Carol's Pun - Poetry - Poet-Tree

In the beginning when the word was chosen I was completely stumped. I started thinking about it and came up with poetry, which translated to Poet-Tree.

I copied a small picture that was my inspiration (it was about 3”) and used my enlarger to obviously enlarge it! I started out with a white piece of fabric and used fabric paints and Inktense sticks, not the pencils, to create my wood tree. I also used some masking for the

whites of his eyes, which I had never done before, and a hair dryer to dry th inks and paints when I added more color. Once I had him all painted up, I did stitched texture for his bark/mustache/face/hands and then cut him out of the fabric.

I then got another piece of fabric and painted his background. I attached him to the background and stuffed him a little so he would have a small belly. I then sewed him down and added more

quilting and fancy stitching, etc. His right hand and book were added last. The book cover is a small piece of silk and the pages are white cotton. I wrote the poem Trees by Joyce Kilmer in his little book, of course.

All in all, I like him quite a bit.

To see more punny quilts, hop over to Material Mavens!

It's Reveal day again! CONTRAST is the word.

This is my rendition of Contrast. I chose the word, then I did what everyone else in this group probably does, just go blank and scratch my head in puzzlement. What am I going to make?

So I played around with the word….black & white is contrasting, so are a lot of other colors, but I wanted to make something totally different and out of the ordinary. I decided to do, my daughter Sarah, who has very light skin and dark hair = CONTRAST.

First I asked permission to use a photo she had which was a gift for a friend - well she is an adult and I didn’t just want to take her photo without permission.

Then I did some photoshop stuff with it, like change it to “posterized” which gives me about six colors to choose from, rather than look at the subject/colors all at once. It broke the tones up so I could see where to make transitions.

Because the original pic was square, I had to get this enlarged somehow, so I used the copier at work and did it in sections. (Since then a friend has given me an enlarger!)

I then outlined the sections and used a black magic marker to divide up the colors, and then numbered them. Luckily for me, I found a person who does fabric dying in all the shades I was looking for (skin tones) at the Mancuso show in August.

The piece is not sewn, but fused, and I framed it as well.  I thought it would look better this way. I did try some sewing, but it was very distracting and I just wasn’t happy with it.
Check out more fun work at Off The Wall Friday!

Catching up

with myself :)    I posted my last word challenge (SPRING) at the Material Mavens last week and am now catching up to my own blog.

So here is my Spring challenge.....

 This piece was accepted into the Living With Craft Exhibition/sale venue at the League of NH Craftsmen's Fair in August. I'm sure it will go to a good home.

I also did a makeover of my last piece, Double Arch Bridge. Here's the original mounted on a larger frame (14 x 14) which is fabric covered. This was finished a couple of months ago or so I thought.









And then the makeover which is mounted on a smaller frame (12 x 12) with the addition of a larger tree that hangs over the side and some dried leaves and rocks which also hang over the bottom. The blue background is just a wall :)

He Sees FISH!

I just posted this over on the Material Mavens site - it is reveal day again!

Yes, an odd name for something in the cell category, but my son works in a Pathology Lab and this is his view of the microscope in a dark area with a color florescence that can be changed depending on what you need to see/know.
He posted this pic on facebook one day after the "word" went out and I said that is a cool picture, and proceeded to make it.
I used cottons, fabric paints, inktense pencils and of course thread.

Check out Off The Wall Friday over at Nina's!

Canyon - Sue's Cousin

I always wanted to find a dinosaur skeleton. When the new word went out for "Canyon," what

else could I do?
So I went to a very nice canyon and did a dig and found a huge T-Rex I call Sue's Cousin. Sue is the biggest T-Rex skeleton found yet and she was found by a kid too! I'm a big kid!

I used a lot of strips of fabric to show soil layers and to give you that feel of age. Then "dug" some of the fabric away to reveal my find. I used an outline stitching to achieve this and then painted in the dino.


You can go to The Material Mavens to see the rest of the Mavens "Canyon" quilts.

AND don't forget Off the Wall Fridays!

Off the Wall Fridays and Material Mavens

This is a 2for - I am posting for two reasons. I usually do Off the Wall Fridays, but today is also the REVEAL day for the Material Mavens, of which I am a member too.

Every two months the Mavens have a challenge word to interpret, this reveal word was Communication.
Here's my piece:

Communication - Music

Communication – I thought what better way to communicate then with music? Music is the universal language and is understood by all. It communicates feelings and thoughts and brings them to everyone who listens. What better way to interpret communication, I asked myself.

So I started with an idea of Gregorian Chant. An old and not well known or used form of singing and the voice is the instrument of communication. There are many forms of chant, but this one I heard at an early age and enjoyed the sound. To depict chant, I put it on an interpretation of an Illuminated Page for a manuscript, and of course used the letter “C.” It could be for the word communication or my name!

Other modern musical notes were added using fabric I have had for years and of course, circles – because everything goes around and comes back to you.

See more at The Material Mavens and don't miss the pieces at Off the Wall Fridays!