Posted on 1 Comment

The Acid Wash Wasn’t Heinous Enough

Besides terrifying ceramics, I brought home several pairs of jeans to cut up and add to my latest quilt.  
 I can confidently say that this pair deserved destruction the most.
 Check out that pleated front.  Because the acid wash wasn’t heinous enough.
 Maybe this detailing on the back could be slimming…
 
…if it weren’t for the giant puffy thighs and butt it’s been designed to give even the skinniest person.
 Don’t be scared, they aren’t going to hurt your eyes anymore. 
 Here’s what one can accomplish in one full length movie, two Larry Sanders episodes and one episode of Mythbusters.
She’s watching out for them
BY WATCHING YOU!
Posted on 1 Comment

This Is What Can Happen

I went to the thrift shop to buy more jeans for my unintentional quilt.  I got ten pair (I have nine to work with since one pair fits my son).  But, that’s not all I brought home.
For, you see;  I have a dark, thrift shop secret.
My love of horrifying ceramics.
I cannot pass this kind of stuff up.  Look:  That girl is totally orange.  And, that’s not only a  pastel train it’s also a glaring, hypnotist bunny.  And, someone thought it was a good idea to stick a huge hole for a candle in the head of a cloying cute little girl.
But, wait.  There’s more.
I have more than this.  I took about this size of a pile to the library in the hopes that someone would use them for garden art but they were passed up.  Probably too terrifying.
 Here’s a small portion which, for my family’s sake, I’ve put in the garage. I don’t know which one I love the most, the dolphins swimming in water made of glitter?  Maybe the prairie girl with the bonnet that hides her enormous alien brain?  No, it’s gotta be the tall headed girl in jammies carrying her evil puppy overlord in her arms.  The part that’s even scarier is that I’ve only just begun taking them home.  This collection is the result of only two thrift shop runs.  …blush..
 This came home with me, too.  But, somehow, this lives in a different kitschy section of my brain.  It’s added to my odd bird corner of the basement.
 The collection I only realized was a collection during the last time I cleaned up my studio and found I had, like, a million stupid bird things.  This is what can happen when you strive let the unconscious, creative part of your brain take over.
More birds.  Just sayin’
On the other hand, I got some pretty paper
and some fun and interesting stuff to collage with (Wartburg…teehee).
SHE CAN SEE YOU THROUGH YOUR COMPUTER SCREEN!
Posted on 1 Comment

It Snuck Up On Me

Oops, I made most of a quilt by mistake.  I didn’t mean to. 
It was just really hot out so I was staying inside and I have this pile of denim and I started cutting it up and next thing you know, I have the majority of a quilt top finished.  
You can see how that could happen, right?
 
 
It went down like this:
Push all the paper stuff out of the way (thereby effectively putting my binding machine problems on hold.)
Cut cut cut, think think think…
Iron iron iron…OH, I know…
What if I cut them into strips and sorted them by size and color….
Well, that’s kinda cool…
 
Let’s see what happens if I sew them up that way…
Not bad.  Now if I iron that…
 
Like this…
Hmmm.  
Let me just break in here to say that this is when I stopped taking pictures because I hit some kind of flow.  Next time I looked up from my sewing machine. I had this:
I drove my family a little nuts by taking over the living room floor with it and making them admire each tiny detail look at it from different angles.
 
 I’m all aflutter and in love…also out of denim. 
I picture red backing.  Maybe some gold or orange in there for wild and crazy contrast.  
Then again, I could stick with denim and just quilt it up with colorful thread. 
I love this stage of a project and I’m even happier because it’s a stealth project that snuck up on me when I was distracted. 
This bin of “Crotch and Butt Buckets” is all I have left of the many many nasty old used pants I’ve bought over the years.  I can’t picture what to do with them but maybe, if I’m lucky, a project will leap out at me when I’m doing something else.
Posted on 2 Comments

One More Problem

Whining Mode Activated:

It’s hot out.

My toe hurts.

My neck has a crick in it.

We need rain.

You would think that would get all of the whining out of me but, no.  One more problem:

Check out that under bite.

I can’t figure out how to bind my books.  I’m not finding much help when I google around either.  I’ll have to figure it out ALL BY MYSELF!

……..sigh….back to the binder……

Whining Mode Deactivated:

Actually, I may just take a little time off and play with my ink stone.

Posted on

I Tried: I Used Pink.

After my Fearless Crafters Journal Program and, thanks in part to these two books, I am obsessed with making cool journal pages lately. 
 This one is a blank, colorful (on the other side) card sewn to a wall paper label. 
I really enjoy sewing on paper. 
I’ve already punched holes into some of them using my handy dandy book binding machine.  Then I decided they were too plain so I added some this and that to them.
Sewed a card to it. 
Here’s just  a pile of blanks to add to later, after it’s a journal.
 Same but less blank.  I felt somewhat compelled to add lines to many pages.
 The more colorful one was an advertisment in a magazine but now is an envelope.
 Fun with paper bags!  
The one on the left is a bag that a wine bottle came in.
 I folded over the ends to make little pockets.  
Here’s the other side.
This bag is one that I just started.  This is when I realized (again) that I don’t have a really “girly aesthetic”.  I have no interest in a ton of lace and floral (which seem very common in art journal pages.)  I tried: I used pink.
This I love so much.  I printed it up for use in a library display and just couldn’t throw it away afterwards.  Wouldn’t it make a great page?  It’s from “The Twits” by Roald Dahl, the picture is by Quentin Blake. 
It’s incredibly fun but also very time consuming.  I have this amorphous plan in the back of my head to sell them.  I’m just not sure it’s realistic.  
In the meantime, though, I’m having a really fun time and learning so much about working with paper.  
It’s hard to believe that it didn’t used to interest me at all.  Then again, it shouldn’t be that hard to believe, it’s such a reoccurring pattern for me. I should journal about it!
Posted on 1 Comment

I Just Have to Share

I just have to share some of the pictures from the Fearless Crafters Workshop we just held:
 
 
 
Aren’t they awesome?  I shared them with permission from the Monona Public Library

P.S.  I didn’t make any of these but I still feel proud because I helped a bit.  🙂

Posted on

Goofy Journal

 The Fearless Crafters Journal Program was so much fun.  It inspired me to make MOOOORE!!! 
For my birthday, I bought myself a book binding machine.  Today, I finally got to play with it a little bit.
 First I cut out some cool looking paper from here and there.  I trimmed them all up so that they were basically even.
 I’m supposed to be able to punch holes in 15 sheets at a time but it takes a little getting used to. 
My first batch was a mess.
 So I punched all the sheets separately, which worked just fine.  I forgot to take pictures of using the binding mechanism, which I screwed up but that’s how you learn so I just kept moving along. 
 It looks fine here but closing the wires (squeezing them together) was hard. I suspect it just takes getting used to.
 See, the pages stick up and don’t turn smoothly.
But, if they did, I would love this goofy journal.  It only took 40 minutes to bind up and that’s while learning how to use the machine.  I picture many more journals in my future. 
Posted on 1 Comment

Travel Journal

 In the last post I was prepping for a trip.  We took it and we are back home already!  One week in San Diego.  It was really lovely.  I brought a couple of projects to work on.  
Well, I didn’t embellish my bag even a little bit more, though that was my plan.  
I also planned on working on a travel journal while we were there but didn’t work on it till we got back.
I think that’s a sign of a good vacation.  We were too busy or too bushed or watching Mythbusters on cable.  
I did pick up tons of brochures and pieces of paper from everywhere we visited.  I put it together in anticipation of my Fearless Crafter Journal Making Workshop that happens tonight!  There’s a waiting list and I’m really excited! 
The left side of the envelope has a card from the Venice Beach “Marijuana Doctors”  I felt so naive, I never know such things existed.  

 Here’s my screwy binding.  The idea came from the fabulous How to Make Books By Esther K. Smith.  I’ve used it once before and it worked but this time I glanced at the instructions and then winged it

Oops.

 You would think that I’d know better by now. 

 I’d like to say that I make it look amateurish so that my workshop participants don’t feel intimidated but I think we all know better. 

Here are boxes of treasures that Megan from Absolutely Art allowed us to sift through to get goodies to offer to people to use in their journal making. 
  
 I was a little thrown off by how much of it was stuff that I had donated.
Next Fearless Crafters:  3-D Collage on August 28th!
Posted on

I Paced, I Pouted, I Twitched

  I did it!  I passed on the baby blanket with hardly a word and no apology at all!  
But then yesterday I was suffering from sewing deprivation.  I paced, I pouted, I twitched with the urge to make something.  I overshared pictures of the baby quilt at Craftser and Craftsy and Ravelry
So I sucked it up and made something.  
We are taking a family trip soon and I’m never ready to pack for a trip until I get a new purse.  Don’t ask me why.  
I couldn’t find one I liked.  That, along with my sewing withdrawal symptoms, made it clear that I needed to make one.  
 
photo.JPG
Please forgive the bad pictures, I can’t find my camera and used my phone again.
It’s exactly like the one I’ve been using (I bought it for our last family trip but I don’t have a picture of it because it was ugly).  I liked how it was laid out though. Two large pockets on the ends of the purse for keys and phone make it so useful. 
photo.JPG  
I used my long neglected stash of barkcloth and a really ugly linen dress I bought at the thrift shop.  I put the pocket from the dress on the inside.  I also used the shoulder strap from the ugly purse.  Can I just say, it took me less than an hour, because I used the hems and finished edges from the original pieces.  I used to spend a day on a bag.  It was pretty exciting.
After I got it all put together I decided that it wasn’t big enough.  So, I bought the cheap one I was eying up at Target.  It was so plain, I had passed on it earlier.  But, since seeing it the first time, I had picked this book up:
So I started to decorate it late last night.  
  
  
I have a long way to go.  I plan on bringing my thread along and working on it on the trip.  Yes, I have to take everything out of it to do that so it won’t be what I work on in the airport or anything.   
That project will be a travel journal.  
I making a traveling kit for that stuff today.   I don’t think I’ll be sewing it, just putting it together.  I just need to find the right container.
Posted on 2 Comments

The Wash Turned The Birds Upside Down

Before the wash
After the wash
After ironing after the wash.
I wish I had measured it before washing it for a comparison.   It looks smaller in the picture but I probably had the camera at a slightly different angle so there’s no telling.
Check out those monster bumps on the jeans side:
 I could have sewn the lines of stitching closer together but I wanted to sew around the pockets so they could still be usable.
 So…bumps it is.
 Before
After

Besides slightly fading the colors in a pleasing, vintage-y way, all the wash did was turn the birds upside down (just kidding).   Well, not really, obviously bird fabric shrank.  I’ve sewn jean quilts with lots of space between stitches before and they didn’t bump like this.  I’m considering this quilt a lesson quilt rather than a failure quilt because that’s just the way I think.  I’m still gonna gift it.  I think having a quilt with usable pockets is more important than having a quilt that is perfectly smooth…right?
Getting gifts with a bunch of apology statements is kind of uncomfortable so the real trick will be handing it over without any qualifying statements.  Like it just is what it is and it’s all on purpose and doesn’t need any explanation.  So, that’s my next challenge.  Wish me luck.