Alice and Harman

More stitched School Photos...

Alice- (Greek for "Truth")


Excellent in math.
Takes ballet lessons every Tuesday afternoon.
Hopes to be president of the United States one day.
Likes the mingled smell of honeysuckle and wild roses that grow in her grandmother's back yard.


Each School Photo ornament is stitched onto a piece of vintage table linen, (a vintage cloth napkin to be exact) which was backed with some fusible interfacing. Afterwards I paint each one with Japanese made Tsukineko's All purpose Ink, which are great to use on fabric as the colors are nice and vivid, but not thick like regular fabric paint. They act more like a watercolor and come with a pencil like applicator that makes applying the color to small areas very easy.

HARMAN - (Old English for "A Deer Keeper"):


Silent and strong.
Likes cornflakes.
Believes in diplomacy.
Hopes to one day be a forest ranger and to live high up in a tree house.


After stitching, painting and heat setting each piece, the same vintage fabric was used for the back side. A small slit was cut in the backside through which I used to turn the piece right side out, and to stuff the piece. A small cord loop was hand stitched to the backside along with one more piece of the vintage fabric, which was used to neatly cover up the slit and the cord ends. Each piece is signed on the back.


Harman and Alice plus a few of their classmates are currently available in my shop. More next post!

If you haven't already, don't forget to enter my GIVEAWAY and win a free copy of Quilts, BABY! from Lark Books!

Giveaway Winner, and... The Art of Play

Thanks to everyone who entered my giveaway! I greatly enjoyed reading what made a year a favorite, and by far I would say that a connection to family and home, marriage and birth, all seemed to be among the top of peoples lists! Congratulations to Rachel of Fog and Thistle you're the winner! I will be contacting you and sending you your calendar ASAP!
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The Art of Play:



My focus on my new line of functional art quilts, (see here, here, here and here) has been derailed by a lack of clear focus and a massive wave of media induced, political ADD. So much is going on outside of me, that I am having a difficult time tuning in the old brain waves into producing clean and simple design. I am the first to admit that I tend to absorb the emotions around me, and am not the best with keeping myself centered. I have come to learn that for me, art is always a response to what ever I am feeling emotionally, and during these last few weeks my emotions have been pretty much disgust with the grown-ups running this world.


Creatively, I have only wanted to rebel from all the seriousness, and play like a 5 year old with her box of wonderfully smelling, newly sharpened crayolas. Scribbling to her hearts content.


However, instead of opening up my magic box of crayons, I turned to fabric and the pages of an old children's dictionary.


The illustrations were done by Joseph Low. I love his style! They take me back and make me feel all happy inside.




I used mostly vintage fabrics,




and kept the edges raw.


Simple embellishment was done with a tiny bit of hand embroidery, text from the dictionary, machine stitching and a few vintage buttons.

I am anxious to get back to my functional art quilts, but I still feel like I need to do a little bit more artful playing. To see each of the little sewn collages in their entirety, go here, here and here. Now go play!