Apron Update

Awhile back, I made aprons for my three new little granddaughters--ages 7, 4, and 2. Well, we had Thanksgiving AND Christmas with them last weekend. Along with the aprons, I got them each Play Dough, a rolling pin, and other "dough" cutting tools. I have to say...this gift was a BIG hit!

Check out the girls in their aprons.

This is Bianca and Lula.

This is Holland.

If you'd like to see the original post about the aprons (maybe you'd like to make one), here is the link. APRONS. It is #2 under "Other Projects."

 

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Find Art Wherever You Go

While I was in Vegas for my son's wedding, I was on the lookout for art. I found this...

There is an exhibit of Chihuly glass at the Bellagio Hotel. The ceiling in the lobby is covered with beautiful, colorful glass. It is breathtaking.

I'm also always on the lookout for inspiration for my doodling. Here's what I found.

This is at one of the entrances to the MGM.

This is the carpet in the MGM.

This is a Louis Viutton window. The art in the window is by Yayoi Kusama.

Inspiration can come from ANYWHERE!

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Wedding Gift

My son married a wonderful woman this past weekend. Their wedding was a "destination wedding" to Las Vegas so a wedding gift had to be small enough to fit in their luggage. I thought about it for a long time and decided to draw them a picture. I finished it the day before we flew out and only had a day to get it framed. Luckily, one of my friends owns a great little shop called Elements. She did a really nice, really fast framing job for me. I'm happy with how it turned out. (Thanks Kathy!)

Ryan and Tara liked it and told me tonight that they have it up on their mantle. If you take a closer look at the picture (by clicking in it) you will notice the heart with the four small red hearts in it. Those hearts represent Tara's children; she has four. Over the weekend I gained a new grandson and three new granddaughters. I'm excited!

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Fall Quilt Retreat

My local guild had its fall quilt retreat the last weekend in October. It was nice to do some "mindless" sewing. I thought I'd work on some Christmas gifts for my new little granddaughters. (My son is marrying a wonderful woman with four children--a boy and three girls.) This is the first time I've had a chance to sew for little girls. (I've only had grandsons previous to this.) I started off with these little aprons for the girls. They are reversible.

One side...

Other side

One side...

Other side

I'm hoping the girls will like these. They were really fun to make. (If you'd like to make some for your special little people, check out my blog post about them here. They are #2 under "Other Projects.")

I also made some blocks for quilts for the girls.

Actually, my plan was to make diamond quilts (like the bottom of the picture). As you can see, though, I didn't make enough "reverse" blocks. I'll have to get busy on those here at home. I'm using a used dryer sheet as a foundation for the string piecing. I won't have to tear off the dryer sheets before putting the quilt together, because the dryer sheets are VERY light. I DID read about using the dryer sheets somewhere in cyberspace, but (for the life of me) I can't remember where.

I also worked on a table runner and got some hand quilting done on my "caged" bias series. I didn't get pictures of those, though. Are you working on Christmas gifts?

 

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Frixion Pen Review and a Bit of Good News

This last weekend I went to a quilting retreat hosted by my quilt guild. It is always lots of fun. This year we even had participants from Paducah, KY, and Memphis, TN (pretty far from southern Indiana). One of the girls from Memphis showed me a pen that I don't have (and I AM a gadget queen). She said it is a pen that a "famous" quilter recommends for marking quilts, so I thought I should check it out. The pen makes a very clear mark on the fabric and "disappears" when it is ironed; the marks reappear with cold and supposedly wash out. Now, I LOVE my Bohin chalk marking pen for most jobs, but I'm finding that the marks are getting rubbed off by me dragging the quilt all over the place (I travel a lot.) while the hand quilting is in progress.

The Pilot Frixion pen is intended for use on paper--not fabric, so I decided I needed to test it. Since the fabric I want to mark is red, I thought I'd see what effect the pen had on that. I thought I'd also try it on white. First I used a permanent marking pen to label each area to be marked. After ironing and icing (running an ice cube over the fabric), I'll be washing the fabric.

In the picture above, you see what the fabric looked like before I did any ironing, icing, or washing. The next picture shows what the marks looked like after ironing.

In the pictures above, the "Xs" that are left were not ironed. I don't know if you can see it in the picture, but where the "Xs" had been there is a sort of "ghost" print of the marks on the white fabric. On the red, there is the slightest little bit of discoloration--the "X" is a TINY bit lighter.

Above, you can see that the "Xs" have returned after I rubbed an ice cube over them. They are a bit lighter than the originals.

Below, you can see how the marks look after washing and drying. (I used cold water and detergent.) There are absolutely no marks left in the fabric (ghost or otherwise) except for the permanent pen I used to label each section. Even the discoloration in the red fabric is gone. I also ran an ice cube over each piece, and none of the marks came back.

Based on this experiment, I have to give this pen a thumbs up for pieces you can throw in the washer after quilting. I used a blue Frixion pen and have no idea what the other colors would do. Supposedly, the "famous" quilter uses only the blue pen.

Oh, I'd also like to share that two of my pieces were juried into "The View from Here: Quilts of the Ohio River Valley. SAQA members from Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio." The exhibit will be on display during the International Quilt Festival Cincinnati, 2013 from April 11-13 at the Duke Energy Convention Center, 5th Street, downtown Cincinnati, OH. If you are interested in seeing which ones, check here. They are the first quilts in the post--The View from Within and Black Beauties. I'm tickled!

 

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Fire Blog--3-D Shibori Technique

This month, over at the Fire blog, we are trying out the 3-D shibori technique. It involves using polyester fabric, tying various shaped objects into the fabric, and boiling the fabric to make the shapes permanent. I finally had a chance to try this month’s technique and got some promising results. Here are some of my final fabrics. If you'd like to see more (and how this process is done) check out my post and the 3-D Shibori tutorial by Nienke Smit. You might also want to check out what some of the other resident artists have done with the technique too.

I’m thinking several pieces done like this might look really cool “caged” in my bias strips for a new piece in my series.