Kids Drawings

Did you ever look at one of your child's drawings and think that it would make a cute stuffed "animal"? I have on more than one occasion and saved many of my daughters drawings on the idea that I would eventually do that. Well time never permitted. (My son didn't really like drawing much) A few weeks ago, this little girl Abigail brought in a drawing to show me. It was so darned cute and I asked if it was for me. Well in normal Abigail fashion she immediately said no! she was giving it to Miss Keri. She promptly brought it over to Keri and she hung it up. I kept seeing it each day and thinking how cute that would look as a stuffed whatever it was. I snuck it out of the school on Friday!

The original drawing! So cute!

As you can see, the piece was a quick drawing in black marker on newsprint. I took creative liberties and added some color to my final project.

Looks great in color!

Side by side comparison

The body was red felt and I gave it purple hair. The eyes were black fabric fused onto the felt and then hand sewn in place. I embroidered the eyelashes and mouth. The white parts of the eyes were created with white fabric paint.  Of course I showed this to my daughter who immediately asked for it. I told her no and then she wailed on about how I made stuff for other people and never for her blah, blah, blah. So I guess it's time to hunt down those pics I saved of her art and create them in fabric to stop the whining. LOL

If April Showers . .

bring May Flowers, what do May Flowers bring? The pilgrims! I still remember that joke from my childhood! Corny but cute. So our latest trade was Rain. Rain as a color really stumped me for quite a while. Well until I realized that it really is clear and picks up the colors it lands on. So I used the idea of a driving rain against a window.

I used a hand dyed fabric I made a long time ago in blues, whites and a pale pink. Details were added with watercolor crayons and water. Once dry, more details were added with fabric markers and then free motion stitching in metallic blue. For the highlights and sparkle I used a scrapbooking product called Stickles in star dust (fancy term for off white!) That had to dry overnight. Additional dimension was created with markers in blues and some pinks. I knew it would be impossible to get the sparkle into the photograph but gave it the old college try. This was as good as it gets unfortunately.

Sketch to Art Quilt

When I saw the challenge in the Quilting Arts Magazine, I felt compelled to create something. I had done a zentangle sketch and used elements from the peacock to fill in the different areas. It was so cool the way it turned out and I thought it would make a great quilt and look good in color!

This was the sketch I started out using as my idea. I made photocopies of it and experimented with different color combinations.

I sketched the design on white cotton fabric and filled in the areas using, paints, dyes and dye pens.

I free motion stitched in black thread in most areas and hand stitched the smaller areas. Unfortunately it did not make the cut for the challenge. Oh well. I loved doing it! Actually, I loved this so much, that I have started a much larger version of this piece but a few color changes. Can't wait to work on it!

Unconventional Materials

A while back, the QuiltArt list had a call to artists to create an art quilt out of unconventional materials. We had only a month to pull that off. Not sure what there was about this call that grabbed my attention but I immediately had an idea of what I wanted to do. This piece came together in a matter of days! I think it was because I hadn't been doing much art this past year. Life was seriously getting in the way.

I started with a piece of fabric I had been using under my rust dyeing experiments. The material is from my mom. It has a type of rubber backing on it to prevent leakage and reminds me of stuff used in baby's cribs. It had some great rusting but needed a bit more color. So I dug around in the garage and found some old sienna brown glazing paint used for faux finishing. I added that in areas to create more contrast. The plant is modeled after my day lilies after a rain. I painted some thin foam material that had been used to ship some computer stuff to my husband. When dry, I cut various leaves in different lengths. I hand sewed the leaves to the background and had to be really careful not to rip the material. The spider web was made using a hot glue gun. I was going for a web with dew or rain stuck to it. I was happy with the look.

I finished up the piece by sewing on different sized washers onto it. They were to add another element of texture and create more of an earth feel. Viewing the final results, I was pretty happy with the project.

Key Lime Pie ATC

Our theme for this month was LIME. This year, we have deviated a bit from our usual theme and we will only be doing colors. I guess they were sick of my finding a way to make a tree out of every challenge! Just kidding. (But limes grow on trees . . . )

I constructed the pie using a hand dyed pink and purple fabric for background, lime batik for the pie and a cream and light brown for the crust. There was too much of a pattern on the bottom part of the crust so I used a brown dye pen to even it out a bit. I added detail to the crust by using a free motion stitch in rust to add another dimension. The lime was made from fusing a rainbow cellophane from a flower arrangement and green netting together. Free motion stitching in lime green added the details. I then quartered the circles so they would fit on each card. More detail was added using a dark green thread to stitch it to the card. The final piece was to use my favorite puffy paint to make whipped cream. Good thing I made extra pieces to test on because I ruined a couple when I was puffing up the paint!

See the other Lime pieces at Arts In the Cards blog!

ATC - Red

This year the group is going to do colors for the trades each month. Red is the color for February - how appropriate. My piece is titled PASSION which red always seems to signal to me.
I stamped all over my batik fabric scrap (which was in shades of red, orange and brown) with a handmade stamp. The stamp reminds me of something inside our brain that is all connected. When dry, I placed a red mesh fabric from a floral arrangement, over the entire piece and free motion quilted around the stamp and filled in with different sized circles using black thread. I cut them apart and added Glossy Accents onto the stamped parts to bring out the red. I think this may be one of my favorites! I loved out it turned out.
Don't forget to check out all the others at http://artsinthecards.blogspot.com

ATC - Two

I had to decline participating in our December trade which was a flat Santa trade. They were absolutely adorable. But everything is calming down once again and our January trade was TWO to celebrate our 2nd anniversary. I can't believe we have been doing this for two years already! So many wonderful pieces were traded!
My contribution for the two trade was based on the anniversary and what does one give on the second anniversary. How interesting that it is cotton! So I used cotton fabrics to create little cotton plants to give on our second anniversary. The background was my flour paste resist in blue for the sky, then a metallic green for background plants and a combo rust dyed with tanin on white cotton for the earth colors. I used puffy paint for the plant and cotton balls sewn in for the cotton of course.
I have managed to misplace my camera so a friend was kind enough to use her camera phone to take a picture for me. So no group shot this time around. Sorry