Creative November 2009

I have enjoyed AEDM so much and I want to visually share all that I accomplished this month. I know I will sign up for Creative Every Day so I can keep the momentum going. Thanks to all my fellow artists participating in Art Every Day Month and other friends and family who have stopped by with a kind word of support. Special thanks to Sam for joining in on the fun :-) Enjoy the pictures... and I'll post again soon.

It worked!

I don't have much to say, except it worked!! The wool inside the lava chamber glows and bubbles and boils. Keep in mind this little quilt is about 3 feet high. Cool, eh?

Now I must put this project aside and work on another more pressing deadline... Christmas! Keep you posted :-)

Bubble and Boil

AEDM. What a great activity Art Every Day Month has turned out to be for me. I have been working hard on my projects. Being able to share my little accomplishments every day has enabled me to get a lot of work done. I have only posted half of the days of November, but I have worked every day on creativity and definitely been more focused on staying on art task than ever before. Thanks for the inspiration Leah!!

Today I'm working with lava :-) I've got the volcano cone appliqued to my quilt base and I'm trying to liven up my wool lava a bit. This will probably involve some beads or other embelishment at a later date, but I am starting with the wool.

I have also been looking over a pile of little sunflower quilts that I would like to finish and get up for sale on Etsy. So little time... 

Where has my time gone the last few days? To good causes in our area and afar. I volunteer a lot of my graphic design services, and every now and then... everything comes at once. Ads, posters, tickets, etc. Most of this will be finished today, then I can get back to the sunflower fields and lava beds :-)

Layer by Layer

As quilts do, this project is coming together a bit at a time. I have a tendency to layer with other parphenalia, such as fabric, beads, and in this case stones.



The beauty of these beads is that they are made of real stones. I will list them when I am finished. There is real pumice shaped into round beads! I am very excited to find them and even more to incorporate them into a quilt about earth's layers. These stone beads won't go on until the fabric has been quilted... it is really difficult to machine quilt over stones (or beads), and of course this knowledge has come hard-earned as usual :-)

Underground

It is a beautiful winter day here. I was intrigued by finding this in our yard...






















So Rosie and I decided to follow the tracks. During winter, the sun hovers low on the horizon. This nicely highlighted all the trees and wild rose bushes in the forest. Although we never did find any deer, we did see these...

Of course, the purpose of this blog for November is to participate and record my creativity... Art Every Day Month! I did spend some time in my studio after our walk and constructed another part of a quilt that might be part of the FAN GeoPhysical Exhibition at Quilt Canada in May. This part is the underground layers... the wine needlefelting will be incorporated into this eventually.

Hope you all have a restful Saturday!

Inchies are Donesies

Well, I'm glad I tackled the Inchies early rather than waiting until the deadline! They are done and I am happy with them. I can send them off to their new home later today or tomorrow. I took them outside and hung them from my Linden tree in the sunshine for you to peruse.

The idea to use the inchies this way comes from a book by Nadine Ruggles. A link to her book is here...

This is the mess that created the Inchies... my mother will recognize this and how my bedroom used to look like this (and still does on occasion) :-)

Anyway, all cleaned up now and beginning on today's creativity. On with the wine project!

Sleigh Bells Ring...

A dusting of snow made the forest near our house a winter gallery of wonders. My quilting pal, Rosie, and I ventured out with camera in hand to have a closer look at all the details. Here are a couple of things that we found...

The snow had settled gentle frosty outlines on everything in sight. For a change, there was no prairie wind and the snowflakes had been allowed to gently float and land on whatever was nearby... even on tiny lichen on a poplar tree.

Of course, I wouldn't have enjoyed any of this if it wasn't for Rosie romping and investigating :-)

Back in the house, I found my other trusty quilting pal helping with the needlefelting.

And finally, the creativity for the day... a little sunflower quilt for a friend. A surprise!

Tomorrow it is back to the Inchies...

Inch Worm, Inch Worm

Today I worked on Inchies as part of my Art Every Day Month creativity. I must say that I have a lot of new found respect for anyone who can make an Inchie.

I cannot!

Well, I can cut and quilt an inchie, but I cannot make the edges look nice, despite watching tutorials on youtube, reading up on inchie edging techniques and asking my expert sewing friend, Elaine, for help. So this will likely be my only adventure down the Inchie path.

Why am I torturing myself so??? Because I thought they looked easy and I joined the Inchie Christmas swap (icon to the right... scroll down a bit). Silly me. Look before I leap...

Of Easy Wind and Downy Flake

I have always been fascinated by snowflakes. From catching them on my tongue as a child, to capturing winter scenes in a snowfall as an adult... snowflakes have been a big part of the wonder of winter. My favourite poem of all time is Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by poet Robert Frost.

Here is this week's snowflake quilt all finished. I added a simple border and even simpler quilting. I did not want to take away from the snowflake. The quilt is bound with black Grosgrain ribbon that adds a nice texture to the outside edges.



It is for sale on Etsy if anyone has a notion to live with it :-)

Friday Night and a Bottle of Wine

I have been working on art every day, but not much to show for it. I guess I could scan all my little doodles, but that takes time away from art!

Today I have a mess to share :-)! I am working on a quilt project that involves a bottle of wine... not drinking it, but portraying it. I've started with wool, my favourite medium of late. I will be working on this part for a couple of days I think. It will be incorporated into a section of other material and combined into one large wall-hanging.

I'll probably just keep sharing messes until the end of Art Every Day Month, but for me, that is the best part of art!

Sheepish Snowflakes

Today I am posting the next step in a mini-work in progress for art every day month. The background is blue wool roving, and now I have added a snowflake of white wool, as well as ivory seed beads and rhinstones. It is nothing like I imagined... as usual, but I am happy with it. I think it will become a small wall-hanging over the next few days. I'll share as I progress.

I am segueing to a new project now as a deadline fast approaches. I will share the progress each day as I work, and with luck and some hard work, I might have it almost finished by the end of November! Tune in tomorrow...

Wooly Snowflakes

Today's art of the day is the beginning of a small project. I made the background this morning...



Tomorrow's art of the day will likely be to add a snowflake. The picture in my imagination is quite wonderful... but we will have to wait and see the final results in real life :-).

The background above has been done with wool roving and a hand needle-felter. I love wool!

Northern Lights

Art Every Day Month. Here is my second art day. I decided to just have fun with my pencil crayons. I'll probably do that a lot this month. Every doodle or drawing or sketch I make, I keep. Then when I need ideas I always have something to fall back on... or move forward with. I'm sure many artists do this. I've even gotten inpsiration from my grade ten sketch book... and yes that was a long time ago!!!

PS Those messy black blobs are trees...

Art Every Day - November 3rd

I am behind already! Art Every Day Month started on the 1st of November.

Here is a project I worked on today. It was half done already and I took an hour or so and finished it. A sense of accomplishment is mine this evening.





















This little quilt is 4.5" square.