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!

Wednesday Works-in-Progress

Yesterday I mentioned that I would be experimenting with Shrinky-Dinks. This is a type of film that you can decorate with heat-set paints, colored pencils, acrylics, or other media, then bake for a few minutes in the oven. I decided to paint with Lumiere paints, most of which have a metallic gleam. I just painted some basic shapes and embellished with dots and squiggles. The words were added with a silver pen. You cut them out and punch a hole prior to baking. For sewing down these charms, it would have been helpful to have two holes, or it just dangles.

Then, put them in the oven. I used a low temperature of about 200 degrees F, and look what happened! These are shown on the same size sheet as the originals.

They come out like a hard, clear plastic. On mine, the paint kind of globbed in an interesting manner. The silver pen looked good for the text. I put some of the charms to immediate use on my works-in-project from last Wednesday.




This piece is done except for adding some kind of label. I have just been calling it The Pink Artist Project. Will come up with something better.

Here is the other project from last Wednesday. It is the one with Textiva film on the center block.

Last week I showed you the center block with some stuff sewed on, quilted and heat-blasted. Here is what the back of that block looked like after quilting. The base is a stiff interfacing like Timtex, with the pink fabric wrapped around it and mitered (sort of.)

Now I have added the outer frame. After auditioning a lot of fabrics, I chose this embroidered pink linen-type fabric. It came from a skirt I bought at the Goodwill thrift shop and deconstructed. It has embroidered daisy-like flowers in gleaming threads. I like the look, but it was a mistake to have one of the embroidered parts at a corner. Hard to miter over all that thickness!I added some beads and silk flowers and a yo-yo.

The center piece is sewn on to a larger piece of Timtex covered with the linen fabric. Right now, it is only attached at the edge of the center block, and it needs to be anchored down with a few stitches through the center so it doesn't buckle out.

I have experimented with some of the drinking-straw fabric beads sewn to the outer border, but am still working on that.