on craft projects to offset it.

And of course, when it runs, it pours. The grandbaby started school again this week, and we've all been scrambling to get everything in order and get into our routine. And my son asked me to keep his little shih-tzu, Coco, for a couple of weeks, since he's in housing transition. I'm crazy about her, but she's on my heels every second of the day and keeps me awake at night.

With the triple tasks of the job, my work, and home, I'm just feeling frazzled and overwhelmed. Here are a couple of things I've been working on this week:

I'm taking an online course at Quilt U on Landscape Quilts, so I painted these fabrics for practice:
Our instructor had an excellent tip for fabric painting: cover a board with contact paper, which I did. Typically, I try to paint on a plastic garbage bag, and the fabric ends up slipping and sliding. So then I have to iron the fabric onto freezer paper and all that mess. With this method, I covered a piece of foam core board with contact paper, and started out pinning the fabrics to the board. When I forgot to pin it and realized the fabric didn't slide, I was thrilled! After painting, I can carry the board outside and lay the fabric in the grass to dry. I used Setacolor for these (with a little Jacquard Dynaflo or Lumiere sprinkled on there and there). I was out of a couple of colors and didn't have to time to run out and buy more, so I worked here with what I had. I particularly like the salted piece (3rd from the left). The second lesson is available today, and while I'm anxious to learn how to use these fabrics to create quilted landscapes, I'm going to resist the urge to work on Lesson 2 until I've completed some other things.

The next project almost didn't happen. A couple of weeks ago, I pulled a fabric postcard out of the mailbox. It was beautiful, and I was excited because I've never received a fabric postcard before. But I was also puzzled; who sent this? Maybe it was the woman who so kindly offered to copy some polymer clay information from a book and mail it to me. In exchange, I sent her a little goodie bag with some fabric and paper snippets, a glass, copper-foiled pendant I had made, and some embellishments. I read the back of the postcard and realized that it wasn't the same woman. The message said something about looking forward to seeing my cards. I tried for a week to figure out what she was talking about; the only swap I had signed up for was a 3x3 collage swap that was due mid-September. I went through every email list I'm on, every Yahoo group, every notation on my calendar, and finally decided she was talking about the 3x3 swap.

In the meantime, I was doing some cleanup on my websites and Etsy store, and I thought I better double-check the email address I have listed with Etsy. I remembered that I had set up a new email address, which I hadn't checked in a long while (fortunately, I hadn't had any recent purchases at the Etsy store!). So I logged in, checked my email under that address, and saw pages and pages of messages about the fabric postcard group I had signed up for and completely forgotten about. DOH.

The postcards aren't due until November, but they've already started rolling in, and I figured it was best to get them done before my Quilt U class starts, which is much more intensive and time consuming. I had a small art quilt that just wasn't working, and so I had cut it up into pieces. One of the pieces became the design inspiration for my fabric postcards. Here is a completed card; 7 down, only 17 more to go!

The other project I may try to tackle this weekend is the 3x3 collage swap. Collage is not my strong suit, and I'm not sure why I signed up for this swap, unless it was to push myself (or punish myself!). The design process has been weighing on my mind. I'm not a design-in-advance person; I need to get started on the work, and the design comes out of the process. I know the pieces will take shape when I sit down to do them, but in the meantime they're nagging at me and I'd just as soon send them packing.

Whirlwind Tours Continued

I'm still flitting from one project to another. I think it's because my job is consuming most of my time but all of my mental energy. Even when I find myself with a few spare minutes to play, I'm thinking about work and so can't really settle into or commit to a project. At any rate, here are some of the things I've been working on over the last week:

ATC backgrounds. I haven't made any cards in forever, but this was dyed paper-towel paper (from Traci Bautista's book, Collage Unleashed) so it was simply a matter of cutting and gluing. I'm not sure where to take them from here, of course.

Polymer clay: AAARRGGGHH. I've said for years that even though polymer clay intrigued me, I did NOT want to get into it, because the last thing I needed was another medium to work with (or to spend money on). Alas, my DP, who occasionally ventures brilliantly--if briefly--into the art world, decided she needed to play with polymer clay. Fortunately, it was on sale at Jo Ann's. Unfortunately, "on sale" is crafter's code for "have to buy tons of it while it's 1/2 price." DP made her lovely project, returned to her favorite past-time (watching movies) and hasn't touched the clay since, so of course, it's up to me to use it up. I have no idea what I'm doing, but that can be a good thing, I think, since there are no "rules." This is a small piece that was striated, and looked like a little ghostly landscape. I used some oil pastels to "paint it." I don't even know if there's any way to seal it now; I would add a polymer frame, but I don't know that I can bake it without ruining the oils.

Another poly clay WIP; I saw a woman on That's Clever (or was it Crafter's C-to-C?) make a large polymer angel over a copper mesh. I have copper mesh, I have polymer clay. Lots of it. So I made a little angel, then decided she needed a box to live in. I'm not happy with the box yet, but I'm not sure where to take it, so I'm setting it aside for the moment. I need to add arms to my angel, and I think I'll make a miniature art quilt for her to hold.

And finally . . . my first ever fabric postcard! I made the background using a technique posted by Wendy in the Cloth Paper Studio group; it's a great technique because I can use up all those little fabric scraps I can't bring myself to throw away. I'm mailing it today to my sweet Mom.

Wildlife update: the bunnies are on their own. We built a make-shift pen around them to keep the dogs away, then opened it up every night so that the mom could get to them and feed them. One morning, we happened to notice one sitting out in the yard; fortunately, we found them before the dogs did. We hunted and finally found a second one. After a lot of debate, we decided that they either needed to go back into the pen, or that it was time to leave. When I reached down to touch one, it zipped across the yard and under the fence to the greenbelt behind us. The second one didn't move, but when I picked it up it jumped and ran out of the same hole. We couldn't find the third one, so we were hoping it had already ventured out into the world. At first we covered the hole under the fence with rocks, but then decided that if they came back through another opening, they would need that hole as an emergency escape route if the dogs found them, so we uncovered it again. At any rate, the dogs are finally back outside, we've swept and vacuumed and dusted most of the hair out of the house, and life seems a little calmer now. The thing in the picture is my grandson's transformer action figure, which is bigger than the baby.