New Quilting Adventure

 Thought I'd share the reason for my renewed quilting activity. I decided to take the plunge and get a longarm machine. My shop had a warehouse area that was 10 x 50 with no heat/air and had serious shelving and not even drywall on the walls. Since I retired it had become a storage for anything we didn't know what else to do with and it was a horrible, filthy mess. It had a rollup door at one end for deliveries so an interior wall had to be added with an exterior door so any heat and air added would not just escape around the rollup door. A month of removing shelves, getting rid of tons of stuff and relocating other stuff and then construction, painting, carpeting and I have a finished room. Might admit I went somewhat over my intended budget for the project but it turned out great. I bought some furniture at yard sales and refinished, made a giant ironing table and a curtain to cover up the heat and air unit. Happy with the results...am busy practicing on my quilting machine.

The finished room is 10 x 40. Made a strip with clips on it to hang up quilts. I currently have some old quilts on the wall but hopefully soon it will be ones that I've quilted. Here are views from both ends of the room. The door at one end leads to a 10 x 10 room with the rollup door and is set up for storage. You can't see the door on the other wall that leads to the rest of my shop.

Another Quilt

Yes, two posts in a day after four months of no posts. My intention is to post more often as I am back in the quilting mode. This is another quilt for my best friend's daughter, another Melissa, for providing my friend with a second grandson. I wanted a baby quilt that was sort of masculine and could not find a single pattern that I really liked. I ended up designing this one and was happy with the way it turned out. The basic quilt was pieced and the wheels and letters were appliqued and handstitched with a blanket stitch. It was quilted by my friend, Susan Bailey.

Finally...

I wanted to share a picture of my first "art" quilt that I made for my niece, Melissa. She is an Edgar Allen Poe fan and I was told her favorite color was purple. The pieced background is predominantly purple batiks and hand dyed fabrics. The tree and raven were appliqued on the top. It was quilted by Jan Hickman and I asked her to quilt "Nevermore" onto the trunk of the tree. I was encouraged to try something besides a traditional quilt by my fellow quilters in the Renegades which is an art quilt group that I was invited to join last year.

A New Die to Play With!

Right before I left on my yearly creative vacation I got a new Sizzix die called Candy Drawer. I had seen some projects I loved made with it and could hardly wait to play with it. The only thing I did before I left was cut one from chipboard and glue it together. It is a little open box with a "sleeve" so the box slides in and out like a drawer. I did determine it is meant for chipboard and using it with cardstock did not work as the sleeve was WAY too big. Did spend some time figuring out the right dimensions to cut and score a sleeve that fit the cardstock box so at least I have options.

The projects I had admired were little sets of the drawers where they had glued together various numbers of them to make little chests, adding chipboard to surround the drawer sleeves to finish them off and make them more sturdy. I had a lot to do this week after I returned home but couldn't resist cutting four little sets and gluing them together. I painted them black with acrylic paint and then adhered some kraft/black print cardstock to the drawer fronts and to the sides and back.  Chipboard on the back and around the outside edges would have made it sturdier but I wanted to get it done quickly. For handles I took some wooden beads from my stash and used Distress ink to darken them. I couldn't figure out how to darken the inside and then grabbed a brown Copic marker and colored inside them. I like the way it looks but I need to decorate it a little more. Mostly I want to make a much bigger one and I think next time I might not paint it. I do have a piece of black mat board with a black core that might be just the raw material for drawer set number two.

Finally Thinking BLOG Again!

Well, I see it has been almost a year since I posted to this blog. Does that mean I haven't done anything in all that time? No, just not sure why I haven't posted anything but a creative "escape" with my sister last week made me realize that I was not taking time to be creative and I vowed to do more things that I wanted to do and to go back to posting on my blog.

The first thing I want to share is actually something I did some months ago. It is a terrible picture as it doesn't show that it is a box shaped like a book that I made from mat board. Basically it was an open box that I attached a "book like" cover around and used black ribbon for the closure. On the front of it I put some of that really old decorative metallic stuff with holes in it. I think what I had is a leftover from the 70's. I also put some chipboard letters and some chipboard die cuts on the front...the whole thing was covered with that thin metallic tape they use for ductwork. I used a stump to burnish around the dimensional things and then dabbed the surface with black acrylic paint, using my fingers to smear the paint and a damp cloth to remove paint where I wanted less. When all was dry I coated the entire thing with mat medium. I filled the box with some goodies and gave it to my great-niece, Rhiannon, last week.

Another Box Project

 Since my sister is also a big fan of Tim Holtz I wanted to make something special for her for her birthday. I decided to make her a box for distress stains and fill it with new distress stains. I will admit I might have made the lid a little tiny bit too big...but I didn't let that stop me from finishing it up.

The first picture is of the front of the box telling what's in the box. The button things along the front of the lid are some old-fashioned upholstery tacks that I stained in Tim Holtz/Ranger colors. The box was made from mat board, assembled with masking tape and covered with papers and edges finished with tissue tape. I stamped, glued, distressed and whatever. Used little trinkets I've collected here and there. The next picture below is the top of box with a picture of my sister wearing a crown (I'll admit the picture was taken quite a while ago, maybe 40 years or so). The top has her initials and even a flower I crocheted in white and stained with distress stains. The next picture is the back which isn't too exciting but you might notice that around the edges of the back and sides I printed out names of the distress stains and added them as decoration. I even managed to squeeze in a peacock feather.

I will say it would not be possible to do something like this with so many different objects without the use of Claudine Hellmuth's Matte Medium. It can tame anything. Anyway, the box is now in my sister's art studio and she swears she'll be using her new box of stains really soon.

Something Different

What a shock to be doing two blog postings in a row...but I just had to brag! I had done a Christmas ornament (off-loom beading) for my friend Sharry. She called a few weeks ago and asked if she could enter it in the fair and I told her sure. Sharry's daughter won a Best of Show ribbon for one of her cross stitch projects, Sharry won, I think, three blue ribbons for quilts and I won a huge purple Judge's Choice ribbon for my beading efforts. My first ribbon ever! I didn't even have a photo of the project so I prevailed on my friend, Jennifer, to take a picture while she was at the fair today and here it is: