My Life

For 5 days a week, I'm disguised as a sales associate at the local quilt shop. I normally work Tuesday thru Saturday. That leaves me with 2 days off, Sunday and Monday, with Monday being the day I run errands. On the days I work, I normally do a little bit of hand work before I go to bed. This leaves Sunday for the main creating. Since I'm a morning person, I get more done in the morning and am needing a nap by 2.

Where is all this going? It's an explanation of why I don't post regularly. Sometimes, I have nothing to post. The art that I create takes time to do. I usually work on several things at once, with each piece being at a different stage. I will do handwork at night after work and work on the pieces that require machine work on Sunday. It is a slow progress.

My intentions with this blog is to share my art and my creative process, not the everyday doldrums of my life; which are to get up, go to work, come home, just about to fall asleep on the couch, go to bed and start all over the next day. Very boring by the way. My life at work is my boss's business and she will tell those tales herself. Outside of a few projects that reflect both work and home (my projects inspired by work), you will not see any work related items here. Now that that is out of the way, on to new projects. Yes, new ones.

New Works

I have a few new projects in the works. Rather some old works being worked on again and stuff that has been in back of my mind for awhile. 

The old stuff first. The shop has a UFO program going and I decided to participate in it. I have 7 projects from my quilting days that need to be finished. One of those projects is a quilt top that goes by the name of "Cam's Cold Blooded World". It features snakes, lizards and frogs. Yesterday I went to the shop an hour early to spray and pin baste the top. My goal is to start machine quilting it today. Yes I will take a picture of it and post here when I get done. Some of my UFOs are art quilts and the rest are traditional quilts. An applique block from about 12 years ago is included in this group. It will be interesting to see if I can combine both old projects with new projects.

One of the new projects I started last Sunday was art dolls. For the past 8 years or so, I have been fascinated by these little beauties. I have had the fabric set aside for these ladies for quite awhile. I finally started playing with them.

These ladies are smaller than normal, I reduced the pattern by 50%.  Notice the fabric on the right.  That was my first paycheck from quilting.  The owner of the first shop I ever worked for, was teaching a class in FL.  She asked me to help her out with the students since it was a large class. (It was also my first teaching job).  When she offered to pay me, all I wanted at the time was a yard of this fabric.  I have used it very sparingly for the past 15 years.

Here the ladies have been traced onto the fabric and sewn.  This method, you trace the pieces onto the fabric, sew on the trace lines, cut out the piece, then depending on which piece, cut a small hole on 1 side and turn.  The head pieces are only sewn on 1 side, cut out and then the face piece is sewn to the back of the head.  The first time I sew the back side of the head, I sewed on the wrong side.  Naturally a very small stitch is used to sew the pieces together (I used stitch length 1), so I could not rip the pieces apart, I had to retrace the pieces.  Now after the pieces are sewn like this, the rest of the process is done by hand.  Well I got everything cut out properly at last and I can't get the arms/hands to turn properly.  In fact, I ripped the first one.  It is back to the drawing board for the arms. I will use a different hand piece where the fingers are not individual pieces, but are more mitten like.  That should be easier to turn.  That project is scheduled to be first this morning before I get started on the quilt.

Octoberfest

Back to Octoberfest.

 This is what the fiber lace looks like after the water solvable stabilizer has been removed.  This was suppose to take the place of the free form crochet and be in the background.  Brilliant me (not) had already sewn down the twirls and in any case, it still would not have worked.  I should have free motion the quilt before I  had sewn down the twirls.  Never mind that I didn't think of it until afterwards.  The process of a creative mind. Duh.

Well I still wanted to use the fiber lace, so my next brilliant idea was to make a flower shape, and here is where the name Octoberfest went right out the door.  Then again, maybe I will keep the name.

Bell shape flower

  

Traced on fusible webbing

The 2 pictures above are the shapes I used on the fiber lace.  My next step after applying the fusible webbing to the back of the fiber lace and cutting it out was to make sure the edges would not unravel.

So I backed the bell shaped lace with 2 layers of tear away stabilizer and used a satin stitch to secure the threads.

This is the layout along with the threads to be used.  The thread on the right is the stems to the flowers and the thread on the left will be used as stamens for the flower.  I'm still working on the stems.

This is as far as I got.

Till next time.

Shirley