Halloween Book

The above images are from a Halloween Book that I participated in. Each artist made a 4x7 page for everyone and they were bound together. The first photo is of the cover. It is really well done. The wording on the cover says:

You can tell yourself it's only a story.
You can tell yourself things like this don't really happen..
You can tell yourself you've nothing to fear
But you know better..
Don't you?

It is full of wonderful creepy-crawly pages. The second photo is the page I contributed. The back of the page has Day of the Dead fabric on it that I got at one of the local Atlanta quilt shops http://www.intownquilters.com/. They have a wonderful selection of unusual quilting fabrics - lots of batiks and bright fabrics.

Black and White Fatbook

Here are some of my black and white ATCs for the Black and White ATC Fatbook swap for the Fatbooks Yahoo site. This book is a little different from the others I have participated in because of the size. Usually our pages are 4x4 but this one is ATC sized or 2 1/2 by 3 1/2. It is a lot different working in the smaller size. We each made 40 pages. Making one original and then making good copies is acceptable for this swap but I made originals this time. The cards on the front are from the dollar store - I just used the spades and clubs so have lots of red cards left. I printed vellum crowns and then stamped a face on each card. The background is printed black and white paper with words on it.

Here is the link to the yahoo group if you are interested in it http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Fatbooks/.

Jacket and Flannel Quilt

I have been busy making a quilt and jacket for the local quilt shop - Tiny Stitches http://tinystitches.com/. The above is from a pattern by my sister. Her website is http://twowackywomen.com/. The name of the pattern is Wacky Devine Nine and it is a "stack and slash" type of quilt. The center of the quilt is made from 9 fat quarters that are made into nine 9-patches. The quilt is made from flannel and is backed with the same flannel that is the inner border. I quilted it with an overall feather swirl that worked well with the flannel.

We had been talking about making a neutral colored quilt for quite a while and this is the result. I quilted it yesterday and then went to my weekly quilt guild sew-in today and finished the hand work on the binding.

Right before the quilt, I made this jacket, also for Tiny Stitches. We had several colors of chenille - this one is bright pink. I used two different coordinating fabrics for the lining. A larger floral is used for the body of the jacket and I quilted it from the lining side. I wound size 8 perle cotton on the bobbin and then quilted around the floral pattern on the fabric using 4 differenct colors. This was done around the front and back of the jacket, about 4 inches from the bottom. The quilting is approximately 10-12 inches high.

The sleeves are lined with the coordinating print in a much smaller scale. It has raw edges that I clipped every 1/4 inch. After it was completed, I washed and dryed it, creating an enormous amount of lint. I covered a large button with the small scale fabric to complete the jacket.

Calendar Round Robin

I belong to a monthly calendar round robin from the ClothPaperStudio yahoo group. We started at the beginning of the year and send the calendars to the next person on the 15th. Each artist supplied the calendar and theme that they wanted us to use.

Some used commerical calendars and some created ones on their computers. Each month is a surprise and a challenge. The above is my conribution to Cassie's calendar. Hers measured about 8x11 and was a monthly calendar with one spread for each of use to work on.

I created mine on my computer using standard-sized card stock. I can't wait to see what others have done to it when it comes home in December

Alphabetica Fatbook

A few months ago I found the Fatbooks group on Yahoo and have been hooked ever since. I love these little books. This one was based on the book Alphabetica by Lynne Perrella where she has wonderful examples of alphabet pages.

The ony rule for the pages (besides having them at the standard 4x4 inch size) was that you needed to include a stencil of the letter you chose on the page. I have a book of quilt wallpaper and used that as a basis for my page. I colleged the various papers on to a page, then copied it in color for the front and after adding my contact information, I copied it in black and white for the back. After printing, trimming and glueing, I had the 4x4 two sided pages. I then stenciled the letter Q for Quilts on the front of each page using my favorite color - lime greeen. Since I can't seem to stop, I then got out my swirl stamp and stamped a couple of swirls on each pages. That was probably enough but I had a bunch of small tags with Q on them so I punched a whole in the page and attached one to each page using some fun fibers.

Finally I decided they were done and mailed them off to the hostess. The book I got back was wonderful. The photos above are of the cover and then my pages. You can see the Q tag in the picture. This is so much fun.

We had a great time at our FiberArtBee today. We meet at the local Fiber Art store - Fiber on a Whim in Sandy Springs, GA. They have a great basement that we rent each month. This month we played with Setacolor and bleeding tissue paper. The above are the results I got today. Now that I understand more about it, I want to try to do more. It was a lot of fun playing but since we didn't really understand the process, some of the results were not exactly what we had hoped for.

It was a very hot day and by putting our fabric out in the parking lot in the sun, it only took about 20 minutes to dry. Putting it directly on the asphalt created more texture.

Sewing Deco and Rolodex Cards

I have had computer problems so haven't posted in a long time. My old computer completely died, taking everything with it and of course I had not backed it up recently. I had to get a new computer and finally decided on a laptop instead of the desktop I had. I am really loving the fact that I can move around the house with the laptop.

Lots has happened since my last post but I decided to start with a deco from my divadecoswappers group. I started it and the other wonderful artists added to it. The pictures posted backwards so the cover is on the bottom and the pages are in reverse order. Hopefully next time I will be able to get the posted correctly. I did the cover and the first spread - the green one. I love this little book.

This picture is from the same group but is the May rolodex swap. There are usually about 8 people who partipate each month and the theme changes month to month. This month was self-portraits. Mine is in the top left corner - the picture was taken when I was about two years old.

This swap is really fun. I bought an old rolodex from eBay and love filling it up with these little art treasures. So far we have done the self-portraits, March Madness and April Showers. The theme this month is June is busting out all over.