hand stitching

ever notice how lovely hand stitched pieces are small. like this beautiful elephant on the cover of Stitch magazine. It is 21 x 17.5cm. I now know why. I belong to a very small but great group of fibre artists - at our first meeting before Christmas last year we decided to work on a project from Quilting Arts Magazine Gifts issue. a bag from Linda & Laura Kemshall.
layers of sheers under tulle then lots of hand stitching. I worked on it diligently watching all the Christmas specials. you know the ones - the ones you know word for word - Grinch, Rudolph, Charlie Brown. Yup classics.
True to my theory that everything is smaller in the UK - cars, roads, fridges. I thought go big or go home. I started out with a fat quarter. so my stiched piece is a huge 42 x 48 cm. that's about 17 x 19"!!
all stitched and more than a few pricked fingertips!!
I love the texture, the bumpy surface where the stitching gathers up the batting.
the big question - what's next!!
Laura & Linda are know for painting on their quilted surfaces.
Yikes. but as Myrna said- the earth won't fall of its axis or birds fall out of the sky so why not!!

I've been published!!!

Yup you heard right. I've been published or rather my ATC's in Quilting Arts newest book 1000 ATC's. I'm waiting on my copy from Chapters. Its here!! My ATc's are #'s 452 & 455. It was originally a machine embroidered design that came with my Husky D1. It was just hanging around so I hacked it up for the ATC's. They are much brighter in colour IRL. Like others I am disappointed in the quality of the colour reproductions in the book but it is still cool to see my name & stuff in a book!

I think this is my 100th post too. I started just over a year ago and want to post every single day!

"Do with me what you will"

Cloth paper scissors magazine had a reader challenge in the Winter 2005 issue. Entitled "do with me what you will" a drawing by the very colourful Violette. I started working on it and missed the January deadline. Around the same time the Twisted Stitchers Guild announced a challenge to be based on a song title. Ok, I could shift gears & use the same piece. The Summer 2006 issue of cps has wonderful examples of how artists took the drawing & flew with it. There are eight more interpretations on the quilting arts website done by students. I think they will appreciate the great art teachers they have as they grown & create. It is a great lesson to learn to articulate about ones own creativity.
I was unable to make the meeting for the song challenge. This piece IS going to be in a challenge even if I make it up myself!! so here it is.......
Guess the song title depicted by my quilt...... I will send the winner 6 fat quarters of fabric. If there is no winner by next week I will give ya a hint!!
And yes it is not finished, needs to be sandwiched & quilted. Hey this is MY contest!! My rules !!
The leaves of the tree are made by using the gleanings from a scarf I made earlier- see Mar 21/06 entry.

Make-it-U!

The most fun I've had at school!! Quilting Arts & cloth, paper, scissors magazines had a huge section at the Chicago quilt show. There were vendors that advertise in the magazines as well as a teaching area for the 1 hour classes. I took three classes. Like a good artist I altered my tags.
The first class I took on Thursday night was with Pokey. We got to play with a variety of supplies to alter a canvas bag.
We stamped with Staz-on ink, painted with Lumiere paints by Jacquard. Mine needs some more work before I can put it to use! It was great fun to try new products.
The second class I took was with Shelley Stokes who does great things with Shiva oil sticks. We moved quickly trying different techniques. We rubbed the paint over a template -mine is alligator skin texture-
we did stencilling with a paint brush - I like the checkerboard pattern I did with the metallic paint. It shows up nicely on the dark fabric.
These are expensive art supplies so it was great to try & get a couple little sticks to bring home. I will have to go back to my copy of Quilt Toppings by Melody Crust to see her work with the paint sticks.
The third class I took at Make-it-U was with Jill Haglund of Tweet Jill Publications. We work quickly to get a good start on ATC made from playing cards.We stamped, used newspaper as background, painted with twinkling H20's which you can see shining on my ATC. The piece of newspaper I used was from the business section and was about stocks but I like how it relates to the 3 little girls in the image. It reads 'Six Year High'.

The second ATC is not as far along. but I like how the 3 on his little dunce hat relates to the face of the card which will be the back of the ATC.

So much fun. Thanks Pokey.

ATC's

It was wonderful to see the hundreds of ATC's that were sent into cloth, paper, scissors magazine. hundreds of exquisite little pieces of art. I don't know how Pokey gets any work done on her magazine receiving such treasures in the mail every single day!!
I heard a rumour they will be publishing a book with all the ATC's. As I was admiring them on Thursday night a woman next to me pointed mine out to her mother. The woman was from Toronto & her mother lives in the very next town to me. Small world eh?! She goes to a monthly ATC swap with mostly fiber artists at the Gladstone Hotel on Queen St. in Toronto. We didn't get to pick our own ATC's for the swap. It would be very time consuming if everyone had to choose. The top row is the 5 ATC's from the magazine swap and the second row is from the additional swap with the staff from the magazine. These are my first ATC's in what could become a large collection. I can see how this can become addictive.