Inchies, Part 1: Starting from Scratch

Our church is going to try to raise some money next month by having a table at the Gambier Craft Sale. We hope to be selling the traditional Plum Puddings from days gone by, and to also offer some other crafts.
Jo and I are working on creating "Inchies" for pins, necklaces, and whatever else we can think of. Most of them will actually be about 1 by 1 1/2 inches. I also am interested in making some reusable gift tags by putting a vinyl pocket on the back side to insert "to/from" papers.

Neither of us have ever made an inchie, but here's how we started:

1) Fuse a variety of background fabrics onto whatever stiffener we had around the studio:



2) Lay down some garish see-through fabric, with some threads and yard underneath for good measure. Sprinkle with 007 and iron. Notice the iron is melting the garish fabric. Play with the time/temp so it sticks but doesn't melt:

3) Cut into easily manageable chunks:

We then plan to do some freemotion quilting. I think after that, we cut then sew around the edges and finish with baubles and doo-dads, then add the pins or cord or whatever.
Stay tuned to find out for sure!

Sling Bling

My friend, Jo, has a show opening on Thursday and she recently broke her arm. She asked if I would be interested in making an art quilt sling for her (I like to think of it as My First Commission!) Of course, I jumped at the chance. What an honor!!

Friday, she brought me the supplies: a sling, leftover orangey fabric from her vest she'll wear to the opening, and a variety of fabric from her previous work:


I began by making a sling fabric template of batting:


And then fusing fabric to the batting. At this stage, the piece is "Helen's Style":


But then I decided to make it an Homage to Jo and added her style on top. In my mind, Jo's signatures are faces, bits of thread, and tulle ("the pizza").
LEARNING: Attempting to freemotion quilt before you have backing on is miserable. Batting is very sticky stuff! And yet, I persisted. I told Jo to keep her arm moving so no one could look very carefully at my craftsmanship.
I then simply zig zagged the quilt top onto the sling, used some of the orange material as binding, and then added a little button bling (since it IS for an opening!)


Here's Jo trying it on with her vest, sans Artistic All Black Underlayer:


I hear she's dyed the ugly white strap a fetching rust, and has done a little painting touch-up on the sling.

I'm not going to be able to attend the opening on Thursday, but I am so delighted that I'll be there in spirit AND she'll have a physcial reminder on her arm that I wish I could be.

Thanks for giving me this delightful project, Jo!

SpirARTuality 1

Yippee! This morning I hosted an amazing, fantastic, first monthly gathering of our women's SpirARTuality group.

Jo, Joanne, Deb, Susan, Chris and I got together in my back yard to paint fabric. Jo is the only one with any real experience in the subject, but I had plenty of supplies, and after taking a little longer than needed to set ourselves up, we jumped right in.

Chris spent her time on a wonderful representational piece I think would look great on her daughter's wall:


Deb spent most of her time in one colorway, but did a nice variety of pieces. Being a weaver, one of her stretches was to stay away from patterns. Her, she uses a pattern she later salted which added some neat variety to it:


I was prolific, as I always seem to be when given the chance to Just Do Art. A while ago, a pattern came to mine, 3 braids on one side and then circles on the other side. I used this in a variety of ways.
A few months ago, Jo taught me that you can use "any glue" to make a design and then paint over it and it's like quickie batik. I couldn't find any school glue during one naptime, so used wood glue instead (see 2 photos down at the bottom). After using it for 2 pieces, I looked more closely and saw that it is water resistant. So it may not wash out like Elmers.
Oh, well, this is all a learning process.

After the glue dried, I wetted the fabric and then threw some paint on it:


I then squnched it up as squeezed it until there was paint on all the fabric.
Here's my resultant fabrics. YUM!


The bottom 4 pieces in the picture below began being painted at the same time. I taped one to my cardboard, then the next right on top, next on top, and last on top. The one on the far left was my top painting. 95% of it was painted, I pulled it off and scrunched it and squeezed it and there it is. Then the next two pieces just screamed "let me be!" so I pulled them off without adding anything. The final piece was probably only 10% colored, so I had fun and used up the rest of my paint with flicking and daubing and then finally even rinsing in some green water.

And the piece at the top of the photo? My paint rag. ;)



As we were cleaning up, we reflected on a list of questions I created. (e-mail me if you'd like a copy). Everyone really enjoyed the morning. I think this group is going to thrive and grow.
Next month, Deb will be hosting us and leading some new art adventure.

SpirARTuality

One week from today, I'll be hosting our first Women's SpirARTuality morning. A nearby spiritual director and I came up with the idea. I've not heard back from her, but I'm charging ahead full-force as is fairly typical for me.

We'll be painting fabric in my back yard and reflecting on the experience. I've invited 8 women, so far 4 of us will attend. I've painted fabric once. Two of the participants have years of experience in painting and dying fabric. So it will be interesting to see how our morning goes. My hope is that I will provide supplies and and the time/space, and that each of us will do our own thing or collaborate as the Spirit moves us.
At the end of our time, we will have some reflecting/journaling questions about the event.

Suggestions are always welcome.

Pop Art Fabric Art

Way back in Lent, I decided to spend a few minutes each day doing art. I imagined that I'd spend the whole season working with people and faces. I made some fun little stick puppets of our family and friends, but then did other things most of the time. Near the end of Lent, I came across this site about how to turn family pictures into pop art. I was intrigued!

I knew virtually nothing about our Photoshop, but we took some photos and my husband taught me the basics. I had TONS of fun altering each mug shot to be a paper pop art piece.

I then cut the paper pictures into component pieces and used them as templates for fabric, and created this:


It was definitely only "play" and a study, but it was fun and I learned alot (like when using cheap Walmart fabric things show through--see hubby's yellow shirt)


I especially like adding the hand-sewn details of my highlights


And our baby's fuzzy head:



All in all, a fun learning project. I commend it to you!

House series

I have lots of house shape to play with from my Neighbors are Nearby and Far Away piece. I'm calling my series "Glass Houses" although some/many of them won't actually be Glass Houses.

I'm calling them Glass Houses because they are just the right size to be a coaster, to hold your glass. And they have houses on them. Thus, Glass Houses.

Here is my first one, sent to a friend.


Here's my second one. I made it for a friend's youngest child who attended a Happening weekend with her church. Unfortunately, I didn't hear about it in time to get it to her during the weekend, and now I'm too shy to send it to her late. Somehow, it seemed like it would be a really neat and special gift along with a bunch of other gifts and notes and such that she would get during the weekend, but it might be a Weird and Uninvited Piece Of I Don't Know What if I send it to her now. So it's sitting in my studio.


And here are the other Glass Houses bases. Aren't they a pretty lot?

I have a few pieces that are villages. Here is one I'm preparing to take to a freemotion quilting class next week. (I'll keep it hidden until I figure out if they will kick me out if they know I'm an art quilter instead of a traditional quilter!)


And another village that I started playing with and it became a Mediterranean Village:

I am realizing I have no sense of when I'm really "done" with a quilt. Anyone out there know if that's something that you learn, or something that develops as you do more, or just an inherent skill I don't seem to have?

Adoption Wall Hanging

Ooh! I just sent off my favorite piece ever!

Earlier this year, my friend Carin's family adopted a son. They also were fostering another child and I spent months trying to come up with just the right gift to share in their joy. I never came up with anything. However, I continued to percolate.

Just last week, we got an adoption anouncement from our friends the Camerons that their youngest son was now legally theirs. And in about an hour, this delightful little piece was created for them:



It's not the best picture. Maybe someday I'll get better at that. However, you can see the elements.
It uses one of the outlines from the "Neighbors" wall hanging from a few weeks ago. And I stamped their name onto the house. Then I cut out a heart for each one in the family, and since I had a little space and they're church folk, I added a cross. Then I used metalic thread coming from the cross in the house and running through each heart, connecting them.

(I hope they like it as much as I do. It's so fun to do things I like and I'm able to share. This art stuff is cool.)