Art and creativity evolves

It’s been 4 years and I have entered another phase of making art. I found this book and it had an intriguing way of using the sewing machine to create. Ive been working this way for the past year and enjoy the challenge. It’s called machine embroidered designs. So I’m not using any computer controlled machine it is done with a hoop and colored thread and some would call it thread painting.

This is the one I’m working on today. I’m enjoying this one. It will be about 3 - 4 inches tall when done.

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!

The Unveiling

I have been working on a piece for my youngest son's wedding, which is this Saturday the 30th.

I took two photos and combined them to make this. My friend made me a silkscreen of the two of them,which came out fabulous. I colored and stitched them separately and then cut them out to apply on the background and did a lot of stitching, which was fun. I also put in a blue bird of happiness :)

So this is Mike & Renee starting the walk down the road of life together.

And the unveiling

Neighbor - Google Earth View

We live in a bit of a rural area – not many neighbors, so I thought it would be fun to do a Google Earth view of a neighborhood. My house is included in this view, left hand bottom corner, but most of the neighbors are those who I hold dear in my heart, rather than those who actually live near me.

I started with a background fabric that gave a forest feel. Then I used Misty Fuse to add some roads. I then used some of my fusing scraps to make the little houses, some with pools, and used fabric paint to create trees. All the houses needed roofs and chimneys. I had fun creating my neighborhood. Stitching all around the houses and roads added a bit of separation from the background fabric. 

I hope one of the houses looks like yours, for you are a neighbor.

Hop on over to Material Mavens for more of the Neighbor Theme quits.

Hot off the Press.....or sewing machine!

I have been working behind the scenes doing all kinds of stuff, but not producing anything in large quantities. I just finished two pieces for the next exhibit at LNHC Gallery Headquarters in January, entitled "Blue, The Sky's The Limit."

The first is Tiny Blue Visitor - a little bird picture I have had for a long time. I used my new-to-me enlarger to make the bird bigger than 1", which he was in the photo I have. I think it came out really cute.


The second is another good picture of what I call Blue Time, My Secret Garden which is the time the sun has set and it is almost dark,
the light reflecting off the snow turns everything blue. One of my favorite times of the winter day. This is a view from my kitchen window, with a secret garden out back.

Both pieces have painted backgrounds. I had a lot of creative fun with these too. :)

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!

Searles Guard Tower

I always feel as though I am continuing a conversation when I come back here to write about what I am or have been working on recently.
Today I started a hat that has been waiting for a year. Just for winter, but you will get to see that eventually as right now it is drying and not very interesting as all.

So back to the guard tower. I finished it and am quite pleased with how it came out. My first "draft" of it had the top where you couldn't see through like you can in real life because of the angle I had created. Fixed that and then went onto other things to do to it.

It was a fun and interesting project and once the frame for it comes, then it will be really, really complete.
It has a printed and painted background.

I have also been working on my Material Mavens piece that is due to be revealed on October 15th!