ART PROMPT - #19 – Add wood

Red Oak Mini Journals

My prompt this time was to add wood to a project.

I chose to make 4 little journals and make the covers from red oak which my husband cut and planed for me. I drilled the holes for the binding that I wanted to make, all different.   I also gave both sides of the covers two coats of varnish.

4 little Journals

Red Oak covers - coptic bindings

showing covers and bindings - lays completely flat

For the pages I recycled all kinds of paper, cutting each piece 8” x 6” and folding in half to make my 4” x 6” pages. I made 8 signatures of 8 pages for each book.

Each book has 128 pages.

Pages from a Japanese poem book and textured tissue paper

The binding is called a “coptic binding” and is ideal for pages that lay flat, making easy for drawing, painting or writing.

Here are some of the different papers I used.

Acrylic painted and stamped used greeting cards

Textured tissue paper and map

 own photo on copy paper and inked shiny paper

sketching and watercolour paper

map from an atlas

These kind of book are also called Junk Journals because of the recycled paper used.
I'd rather call mine Art Journals.

Linking to Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday

See you next time,

Terry

NEXT PROMPT 

ART PROMPT - #20 – Add buttons

HERE'S MY “ART PROMPT” PLAN

One prompt, one project (taking as long as required to finish the project)

It's OK to finish or use a previously started project (UFO) as a starting point.

Make something creative.

Use any Media.

Blog about the project.

Pick another prompt once the project is done.

THREAD SCULPTURE

ART PROMPT - #9 - Add wire

Week 1 here

Week 2

I have been thinking of making a soft sculpture from snipped thread for a while and when the “add wire” prompt came up, I knew this would be it.

Thread Sculpture

I purchased this Madeira Wash Away Avalon Ultra a few years ago but had not used it until now. I tested a little piece to see how it would dissolve,as it is pretty thick and was surprised that it did, very quickly. It was easy to sew through and only had to sit in lukewarm water for a couple of minutes to dissolve.

This is the work in progress:

pattern from wax paper

Thread sandwich

I stitched straight lines to stabilize and then in circles over the whole thing.  I used dark red thread on top and variegated thread in the bobbin.

Stabilizing with straight lines

top before soaking - red thread

back before soaking- variegated thread

Dried after soaking - adding wire

wire couched in

close-up

back

It measures 13" from the top of the base and 11" across at widest point.

Linking up to Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday and The Needle and Thread Network WIP Wednesday.

See you next week,

Terry

NEXT ART PROMPT - #10 – Use tulle

HERE'S MY PLAN

One prompt, one project (taking as long as required to finish the project)

It's OK to finish a previously started project (UFO)

Make something creative.

Use any Media.

Blog about the project every Friday.

Pick a prompt for the next week once the project is done.

Upcycling #2 – Book and Binder Covers

Book cover from free motion quilting sample

Last year, I took part in the Free Motion Quilting Challenge at Insights from SewCalGa and in the process ended up with lots of “samples”.

What a shame not to use them for something!

So, this is a book cover made from the Tiles challenge by Angela Walters.  The quilting design in the tile is Leah Day's design "H2O"

Here's what I used, minus the small blue scrap which I did not need.

Supplies

I measured the book and added seam allowances.  I cut the quilted portion longer so that it would turn in about one inch on the inside covers.  Added extensions and turned under.  

Extensions on book cover

 I used a decorative stitch to turn under the edges

Inside covers

Quilted book cover

BINDERS

I like to use binders to store instructions, class information, etc.

Here's three different options I used to make binder covers: orphan blocks, pieced strips left-over from making a quilt, even placemats.

Orphan blocks

orphan blocks

 Strips left-over from making a quilt

Left over strips

inside cover

 Placemats

Made from placemats

cut to fit

Linking up to The Needle and Thread Network WIP Wednesday, all Canadian blogs!

Happy Quilting,

Terry

Upcycling #1

Quilt Documentation # 137

Upcycling #1

While doing some cleaning out recently, I came across half a dozen little landscape quilts that I made a long, long time ago. They came very close to being trashed and then I thought I might want to play a little to see what I could do.

The appliqueing was pretty bad (I was just learning) and the fabric.......well, just look for yourself.

This is what I started out with:

Add caption

I decided to leave the hand quilting and added a whole lot of free motion quilting.

Time to tackle the polka dot tree. I picked out 3 shades of green, light, medium and dark and started with the light then adding the medium and finally the dark.

light green

medium green

dark green

more dark green

For the grass, I used the same thread but reversed the order of the shades of green.

grasses - dark green

grasses - medium green

grasses - light thread

A little tweaking on one of the hills. I tone down the red flowers with a purple marker before stitching a grid in gold and brown thread.

tone down hill

I did not mind the colour so much under the tree, related to the mountains, so I added some paisley shapes to make it look like rocks.....maybe.

rocks

There was a lot of distortion going on by the time I finished all that thread painting.

distorted

I blocked it and squared it up.

blocked

And added a facing.

Upcycling #1

Not sure what I'll do with it now, but it was lots of fun.  It measured 12" x 16", now 9" x 13".

I called it #1 because I think I may do this again.

Linking up to Nina Marie's Off the Wall Friday

http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.ca/2013/04/threadpainting-lily-off-wall-friday.html

Happy quilting,

Terry