Today

I  love what I do.  I love my work.  Looking at inventory after the past weekend, I decided I needed to dye a few more scarves and make a few more small bags.  I am almost out of the ArtFul cloth zippered bags.  And so this a.m. finds me printing cloth.  I have 11 ready to stitch!

Killing time waiting for them to dry (actually, I’m taking a break), I was looking at my favorite pages on Facebook and came across something everyone might be interested in. Linda Matthews has gathered 250 free handbag and tote pattern links from across the web all on one page.  There are so many cute bags on there!  Now I want to make some just for fun.  I have added the link permanently to my sidebar under her name, but here it is too. Free patterns for purses and bags.

January This ‘N That

Here it is January 5th of the new year and I’m just now blogging.  Been sick all through the holidays, tired and still had to do all the festivities stuff.  Now I’m just tired!  I am better though and thankful for that.

In my last blog post I said I would share a picture of a pattern that caught my eye.  I was too busy to do art during the holidays, but it’s interesting how my attention was taken by a pattern made by the dipped pretzels on the wax paper!  I may use this for something. That’s a plaid dishtowel laying beneath it so that I could photograph the pattern. I wonder what India ink would do?  Would it go around the outlines of the patterns?  I may have to try that tomorrow.

Today I “autographed” a couple of my art pieces in stitch.  I recently heard a horror story about someone being denied their art because their name wasn’t stitched on it….I am not going to have that happen to me!  I am taking these two quilts to a photographer’s studio to be photographed next week and wanted to get my name on them before that. I am considering entering these in an exhibit and want to get some really good pictures as I don’t think mine are that great.

And now my playtime event…a piece of screened cloth from a long time ago with lots of white spaces in it because I used torn paper…I decided to paint those white areas and then maybe I can finally do something with it.  This also gave me ideas for doing a larger piece of cloth.  I ‘m really loving the colors, but not sure where this goes from here.  When I screened it, I used screenprinting inks which made the cloth kind of stiff.  The inks are very thick.  I came back in with fabric paints and liquid acrylics to paint the white areas.

Well, I guess it will sit again until I get an urge to do something with it.  I am really wanting to do some free form piecing….maybe on the retreat I’m going to later this month….

More This ‘N That…

Last week I was playing around with some ideas for new art. I painted some construction fence designs to have cloth to use. I actually found that painting the cloth with fabric paints was rather therapeutic. I enjoyed doing it, although I don’t know if I would have the patience to do all my work this way. Painting a stenciled design is slow going at best. Here is the progression of the cloth.

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Then I wrote quotes about fences on it.

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I also started some new small pieces for the art fair coming up in December.  Free form piecing was the technique of choice and using scraps of fabric in the same color scheme made sense.  I could sit and do free form piecing all day long. I used leftover fabrics from a larger piece I did earlier in the year for a show. Funny how I pieced with the same colors I painted…

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Now, to layer and stitch.  I just laid the mats on them to see what they looked like.

This week I don’t think I’m being nearly as productive, but I do have a couple of rag quilts to work on for a girl from my church.  She wants them for Christmas presents, so I got started cutting all the squares and batting for those yesterday.  Today I am making a flopped recipe for gingerbread squares.  Ah, life.  Tomorrow I am meeting up with a good friend to celebrate her birthday.