Thanksgiving

 A lovely day at my neice's, again.  Everything was delicious, but I think my favorite this year were the mashed sweet potatoes with candied pecans. Yum! I am going to make them for my party. That's not to say that I didn't love the turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, broccoli, and pies (pumpkin and pecan).

She always has a signature drink and this year it was a chocolate martini with this cute ginger bread man perched on the rim. She got them at Trader Joe's and they had a big notch on the bottom, meant to sit on hot chocolate mugs, but equally good on a martini glass. I am going to borrow this idea, too. I stopped at Trader Joe's on the way home.

Her daughter always make a charcuterie platter. So attractive and full of delicious goodies. I ate too much, as usual.

Lovely tablescape, different every year.

She found these large pinecone candles at Aldi's. Faux light, of course, but they even glowed inside, making them look so very real.

Another perfect Thanksgiving and now the rush to Christmas! I started my decorating today. So much still left to do. It's a lot of work,  but I do love the results. I hope to finish this week.

Toward 2025

 I am participating in a project, Toward 2050.  There will be a massive labyrinth at Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, AZ. You can read all about it here. We are making banners similar to prayer flags. I made two of them a couple of months ago and Ann Morton, the designer, sent out a call that they are still 900 short of completing this huge job. The deadline has been moved to Dec. 31. If you are interested you can sign up on the website.

They are to be environmentally themed banners. The last two that I made  a while ago were flowers and cacti. This time I chose fish, mainly becasue I had a huge stash of fish fabric. The flags are two sided so I had to make 10 panels for my five flags. 

I chose to fuse the fish down and then button hole stitch around each one with variegated threads. I also printed out SAVE OUR OCEANS on some of them. On some of them I used an ombre blue fabric from my stash  and others my hand dyed shibori fabic in aqua. 

These last two were part of Round Robin a few years ago. I made the shibori fabric and the next person handpainted the fish. I had to piece the other side of the panel.

I am linking up with Off the Wall Friday. Please pop over and see what everyone's doing.

The Zoo Quilt

I started this baby quilt abut 20 years ago. I made all of the blocks and cut out all the sashing and then I never finished it. It was rather complicated piecing and I thought it would only be for future grandchildren. No grandchildren, so they were put away. Every once in awhile I would see them on the shelf and think how cute they were. My sister was over one day and I showed them to her and she convinced me to finish it.

The quilt was from Margaret Rolfe's book, Patchwork Quilts for Children. You made a grid, then drew the pattern on the grid, cut them apart and drew them on your fabric. The piecing directions were very good and I follwed them carefully. I am pleased with the results and now I am putting it together.

I am now in the process of free motion  quilting it. The quilt will measure about 46 x 68, a little big to FM quilt on my standard machine. So I picked out the stitching down the middle length of the quilt top, making two long narrow panels that are relatively easy to quilt. I will then sew the two quilted panels together. I have done this before many times with great success. 

I will show you the whole thing when it is finished. Now here are the cute zoo animals and the alternating pieced block.

Alternate block. I like the yellow for its cheerfulness and also making it gender neutral.

I have decided to donate it next year to the Festival of Trees, where all profits go to Ann's Place, which gives care and comfort to cancer patients and their families.

Please hop over to Off the Wall Friday and see what other talented people are doing. 

 

 

More alcohol inks

 I'm still in love with these inks and I did something entirely different this week. I watchd a video (down the rabbit hole again) by Debra Lyn Rosenbach on a very loose way of painting with the inks. Best to watch the video, but I will try to explain a little. 

This method uses way less alcohol and the inks get moved around with a paint brush dipped in Isopropyl alcohol. No hair dryer, compressor gun or any blowing at all. When you apply the alcohol dipped brush onto a blob of the inks, you can get many different looks. I was aiming for flowers, as was the video.

I watched the video all the way thru, a little over an hour and then I went back and tried to work along with her. She is a professional watercolor artist and many of the metholds are the same. What I like about this method is that you can fix your mistakes, by adding more alcohol and moving the colors around OR you can totally erase a mistake. When  finished I noticed that all of my flowers were round with centers in the middle and so I made another, without lookng at the video, but still aiming for flowers in a vase.

So here is my second attempt. I REALLY  like working this way and will definitely make more. These two were done on the reverse side of photo paper, 8 1/2 by 11. I want to try working on stretched canvas, which can be done if you thoroughly seal the canvas to make it impenetrable. I will use KillZ 2, as suggested by other artists. This way the inks will sit on top of the canvas and not sink in.

I tried for more flowers that were not round, maybe hyacinths or hydrangeas or lilacs. The fun and unpredictable part of this method is that the ink moves as you brush on it and then moves some more as the alcohol and inks move around and dry. What you may have thought was perfect, may look very different in minutes. BUT you can always go back and try again.

As many videos have told me, there are fumes and you should wear a mask, preferably a respirator mask. Oh, joy here goes another big expense, but much to my delight and surprise they are very affordable. Mine was only $17 and they were all around that price, unless you went for a heavy duty professional one. I think mine will be just fine. It arrived today and I haven't used it yet. I hope my Amazon delivery guy doesn't think I am up to nefarious deeds!

In case you are wondering where the Norma has gone who made art quilts and baby quilts and charity quilts or the Norma who makes all kinds of greeting cards. Well, she is still here. I will be working on an intricate baby quilt started many years ago. I just came across it a few days ago and my sister convinced me to finish it, so I will show that soon.

As for cards, I will always be making them and some of my smaller ink projects will turn into cards.

I will be linking up with Off the Wall Friday, so please check that out and see what some very talented people are doing.

New Obsession

Alcohol inks! In case you don't know what they are.....they are inks or paints with an alcohol base. Unlike oil paints or watercolor paints. These inks are thinned and use with Isopropyl alcohol, at least 91% alcohol. There are many, many videos on Youtube, so if you like what you see, go check them out and maybe you'll be hooked, like me.

You need alcohol inks, of course, which you can buy at Michaels or Amazon or any art or craft store. You also need a special paper, such as Yupo (expensive) or the wrong side of glossy photo paper. You will need the alcohol mentioned above to push your inks around.

You also need an air source to push the inks around on your paper, such as a straw, canned air, a bulb puffer, a hair dryer or an air compressor (my favorite)

I will not go into detail, but if you are interested, just go to Youtube and search for alcohol ink techniques or painting and you will get enough to keep you very busy.

Now to show you just a few of what I have done. The first several were done by using a hairdryer (preferably one with a brush that you can remove). Mine is a Revlon, which many demonstrators use.

It is quite unpredictable and often surprising, sometimes frustrating, but always fun.

These next flowers were made using an air compressor to push the inks around. There are many tutorials on making flowers. I really want to make more of these. Many got thrown away, yet  some can be fixed if you goof up by using a tissue and alcohol to take away your mistakes. Sometimes!

 

These were all done on 4 x 6 or 5 x 7 paper, perfect to use on my cards,

I'm linking up with Off the Wall Friday.

Finished

 I've been working on this little embroidered scissors case for awhile. It was very fiddly but I am pleased with the results. It was a pattern and kit from Mary Corbet, embroiderer extraordinaire. She writes a wonderful blog, which I get in my emails and I could have made the case without buying the kit. I can't seem to buy nice linen and the kit came with the linen, all the threads, silk Dupioni for the lining, and even a needle and button. The needle is a size 7 John James embroidery which I thought would be too small, but it was great and and I used it through all the stitching. It was all done with one or two strands of floss.

Her directions are fabulous and there were copious print outs. Go to her website, Needle and Thread, and see all the interesting things she has. She also gives freely of her advice and has many, many stitch videos on Youtube. I used her a lot when I was doing my daily stitching.

Front where you can also see the buttonholed loop, which was made by doing the button hole stitch around a loop of threads.

I learned some new to me techniques, whcih is mainly why I bought the kit with all the directions.

Here you can see the prettty silk lining. It will hold one or two scissore that are no more than four inches long.It will hold my special litle Gingher embroidery scissors that were given to me by my sister many years ago. I have never lost them and I always put them back in the leather sheath.

I am linking up with Off the Wall Friday.

Fun new project

 One of the blogs I follow is Linda Heines. Last week she blogged about these cute little window cards. They were 5" square with a 3" opening and made of a very nice, heavy duty, slightly textured  paper. They come with a good quality envelope and would be suitable for framing in a 5" square. I knew that I would order some here. 

Then I remembered that I had made Christmas cards several years ago with window cards and embossed velvet snow flakes. I thought I had a few left. Yes, I did and there were 18 left! My cards were 5" x 7". I first thought that I would cut them down to 5" squares on my great paper cutter. Here is the first one I made.

I am using squares from a quilt I made and never finished, not sure why, but it gave me quite a few of these cute little succulents that had been color changed in Photoshop. I added the die cut border, but now I'm not sure if it needed it.

Then I went on to make a few using the the 5" x 7" cards, ging me more room for stamped sentiments. And of course, since these are cards, there is plenty of room inside for another stamped sentiment.

The backing for the quilt was a yummy hand-dyed look-alike of pretty pastels merging into each other and they looked good in the openings, too.

Lots more of those squares.

I went searching my studio to see what else I could use and in my big stash of shibori fabric I found these little stitched circles. They are not quilted, but that's okay.

This makes me want to do some more shibori

So thank you Linda, for inspiring me. My cards arrived yesterday (one day after ordering, gotta love Amazon) and I'm off to "play" some more.

I am linking up with Off the Wall Friday.