Fun new pens

Testing out one of the Christmas gifts I got from Eric, Tsukineko Fabrico Markers.

The Tree Project by Wanda Shelton, part 3

Now that I actually marked the cutting lines, I had to remove leaves because I put some too close to the cutting lines.  Yeah-it would have been smart to mark those earlier!
Now to put the upper 2 sections and the lower right section in their own zip bags, with my name and some extra leaves; and then get a piece of fabric the same size as the whole thing and pin my lower left section to it and wait for the trade at the MCQ meeting.
All these days off from work and this is all I've accomplished so far. :-(

Exploding under pressure

So much has been going on with the Holiday Season that I haven't had time to post.  I've been busy, and yet my first thought to post is this lesson Isaac experienced...forgetting an unopened can of pop in your car when it's frozen outside.  If you can see it, both the top and bottom of the can are pushed out, and the pop came out liquid all over the seat of his car and froze, some as if frozen while suspended in air.

Reduce, reuse, recycle

So many times I go to the grocery store and forget to bring my cloth grocery bags.

  So when I accumulate some of the plastic bags instead of putting them in those recycle receptacles at the grocery stores, I take them to the cash register clerks at Goodwill.  They really appreciate them!

Goodwill Easter Seals Retail Stores
How's the saying go?  Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.

Tea Cup and Coffee Mug Pin Cushions

It is so relaxing to be busy with a fun project and listen to an audiobook.  These little pincushions in small vessels I bought at Goodwill (most for .49 cents) and using a smidge of that huge stockpile of felted wool I have, were perfect for hiding away in my sewing room while the temperatures went from 60 to 20 in one afternoon.

And listening to Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn is so suspensful that I don't want to stop!

PostmarkdArt Round 16

Using the branch and leaf pattern I used for The Tree Project, I made my postcards.  I've never been so early getting my cards done for a trade and I am so pleased!

 Scanning them with the white scanner top didn't show up the white fuzzy fiber I used on the edging.

I'll mail them tonight after Cave Women.

The Tree Project by Wanda Shelton, Step 2

Those last few leaves clinging to the tree, trying not to succumb to the cold wind.

I stopped working on it because I don't have the pattern at the moment and I realized I went a little gung-ho on the leaves without respecting the guidelines.  When I get the pattern back I'll adjust them.

The colors in photographs never seem to be true.

The Tree Project Pattern by Wanda Shelton

At Minnesota Contemporary Quilters Wanda Shelton came forward with the Tree Project where all who sign up will receive the tree pattern, make the tree art quilt front and then it will be cut into 4 quarters (on the fold lines of the pattern) and the pieces exchanged and then put back together and completed.  You keep 1/4 of your own, but you will have the 3 other quarters replaced by the other quilters who also completed their tops.

I'm inspired by 2 ideas. One being that Sharon Englund has not only already started hers, but she's going to sew on individual 2-sided leaves and I like that idea.  And the 2nd inspiration is just looking out my window at the lovely bright yellow maple with the blue sky behind.
Since many of the leaves on my beautiful maple have already fallen, I will have some of the branches showing through.  I've done a rough sketch of some arty branches.  They remind me of thorns!

UFY...Un Finished Yo-yo

 I think it's pretty safe to say I've been working on these yo-yos for 20 years.  Because that would be about the time DuAnn Wright taught a short class at the Quilt Crossing (Boise, Idaho) that I took on making the yo-yo's to string together for a tree garland.  I've been working on these for so long that some of them were sewn by quilt buddies in the Friday Nooners group in Idaho.  Many by Lois Bell.



In the back shows part of the arm rest sewing caddy made by Wilma Smith (Idaho) that I always use for my yo-yos. 

I made one 25' garland years ago and gave it to my Aunt Joan.  I guesstimate that I have at least 1,500 pre-cut circles left to sew.  So if I sewed 10 per day it would take me half a year to finish but 10 per day is actually a tall order.  I think the finish date will be at least 3 years from now, but don't hold your breath.

Still across the generations

My Grandmother and Grandfather, Ida and Manne Svedberg, died decades ago.  The memories of driving to Grand Forks ND and spending time there seem to be crisp as if it just occurred.  Eric, my brother, says every time you recall a memory you recreate it and it might not be 100 % accurate anymore but it now becomes the new memory and any fact changes are indistinguishable to you from the original memory. 

The drive to Grandma and Grandpa's for Christmas has one over-all memory for me.  On Christmas Eve Dad would have to work during the day so we couldn't leave until evening.  It was always a rush to finally leave.  Eric and I were always put in the car, buckled up, while it was running so it would warm up.  Mom and Dad always had to go back in for something they 'forgot and to lock up'.  What they 'forgot' was having a minute with Eric and I buckled in the car so they make sure Santa could get down the chimney...

Dad would find a radio station that played constant Christmas music.  I remember feeling mostly occupied at the start of the drive, but after we passed Fargo/Moorhead area I knew we were half way there and I would soon be with my cousins. 

I remember leaning against the car door and watching the dry snow swirling on the highway illuminated by the car headlights.  And the flat snow-covered landscape would be illuminated by the moon. 

Some times it snowed and looking out the windshield that pattern of streaks of snowflakes in the headlights was mesmerizing, hypnotizing.  One year we drove up in the Blue Datsun B210 and it was so cold out that during the 5 hour drive it never warmed up in the car.  Eric and I were bundled with blankets in the back seat.

All the time the Christmas music flowed from the radio and Mom and Dad would open the thermos of coffee and I would complain that the smell of coffee stunk so bad.  Sometimes we would stop at a restaurant so Mom and Dad could buy a refill on their thermos.  That or a bathroom break were the only stops. 

Back then you had to go to a restaurant for your coffee because gas stations only sold gasoline, oil, and if you were lucky a rack of candy bars that you had to squeeze a little to know if they were so old they were rock hard.  If it had a mechanics bay or two it would have all sorts of mufflers hanging from the ceiling and an assortment of belts on the walls.  It was later the gasoline industry discovered the profitability of including a self serve restaurant offering easily heatable food, hot dogs rolling on heaters for 25 hours, a full case of doughnuts and premium ready-made coffee.  Often there is a token brown spotted banana and a bruised apple or two to show that they do care about a vegetarian or your cholesterol.  I don't know which, but I imagine they're killing one bird with two fruits.

Now when I smell coffee I like it, I think of the drives up to Grandma and Grandpas for Christmas.  Of coming over a rise in the landscape and suddenly see a horizontal line of twinkling lights that was Grand Forks.

This wall hanging, partially completed by Grandma Ida, is now completed by me.

 The dowel and gold trim were missing.  I tried to get more information about the pattern, Bucilla Kit No. 48635 'JEWELED PANEL' 'holiday scenes', specifically the year it was produced.  Searches on the internet only came up with a few EBay sales.  Bucilla is now owned by Plaid. 

The pattern is old enough that a copyright year is not listed on it.  The contact information actually says "Please direct any correspondence to: Bucilla, 30-20 Thomson Avenue, Long Island City, NY 11101"

That address is now a school.

In a reply from Plaid they said they did not have any of the records from Bucilla and that Bucilla had not been at that address "for many, many years".

I imagine the person who answered my email was probably born in the 80's and that indeed it was many, many years ago; you know, before the internet, which is akin to when man discovered fire and the wheel was invented. 

To me the 80's are just a blink ago. 

I'm still pluggin' away...

Geez, it's been a long time since I blogged!  It's been a busy summer.  And the heat and humidity just suck the life out of me.  During one of the heatwaves the temperatures finally dropped.  I didn't realize how cooped up I felt until I went for a walk and actually thought I'd been given freedom from jail!  I guess it's the same as cabin fever in the winter.

I've finished my postcards for Round 15 of Postmark'dArt.  I signed up for a 'no theme' hoping I would find a theme that would invigorate me.  I hadn't been in the sewing room for a while and followed my own advice of 'Just get in there.'  It doesn't matter if you sit and stare at the walls, just get in that studio.  Maybe tidy up a bit, put a few things here and another thing there, finding a 'I've been looking for that' type of thing and before you know it you're picking up something you want to do something with. 

I just decided to start pulling some fabric and get going on the postcards.  At first I tried not to look at a color theme, but eventually I couldn't help myself.  I picked a bit from my big bowl of cheap poly threads and experimented.  It would have been really easy to just cut the plate into straight rectangles but I'm just a lopsided kind of girl...  The top two are only straight because I decided I couldn't use that big blue twist of yarns and threads and there wasn't enough room to cut them crooked.

And I got a binding done.  The request was to match the binding to the 1/2" inner border.

It looks cool!

Cup Cozy and Pin Ring

For many years now I haven't bought any patterns.  I just follow my own path. 

At the MQ Quilt Show and Conference last week this pattern caught my eye...who doesn't have extra coffee mugs laying around?

And I don't even drink coffee!

The pattern is called Sewing Cup Cozy by Country Fabrics and Quilting in Brainerd MN.

It doesn't take much fabric, it's quick to make and uses some pretty buttons. Next time I'm going to stack a few buttons and 'make a new button'. 

It does require a skinny hair binder, which I don't have.  I even tried using some of that shiny elastic cording but it shreds apart easily.

But this week Rainbow Grocery Store has their hair accessories B1G1 and they have hair binders that are about 1" across and in over 20 colors.  Poifect!

Inside the cup cozy with the pins sticking out of it is a finger pin cushion that Barb Collins made at Wapo and gave to a few of us.  She said it's in a fun book called "100 Pretty Little Things".  It fits right on your finger and it's soft.

Foshay Tower

For Postmark'dArt trade themed "Cityscape" I want to do something with the Foshay Tower, built in 1929 and back then was the tallest building in the Mid-west.

In the early 60's when my Mom moved "to the Cities" (as said by the people who live in Minnesota but don't live in the cities) she said it was still the tallest building, and it was until the IDS tower was built in 1972. Today it's crowded in by taller buildings.

I thought I could find a picture of a postcard of the Foshay from the 1930's and print it on the fabric and then an identical picture from now on a sheer and over lay it.  I've run into stumbling blocks every since that thought!
First I found all sorts of pictures online. Printed them out. Sorted them by copyrighted and no-identification copyright. I'm not too worried about the copyright of a 70 year old postcard but of the copyright of the person who put it on the web (if you ask they often give permission).
Most angles were from high up. And although I know I'm not too shy to go into buildings asking if I can obtain a shot, I knew an angle from the ground would be easiest for me to figure out. The 'ugliest' postcard picture of the lot was from the ground and from 1971. I found 2 buildings in it that are still existing. I bet that only about 10% of the buildings from the 30's still exist today. Mpls and St Paul are called the Twin Cities, but St Paul has retained her historic buildings and Mpls has torn hers down.

So a couple weeks ago, while still having the dream of obtaining my self-proclaimed May 31 deadline, I went downtown to at least obtain the 'ugly' postcard picture.  I brought the paper copy of the picture I had printed and went to see what I could do.

After seeing I was at the exact right spot but I wasn't going to get the same shot because of my camera lens (see how the building above is leaning?), I tore away the sky so I could hold the image up and see how off it was...I'm sure people thought I was nuts standing on the corner concentrating intensely on tearing a piece of paper.

So I was excited after this, not having a complete plan, but at least having some 'parts' to put together.
I bought the postcard image online.
I printed the postcard image on fabric and then fused that to the peltex. I drew all the lines of the buildings on and then stitched over the outlines of the buildings. Because I drew it on, each one is a little different.

In the original postcard there are several other things that are the same.  While standing there taking photos a bus drove by in the same place as the bus in the picture.  The dark brown lamp posts are the same even though the light fixtures changed.  At first I was disappointed that the one way sign was gone, because it still is a one way street.  But then I saw the sign sitting on the ground against the traffic signal lamp pole.  It is beat up but I don't think it's 40 years old.

It was a fun process and I want to do the same for some other structures in downtown Minneapolis, but on a larger scale.
Maybe some day!

From the observation deck in 2006:  Isaac

"Peace" is a wise word.

Finally I get to post something!  "My 'peace' piece."

 I've been working on different projects every evening and all weekends, but everything takes so long to complete.  So: Hurray!

It's not like this has been some last minute challenge; I've known about the Minnesota Contemporary Quilters "Words of Wisdom" Challenge since last summer.  One of the hardest parts for me is coming up with my plan.  What inspires me?  I think the word Peace is a wise word.  Not too many of us can figure it out, and spend our whole lives not figuring it out.  It didn't take me long to know how I wanted to do it and since the entry form was due back in April, it was at that time that I had to decide the size. 

I knew I wanted blocks of grey for the background.  I printed the 5 letters in outline on paper for a pattern...I can't remember what font size this was but they are about 6 inches tall. 

Often at MCQ meetings Mimi Holmes brings handwork to do.  She sits there cheerfully putting stitches on her surface using embroidery floss.  She uses all sorts of colors and gets a fabulous effect.

So that is how I was inspired to get my word on my piece.  You can see in the picture above that the fabric in the middle of the photo is grey with black and white stitches, yet the grey looks like a darker shade behind the black stitches than it does behind the white stitches.  Optical illusion!

Peace can mean different things to different people but to me the quote "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" stirs deep in me.

Bullying has to stop.  If we can't teach kids to stop bullying how can we expect them to know how to deal with it when they are adults?  Little bullies turn into big bullies.  And intimidated kids turn into intimidated adults. 

An easy solution is to teach kids to all come to defend another child when they are being bullied.  Safety in numbers and the power of the people!  Evil cannot triumph when good men do something!

And then there is some poor, mentally unstable kid who is so unsatisfied with his life that he already gets satisfaction from hurting others.  I don't believe that is easily solved but it can be solved.

To me "Peace" is black and white.  You're either for it or you're against it.  There is no thin grey line.

The entire grey background of my piece is only an optical illusion.  We've accepted that there are all these "grey areas".  If anything is grey to me, it is the millions of solutions that are possible.  For peace the only thing that matters is black and white, and that forever changes the illusion of the grey areas. 

More bindings...

Minky is hard to see where your stitches go!

Postcards completed and starting

Above is 5 of the 7 van Gogh cards I mailed.  The top one is my favorite, and it is also the most literal interpretation of the painting.

Below is the new postcard project.  The theme is Cityscapes and I'm working on the Foshay Tower.

Mom said when she moved to Minneapolis the Foshay Tower was the tallest building in Minneapolis.  As you can see, that's no longer the case.  I think I'd like to find out just exactly how close that building is to the Foshay Tower.

An old photograph of the Foshay Tower.  

My brother teaching his son carpentry.

Vincent van Gogh Les Alyscamps

In the van Gogh theme PostmarkdArt trade I am finally finished stitching my cards.  Two are waiting for the liquid stiffener on the back to dry.  All cards were due April 30.  Note to self: "Next trading round do not sign up for 4 trades, no matter how fun they could be".

 All of the cards look different.  Some have the sky put on, but that didn't give me the effect I wanted.

I made them with counted cross stitch cloth (aida cloth) that was laying around and embroidery floss.
20 years ago I loved doing little cross stitch things, and now...well, these cards kinda say what I feel about cross stitching today!
I painted the cloth first.  I started out using some painters markers, which worked excellent, not changing the hand of the cloth, but they stink to high heaven.
Then I changed to acrylic paint, watered down.  It didn't work well, but I didn't want to poison myself with the other pens.  The main problem was the paint would clog up the holes in the weave.  I had to switch from a rounded point needle to a sharp point needle and poke my way through paint some times.
Then I just started stitching.
I also started out by marking the 4" x 6" size on it and started stitching with 6 strands of embroidery floss.
[That reminds me of a quilt show I went to years ago in Idaho, someone had tied their quilt with real dental floss!]
Eventually I wanted a stitch going around it and when I started doing the typical needlepoint stitch I immedately had some type of PTSD from whatever project I last cross stitched.  It's just no fun to stitch in an orderly fashion!
I made a few cards where I didn't do that outer stitch, I just stitched the picture up to my 4 x 6 lines.
After stretching them and putting the liquid stiffener on them I decided I didn't like it.  I stretched them in a quilting hoop so that when I put the stiffener on them  it would dry straight, but they went crooked anyhow.
So the last one I again put a needlepoint stitch around the edge and it didn't feel as painful as the other times.  I guess I got used to it.
The picture below is the back of one of the cards.  I didn't want a lot of thread on the back, so every time I stitched down into the fabric, when I came back to the front I only moved one hole over.  The exception is the trees and all their branches, I had to make a mess.

There's also those red dots all over.  Those are not stitches!  They were preprinted on the fabric for whatever the kit was that this fabric came in.  You can also see where some of the yellow paint seeped to the back in blotches.  All the aida cloth came from other cross stitch kits so that can be considered recycling, and the embroidery floss would have been the same, but making all the van Gogh cards I ran out of yellows.  So some of the yellow is newly purchased. 
All in all, I would make these again.  Each one takes hours but I love the effect.

My van Gogh cards are driving me insane...

Remove Google Chrome!

It worked!  I removed Google Chrome and now I can post.
I guess they'll have to make some updates before I get to look at that fabulous site again.
http://www.googleartproject.com/
Which is 30,000 pieces of art from museums all over the world, photographed with such clarity that you can zoom in and see the cracks in the paint!
It's beautiful.
In the mean time, I'm still working on postcards.
This is one of my cards in the No Theme catagory.  It's "Stamps go round the world".  I've always loved stamps and I can envision that they will soon be extinct.  I mailed them last Saturday.

And I continue to work on my van Gogh theme using Les Alyscamps for my inspiration.

I don't know if the rest of the conversation was any good, but at Target I heard one sentence of it between 2 young guys:
"You couldn't do anything to me, ever, that would get me to use the wrong deodorant".

Let's see if I can post now!

I've had a problem being able to sign on to my blog to post. I just get a white screen.
I just went searching online to see if others had this problem and what was done to fix it.
The initial answers were to find out if you're using ie, firefox, etc.  And they recommended to download the new Google Chrome.
But now it came to me, because I recently downloaded Chrome so I could see this awesome site: www.googleartproject.com
And I've had the problems since then.
So I opened firefox and I couldn't directly get to this point, but I eventually got here.
So this is a test.

I have been working on my postcards every evening.

For the Postmark'dArt trade for Van Gogh, I feel most intrigued by his style of paint stroke; impasto.

I wanted to interpret this with embroidery floss, 36 or 72 strands together to help create the feeling of impasto.

 It's really more of a study, since I haven't gotten down to one type yet.

He painted lots of fields, but the one above isn't mailable.

 I really wanted to do something with starry night, but it's not working for me.  Partially because there isn't enough shades/colors in embroidery floss, and partially because I only wanted to do a section but this just looks like a mastectomy.  When I was starting this one I had been looking at the piece at http://www.googleartproject.com/ and was amazed to see that he didn't paint the entire canvas, he left spots of the canvas unpainted when it contributed to the overall look.  At first I was trying to replicate that, but the more I futzed with it, the worse it looked.

 I also love Les Alyscamps.  The trees full of fall color appear to be on fire in his painting.  So I was inspired to do the one above.  But when I was done I did the one below.  Unfortunately all I see in the one below is a big blue tornado.  Or a river falling over a dam.  The blue takes over the yellow, believe it or not.  Plus I shouldn't have used the stitch going vertical.

I put stiffener on the backs of all of these, so they'd hold up in the mail.

I'll just keep working on them, but in the end I'll probably just make more of the yellow one, with one row of trees.  But can I ever just do the simple thing?  I wish!  There's lessons learned in each one.

Murphy's Law

When I was making my Steam Punk postcards for the trade at http://www.postmarkdart.com/ I spent a lot of time searching for the parts, trinkets, images, etc, that I wanted to use.
I went to thrift stores looking for medical books about the heart to take apart so I could use the pages,  I looked for gadgets that I could take apart...and some cheesy quilting related item for a gift exchange with Cave Women.
The results weren't very good.  But I had fun looking at everything and found some other things I didn't want to live without.  Like a brand new, still sealed, set of paint pens.

Last week I stopped at one of the same thrift stores and I found a medical book exclusively about the heart with lots of images, wind-up clocks to take apart for parts and a cheesy little metal sewing machine that was a pencil sharpener.

Apparently God and the universe heard my wishes but they had more important things to do and I was near the bottom of the list.  Which, of course, is right where those types of wishes should be.

Trusting or letting go.

My steampunk cards in the PostmarkdArt trade are ready to mail.  Addressed, stamped, signed, sealed, delivered...I'm yours.  Whose am I?

I've been hesitant about sending out something that I spent so much time on.  I spent hours on the cards but even more hours on my quest to find what I wanted for them.  It was all fun of course, but if the recipient doesn't receive them, well, that would suck the joy right out of it.

So if it gets lost in the mail, that means someone else would have my little piece of art, right?  Well, isn't that still nice, that someone else liked it enough to steal it?  (I believe that's a Federal Offense!)  Someone else wants to enjoy looking at it?  I should be so honored.  Or not?

Today I carefully covered them with removable painters tape.  As I was taping them I felt foolish.  It is suppose to be postmarked art after all, and what challenge is it if I cover it up?  It's not exactly postmarked art if I send it in a box.  Isn't that the same as covering it up?  If I ordered a shirt from a website and when I receive it in the mail, does that mean it's postmarked shirt art?

If I just trust in the Universe, that the card will go where it's suppose to go and if where it goes isn't where I wanted it to go then what?  I was mistaken?  I was presumptuous to think what I want matters to the Universe?  I was dumb enough to not understand where it really was suppose to go?

Or should I worry more because I'm going on and on worrying about something that hasn't even happened and may not happen?

OK. You're right. Tomorrow I will put them in a mail box.  And I will let go.

It's been a long time since I posted!  But that doesn't mean I haven't been doing 'stuff'.
I have spent wayyyy too much time on my Steampunk postcards for PostmarkdArt.
Way too much time on something that could get lost in the mail.
I spent so much time driving around to get my 'parts' for the cards.  Luckily for me Archivers had a nice selection of steam punk and some of them were actually gears!  It looks like most of the other postcard traders also bought the same gears.  I spent time at Home Depot, many thrift stores, JoAnns, Michaels, etc.
I wanted gears, things to take apart, cheap books that had medical 'stuff' in them.  I wanted the type of medical books that have the clear plastic pages showing the different parts of the body.  I found one that only had the whole body.  But I still bought the book and ripped it apart.
So I gave up on that and decided to print my own.  Thankfully in my old couponing days I got free samples of 3M transparency sheets because when I looked for them at the office supply stores they are $60 for the smallest box!
Then I was looking for a copyright-free heart.  I spent way too much time searching the internet, and Dover Publishing.  No luck.  So these 6 hearts belong to some text lesson somewhere.
I printed the heart on the transparencies.  I wanted a blood red fabric for the background.  But then the transparency didn't show up. 
So I also printed the heart on photopaper, cut it out exactly, cut out the center, and colored the white edges to match the heart.  Putting that behind the transparency was perfect. 
I arranged my assorted gear paraphanalia so that it would fit in the cut opening of each of the 6 postcards.
I glued, then handstitched every little gizmo down to the red fabric, backed by interfacing.  I also cut apart the copper sheets I embossed and painted in my previous post.  I glued down the photopaper hearts.
Each postcard will still have timtex (pel-tex) in it I had to cut the center out to accomodate the thickness the gears and 'stuff' were adding to the postcard.  Since each of the 6 cards gears are different I had to cut out each one to match.  I never do anything the easy way!  I fused the red fabric with all the stuff on it to the tim-tex.  For the written side of the card I fused light blue fabric.
Then taking the medical textbooks I added a page and tore out where the heart goes.
Now to assemble them!
Lining up wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be, but pounding the eyelets was.  The plastic and metal form you use to pound the eyelets with wasn't fool-proof.  Every one had to be checked and then hammered again to even it up.   I think it said something about 'pound lightly'...are you kidding?  I had to pound the crap out of it!
Then I trimmed them to 4 x 6" and I was relieved to be done!
Now on to van Gogh postcards:

The Crafters Devotional - 365 Days of Tips, Tricks and Techniques...

...for unlocking your creative spirit.
By Barbara R Call.

This book is boosting my creative spirit.  I've borrowed it from the library so I can't take each day to read one devotional, but I try to get through several each day and keep a notebook to jot down the ideas I start to think about.
I've always wanted to make those pop-up cards or books, and she suggests buying a childrens pop-up book and...redecorating it.
She shows you an easy way to draw a labyrinth, which types of tea dye which colors on muslin, how to make color paste paper, using bleach to alter your photographs, inspirational quotes, how to meditate, and on and on.
If someone were to read your journal in 100 years, what would you want to tell them?
What animal keeps occuring in your life?  (Sharon, you're a fish!)

Fun book:
Name Your Link

Copper Sheet Molding