This Winter Day

Here is one of my art quilts that is appropriate for this cold, dreary December day.  My group Cyberbee issued a challenge eight years ago to make a quilt based on Maya Angelou's poem, This Winter Day.

I wove the front of the quilt from strips of hand-painted and commercial fabrics.  The green and white striped fabric was made with Shiva paint sticks, and made good tops for the button vegetables!

I made up for the gray palette on the front with a wildly colorful back.  I wrote the words to the poem on the hanging sleeve.

In case you cannot read them, the poem reads:

The kitchen is in readiness

white green and orange things

leak their blood selves in the soup

Ritual sacrifice that snaps

an odor at my nose, and starts

my tongue to march,

slipping in the liquid of its drip.

The day, silver striped

in rain, is balked against

my window and the soup.

Flocking at Home

Hello, everyone!  It has been a whirlwind week.  Last week we celebrated Christmas with my son's family.  It was wonderful!  Love to get my kids and grandkids all in one place!

I got a book that I have been coveting...Joanne Sharpe's The Art of Whimsical Lettering.

I will look forward to spending some time playing with my text on journal pages, cards, maybe even artwork.

We had a lot of fun, good food, and fooling around.

Dave "borrowed" my Christmas sweaters years ago for a Tacky Sweater party, and never gave them back.  He won a $75 prize at work for wearing the blue one that I thought was so pretty.

This hat was a popular hit.  It reminds me of the movie, A Christmas Story.  A true classic.

I have done some decorating for Christmas at our Raleigh house.  I decided the green artificial wreath on our front door did not show up at all against the black painted door.  After looking online for white or glittery wreaths and not finding one I liked short of forty dollars, I decided to visit my art supply stash and lighten up that wreath.

I found a tube of heavy body acrylic paint in Titanium white, and used almost the whole tube.  There was a small bag of snowflake-shaped crystals in my embellishment jar.

For added sparkle, I used glitter and glitter glue.

I used two cheap paintbrushes to apply the paint, and a palette that used to be a microwave container for something or other.  I covered the work area with freezer paper.  When I was done, I balled up the paper and threw the brushes and palette away.  No mess to clean!

Basically, I worked paint inside the pine cones and spread it on the foliage and pine needles.  That thick white paint made realistic snow.  I sprinkled glitter on the paint while it was wet.  The snowflake crystals went on with the glitter glue.

Now it shows up much better!

I bought some silver and white ribbon, but have not decided whether to add it or not.

Wooden Needle Holder and Bag

Here is the gift that I selected to give to a member of my quilt bee during our gift exchange tomorrow.

It is a turned-wood needle holder by Meiki's Designs, which I purchased at the Vendor Mall of the Ashe County Piecemakers Quilt Fair back in September in West Jefferson, NC.  The maker is http://meikisdesigns.com . Fortunately, I was able to find it in time for our Whacky Ladies party tomorrow.  Sometimes when I buy gifts way in advance, they disappear before it is time to give them away!

I decided to make a little "holder for the holder," or a little cloth bag to put it in.  Here is when it is handy to have a supply of pre-painted, pre-quilted fabric ready to cut up and sew.

All I did was zigzag a piece of pretty fiber all around the edge, sew on a button, and wrap some more fiber around the button to close.

Here is the back view of the little needle case.

In case you are interested, the blue and green fabric was made by squeezing Elmer's glitter glue onto muslin, then painting with Setacolor and other fabric paints.  When you remove the glue, you have markings on the fabric where the glue resisted the paint.  The outside flap was painted with Shiva Paint Stiks.  You can see how I made them here if you scroll down through the post.

After the party tomorrow morning, I have to do some cooking before my husband's Christmas dinner for the office tomorrow night.  Yes, it was just Thanksgiving last weekend, but this weekend my son and his family from South Carolina will be coming up for our family Christmas.  When you work in retail and also have to share children among multiple sets of parents for the holidays, you have to celebrate when you can.  We are looking forward to seeing them and having an early Christmas!

Christmas Surprises

It's Christmas week for two of my quilting groups.  Yesterday the Anything Art group met at Ruth-Ellen's for our annual holiday lunch to celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah.  We all helped make the potato latkes, and Ruth-Ellen made the kugel.  

In honor of the season, I made some little ornaments for the ladies to select.

Some are made from a piece of needle-felted batik enriched with silk roving and other fibers.  The shiny one on the left is made with Textiva film and bits of ribbons and threads that I fused to a piece of Timtex with Misty Fuse.

Here it is, upside down...thanks, Blogger!

I made quite a few of these but they were snapped up yesterday at the art quilt bee meeting!  Each one has a little bead, mostly ones that I made from Shrinky-Dinks painted with Lumiere paint.

I received a very nice quilted, beaded fabric bowl from Toni yesterday.  She cut up a quilt, tucked in the sides, and voila!

Roberta made us each a fabric-covered notebook covered in cheery Ultra-Suede.

Sideways this time!  What's going on?

Tomorrow it will be Christmas brunch in Wake Forest with my Whacky Ladies bee.  I don't get to participate in all their meetings anymore due to the distance involved in driving at night, and also because we often leave for the mountain cabin on Thursday nights.  But I am looking forward to seeing them again tomorrow!