My Creative Space is Home

I am SO excited to show all of you in blogland my first ever art quilt. And it's perfect that I finished it this afternoon just in time for My Creative Space. Pieces of it have been all over my creative space all week.

A week ago my friend Kate featured her entry in the Breaking Traditions Art Quilt Exhibit on her facebook page. Breaking Traditions hosts an art quilt exhibit each year at the American Sewing Expo in Novi, Michigan. Although the art quilt exhibit occurs each year I'd never heard of it. Yippee for Kate!

A quick aside about Kate: she's an amazing artist, skilled at all things sewingish, super sweet, always thoughtful and she has this slightly sarcastic, fairly self-centred but always witty monkey named Nigel who has his own blog. Last year Kate gave me the heads up about an opportunity to exhibit a few of my sock softies at American Sewing Expo.

The instructions for the exhibit are to make an art quilt measuring 12 inches square which embodies the theme "home." My piece is called "Side to Side", referring to the two sides of Michigan where we have lived over the past 16 plus years.

Here is how I did it:
1) Traced my own designs onto white fabric with crayons. I colored them, ironed off the excess and put them in the dryer on high for 15 minutes. I wanted to make sure nothing was smudging.
2) I added the embroidered details using stem, split, satin stitch and french knots.
3) The layers of the top were appliqued. Next time I will fuse them before I stitch them. I had a little bit of shifting that made a few less than perfectly flat places.
4) I machine quilted the fabrics and then added the binding trim.

I made lots of rookie mistakes, learned heaps while working on it but I'm all aglow now in "Look What I Did" joy. And for more joy hop over the see more My Creative Spaces.

Celebrate Summer

My new Summer Time Celebration banner is so cute it could not be captured digitally until the National Science Folks created a higher cute intensity camera. Really. I haven't just been goofing off. Cause I mean it's super cute.

Featuring the Bar-B-Cute designs of Wild Olive.

Got to run write a thank you note to those nice scientific people....yep. Don't forget that tomorrow is My Creative Space. Will mine be clean or messy....tune in tomorrow to find out.

I'm Still Here

I've been working on a lot of things lately. Really, I have. I know that I don't have to justify myself to you blog readers. It would be okay if I hadn't been working on a lot of things. But then I would have been playing so I could blog about that--my weekend trip to the Riviera, the week in the Catskills, punching cows out in Wyoming--maybe just waving at them since I'm a non-violent sort of gal. But, no: I have been working. (Okay, Huckleberry and I did go for a Turtle Sundae on Sunday but otherwise I've been working.)

I just don't have anything finished which I can show you. I'm making my first ever art quilt and it's a tonne of work. (Tonne is like ton only even heavier.) I had no idea. I'm finished with my wonderful camping banner, pattern by WildOlive, but haven't made time to take a picture of it. I'm working on a secret project for the Embroidery Exhibit which I cannot show you on penalty of death...or at least disqualification. I added two rows to my embroidered quilt but I haven't taken it to the quilter yet. I've created two new embroidery designs but want to stitch them up before I show you.

Oh and I'm getting ready for a visit from my parents, trying to keep my deaf daughter moving forward with her reading, trying to get my stubborn daughter to work a bit on math, trying to get applications completed: the two oldest girls are going, if I ever finish the paperwork, to afternoon classes at a Christian school next fall.

And I'm searching for a way to keep the house neater...along with peace in the Middle East and the Holy Grail. Of course, in cleaning up around here I just might find the Holy Grail. And, if it were neater, I could more easily take pictures of the finished projects without using creative framing to make sure no junkie backgrounds show. Okay, it's onward and upward.....

Bear with me---tutorial

Continuing where we left off yesterday...embroider your pattern as you see fit. I used a split stitch to outline my bear. For the nose I used a fun, funky stitch--I think it's called woven spider's wheel. Embroider both the front and back patterns.

Placing right sides together, pin. I sew the seam around the outside of the pattern and then trim back the fabric. Be sure to leave a gap where you can turn your sewing back rightside out. Stuff. Sew the hole closed. Play.

Simple, eh? And I'm sure you could figure it out yourself without any help from me but I had fun working through it. I hope it was fun for you too.