Sunshiny day

During quilting

A friend of mine is very ill, and I wanted to make her a warm, cuddly lap quilt.

Quilt taking shape on the wall behind me

For inspiration, I asked for her favorite colors and without hesitation she said, "pink, purple and yellow!" I began cutting free form strips (no rulers!) and pieced the colors together in a pleasing gradation.

During the quilting stage I filled her quilt with hearts and words such as Love, Hope, Joy and the names of her husband, two children and faithful canine companion. I hope it brings some cheer to her days.

I filled the quilt with words of inspiration, love and hope.

Butterfly painted purses

Whoever gets one of these purses 

will be carrying their very own piece of art!

First, I "painted" these butterfly wings for a new quilt -- with marking pens and rubbing alcohol!!!

Then I cut up the bottom wing (which hadn't turned out the way I wanted) to create these original hand-painted purses!

How it began ...

A couple of months ago I tried my hand at painting on fabric - using - surprise - marking pens! Yes! You can use Sharpie permanent markers to create beautiful effects on fabric - in this case, plain white 100% cotton. And shading can be done with a mixture of rubbing alcohol and water! Who would have thought? 

After "drawing" in the color with marking pens, I used a paintbrush dipped in the alcohol solution to dilute and "spread" the color on the edges.

After I created the butterfly wings I decided I didn't like the bottom wing and cut it up to use some of the painted fabric to use in my purses! (I will paint another bottom wing to finish the butterfly quilt...)

Whoever gets one of these purses will be carrying their very own piece of art!

More photos here.

What's on YOUR wall? - WEEK 4

Zentangles!!!

Oh goodie! A new obsession!
They are called Zentangles and making them is both an art and a meditative practice. I spent a couple of days going crazy with them: making them, reading about them, studying them late into the night and waking up with them on my brain.
www.zentangle.com
The patterns are beautiful and I can see so many possibilities for free-motion quilting. I even have some flashes of insight for piecing based on some of the Zentangle shapes.

What's on YOUR wall? -- WEEK 3

Wow... another week has blown by and knocked me off course!!! I've been taking care of "stuff" in real life, which is necessary, but I get cranky when there is too much of it!!! So now I'm back in the studio, playing and getting my soul filled up.

The red piece on the wall looked like this last week:

 Then it morphed into this:

AAAAAAGHHH!!!!  A red alert started flashing and a voice was saying "Danger, danger Will Robinson!!!" (For those of you not watching TV in the 60s, just ignore this.) I think the glare from all that red was causing a dangerous flux in the fabric of the time-space continuum... plus it lost the cool circles which were my favorite part...

So I set it aside for a bit. That's all you can do sometimes... and just wait for fresh intuition to tell you what to do. If you try to push it you can end up with a hot mess. Art cannot be forced, it must be allowed. I make the space for it and it does what it wants to.