Monday, June 22, 2009

Paper Friendship Quilt

On our recent trip back to Kansas, we did an art project with the Reeces. Cydney suggested a friendship quilt, and I loved the idea. I, of course, wanted to do it in fabric. She wanted to do it in paper and had all the supplies. So paper it was!

Step 1: Choose the paper.
First, Cyd and I each chose a group of scrapbooking papers that we liked. (Suggestion: have the whole family choose the papers, not just one person.)
There were 3 piles: Reeces, S-Bs, and shared.

Step 2: Choose the quilt pattern.
You can make any shapes you want to on the quilt, but since we wanted to make it easy enough for a 2-year old to do it, we just cut triangles. Each quilt square was to be 5 inches, so each of the scrap book papers was cut first into 2 1/2 inch squares and then cut on the diagonal to make triangles.
Each pile is kept separate (Reece, S-B, Shared).



Step 3: Everyone makes 2 quilt squares, one for each home.
Here, you can see me, Matthew, and Cydney working on our squares. Each of us used triangles from the "S-B" and "shared" pile for my quilt, and from the "Reece" and "shared" for the Reece quilt.
We used glue stick to stick the squares to a backing of stiffer paper (whatever we had on hand, posterboard, perhaps).
Each person got to choose both the triangles they use and what pattern they wanted to place them in.


Luke's one for us is directly below him. I didn't mind the white showing, but we straightened up the one he made for the other quilt because the wonkyness would have driven them crazy. ;)

Here, you can see the 3 piles we were drawing from, the Reeces are more green/muted, the share is ecclectic, and ours are more pinks and oranges:


And here are our finished quilt squares.
They are now divided by family, and waiting to be mounted and framed using this matte board.
Cyd and I are both pleased with the results:

Birthday (The Big 4-0)

My birthday this year fell on a Wednesday, which made it easy to make it an arty day. SpirARTuality meets on the 1st Wednesday of each month, so we celebrated by making these cute little animals out of pre-plastered gauze. We chose these animals to go along with my birthday theme. My goal was to have all of my friends donate to the Heifer Project so that we could buy 40 animals for folks around the world for my 40th birthday. (We surpassed my goal!). These animals graced the table at my party that evening. Jo's lama is so well-dressed. Susan's lamb is cute as a bug. And my lama is ready to go!


In the evening, it was the last in our church's series, "In the Image of the Creator God." Each week, a different artist came to share a little of their art, how God/spirituality influences their art, and then leads us in an art project (HOW COOL IS THAT?!?). It was a great series. This last week, a woman who paints eggs using wax lead us in painting eggs. It was ridiculously fun, addicticting, and everyone was successful at it from my 2-year old son to my 87-year old mom, and the most creative to the most...reserved. Charlie shows off his favorite two eggs:


My niece Sara surprised me by driving 3 hours for the party (and having to leave again very early the next morning). She and Luke worked on some eggs together:

And here I am watching hubby and a bunch of other folks work on eggs. What a great birthday!