Christmas Wreath

I have been dying to do this wreath from two years ago. I have finally done it. I love it. It may be too big for my door but I don't care lol.....

Don't forget to check the doll blog. I will be posting an ornament doll there in a few....

Time to Paint

My quilt and doll room is over flowing with rolled up quilts on large cardboard rolls. So, what does one do when that happens? One switches to another craft lol.

My mode has switched to painting, even though I have two more dolls to finish. I will do those in between. I have been painting a few little things to get me going and purchased a few patterns from JoSonja Jansen. Her patterns are so professional with lots of color pictures,  and a delight to just look at. Just go look at her website, click on shop and each icon you see there is a selection of patterns. Here

I have already got the two Whale cribbage board patterns and will order the boards to go with those patterns today. One is for hubby and one is for son, both fishermen lol, the younger being a surfer also.

I love JoSonja's whimsey. Her Thumbelina pattern is so wonderful as is the Owl and the Pussycat, The Pirates and etc etc etc...you have to go look to appreciate all the wonderful paintings.

Today, I will show you a very large ornament.

I know, my studio is a bit messy but that is from all the stuff I have been doing and all of it will be totally put away when I start to paint. Anyway this ornament measures 13 3/4 inches tall and a has a diameter of 8 and is shaped beautifully with the point going down and the name escapes me at the moment.

It is plastic. I thought I would put JoSonja sealer all over it and paint one of her Christmas scenes on it. I will have to give it a good think and decide just what and will post when I get started. I will be using her paint line, of course.

The little guy you see there at the bottom is called a "Humbug" lol...isn't he just miserable? I am painting a bunch of those for a little craft show I am doing in December.

Ok, back to work and I will be getting back when I start, stay tuned. Remember my other blogs, where I post dolls and quilts. The link is on the left.

Wall Angle

 I haven't posted to this blog for ages. Anyway, I got in the mood to paint and I thought I would do a little demo for those interested, who would like to see how to do some of this Folk Art, as its not that  hard at all, and also tell you a bit about this Prolific Artist who died many years ago

This angel may look complicated but she is not hard if you know a little stroke work. There are books on the market that can teach you that. I would recommend, "Jackie Shaw" books, for beginners, for the basics.

Folk Art or Decorative Painting consists of basecoat, highlight, shading and strokework.

I have many many wood cut outs from my painting and show days. This is one of them.

The pattern I will be using is one by Joyce Howard which is very rare and hard to find. Joyce published 6 books in her liftime, one of them a quilting book with painted blocks and I think that will be my very next project. I have wanted to do that for years.

Joyce also published very few patterns. A dickens series ( I found a set in Washington many years ago at a close-out). The only other Patterns would be ones in the posession of students of Joyce. I was not one of the fortunate ones to take classes from her as I hadn't started to paint then. I am fortunate to have friends who have  shared with me tho. I have bought and begged and borrowed for years. I now own all six of her books and a few of her patterns and I am finally happy lol.

This angel is just called, Wall Angel and measures 18.5 X 15 or so.

To begin, the wood piece must be sealed and then basecoated with acrylic paints and I am using Decoart Americana  paint. I basecoat, let dry and lightly sanded and basecoated two more coats and let cure 24 hours.

The pattern must be traced onto tracing paper (transparent) and then positioned on the wood piece and taped at the top in just a couple spots, graphite is slipped under the traced pattern and only the main areas traced and blocked in with colors as per instruction.

As I block the entire angle in I will put a pic up and so on..the picture above is the Pattern Picture. 

This is the pattern. It must be traced onto tracing paper.

Here the pattern is traced on with graphite paper. 

Here is the angel all blocked in. Now I have to trace all the strokework and flowers on and start to paint those.

For the strokework pattern, I just trace lines for directions of the strokes and the brush and paint does the strokework. Most of the florals are also strokwork, where the brush is loaded with a couple colors and applied. I will post as I go along and try to show some of it.

I just finished the Wall Angel. This is the painted stage. After 24 hours, it will get a coat of glazing medium, that has to dry and then, I will antique it and flyspeck it. I will use black and white for the specking and will post another pic. Flyspecking brings the open areas together.

I just notice that I didn't put the white flower centers in lol. 

Necklace Mania, The Wedding Cake Necklace

Ahhhhh a change of pace and something different. I am posting this quickly as I want to go bead some more. The pics are not so good as I took them at night inside but will post more later

I have the Queen of Necklace Design, here with me, Marylyn Doyle from Arizona. We went to the hugh Gem show a week ago and bought lots of beads etc. This is a necklace she made for me. The earings, I made. The beads used are, semi-precious, fancy glass, Trade beads, Venetian beads etc.

A word about Trade beads. You can google them and find more than I can tell you here.

She makes a very strong necklace and so I had a few lessons. This necklace is called the Wedding Cake Necklace, because.....on the left is a powder blue, Venetian glass bead with lots of lovely decoration. I have had this and it's brothers and sisters for over 20 years in my collection. The decoration on the bead looked like fancy frosting to us, therefore the name applied lol.

I made the necklace above. This one has a red Venetian, Meliflori heart, peppermint jasper, spottes jasper, fired glass and so on....I made all the earings.

Here are all three of them.

Here are some of the Trade beads up close. They come on ropes as they are heavy. We only put about four on a necklace.

Some more beads. Ok, back to more fun.....

TURTLE PINCUSHIONS CONTINUED

As promised, here is Fred. I don't know why they look masculine to me, even tho I beaded them some lol.

I gave him light tiger eye beads for eyes. His house is covered in June bugs so he won't be going hungry in a while.

I tweaked the pattern some more and I think I like his house, not sure yet. I might make it a bit bigger. I like the tail and everything else. I might make do another version with a shorter house to see if I like that.

I did some beading all around him here and there. You can still use him as a pincushion.

TURTLE PINCUSHIONS

EDIT: I switched out the two top photos as I made him a bigger house.

I am so enjoying the pincushion craze that has been going on, on the web. I decided to jump and try a few of my own too. Here is a little cutie that I made out of scraps. These are making me smile and I hope they make you smile as well. As long as it's an animal etc, it's always adorable....


I made this fat little bugger first after three or four trials and errors. His house seems to be a bit small for him hahahah....anyway,

I wanted a realistic face and I think I captured the turtle face pretty good. I made his shell and body as one piece and then made the cover for the shell seperate. I took a T-pin with a round loop and forced a huge plastic pearl on it and then wired some seed beads in the loop of the pin.

He is definately a snapping turtle with his mean look lol. I rouged his cheeks with crayon and outlined his mouth with a black Identi-pen, two black/green seed beads for his eyes. In this model I made a seam on the bottom and it raised his head and I like that.

I think I want his tail a big longer for the next model.

The next model: Then I decided to make another one with the shell not included with the body to see if I liked it better. I used the fabric from a little embroidered dress for the body. I then made the shell seperate.

The shell is just stuffed a bit and pinned on the turtle so far.

I adjusted this pattern for a longer tail and tried to make the beak longer. I rounded the head a bit more on this one. I still need to adjust the shell, it is still a work in progress.

I didn't put a seam down the bottom like the first one and his head is therefore lower. I like the higher head better.

Here is a pic of the mess made when trying to design your desire lol.

I made about four models and kept adjusting until I got it. I did sleep on it and as usual, I woke up with the plan. This was great fun.

Hazel Quackenbush

Just a note to remind you that I will be posting the dolls in my doll blog. The link is on the right side.

Here is one pic of Hazel...the others are at the doll blol.

Uma

These two dolls are from a pattern called Uma and she is a forest Elf. I made two of them and changed the names to Autumn and Nightshade.

This is Autumn

I used Batiks for her body and clothing. She wears cuffs on her ankles with jewels attached. Her fitted outfit is all wired to resemble some sort of forest plant. All the clothing is wired and quilted except for the cuffs.

Close-up of her jewelry, made with glass beads, semi precious (japanese turquoise) and Swarovski crystals.

This is Nightshade

She is made the same as Autumn, only darker and also bejeweled, she has more turquoise lol.

Close-up of jewelry.

Here they are together. I love that I can pose them anyway I want.

More poses..

I used eyelash yarn for the hair. I just knitted a patch and sew it on. I sewed beads here and there on the clothing and painted the faces with fabric paint and glittered them.

I painted the faces with Decoart American SoSoft fabric paint. I also used the Shimmering Pearl and the Metallic lines as well. Painting your doll faces make them so much more realistic and natural looking. The paints blends very easily and even a beginner can do it. If you live in Orlando Florida, I will be teaching this doll at the Sewing Studio. I will teach you how to paint a doll face....write to me if you have any questions.

LOG CABIN DIAMOND STAR QUILT

This is the last step for the CLCS. I quilted it yesterday and instead of binding it with a seperate binding, I left a 1 1/2 inch of batting and backing all around the quilt.

I then mitered the corners by folding the two ends at the corner, on the wrong side, together and sewed a seam down leaving a 1/4 inch for the turning under.

I then folded that exta binding to the right of the quilt and turned under 1/4 inch and proceeded to sew it down on the right side. When I got to the corners, they were already mitered, so all I had to do was turn under the 1/4 inch, I had left free.

You can't tell that the binding is a self binding unless you turn it over.

This is a total scrap quilt, using only lights and darks but one theme (Christmas fabric). I love all the effects. I see the star, boxes, baby blocks and buildings.

The strip on top is a crazy patch I add later to make the quilt longer, using all the left over scraps.

One could have make the plain blocks also striped like the rest of the quilt blocks, but one was getting sick of it and wanted to move on to something else lol, and the plain blocks look just as nice.

Since this was a custom quilt, some things had to be custom cut. Looking at the quilt, you can see that when the star is finished, you need to fill some spaces in with half diamonds and that was easy. Just cut a plain diamond in half and leave 1/4 inch seam allowance before cutting.

I found some nice Christmasy rose fabric for the back.
For the four ends, I layed the quilt corner on the cutting board, lined up the top and the side and made a paper pattern of that area and added the 1/4 seam and cut that from fabric.

I am happy to report that I have put a good 12 to 15 yard dent in my stash lol.

LOG CABIN DIAMOND STAR QUILT

The quilt fits a single bed nicely but needs just a bit more to tuck the pillows.

I worked on the extention. I had some strips left over and quite a lot of odd pieces, there was a basket full of them and so, not wanting to waste, I decided on S&C (scraps and crumps.


I started working on some areas. I say areas because I dont' want blocks, I want the extention to kinda melt together as one piece.

After I had sort of a beginning on three different pieces, and a couple small ones. I started to built on them. I decide on 17 wide by 86 long, the width of the quilt. This piece will look nice on the pillow.

I feel great about using all the left over scraps. This will take a nice chunk out of my Christmas fabrics, after the backing etc, I will have to take a look and see what is left now.....I might have to do another.

These are the three area that I am going to join for the extention.





LOG CABIN STAR QUILT

HOW TO FIX A QUILT THAT YOU CAUGHT ON FIRE LOL. I will be the first to admit that I am a dummy hahahhaahahahahah..long story short, I lit a candle in the studio and thought I had more that enough room to finish my quilt top.

Somehow I flung the top around to sew one side and thought I saw a flash of light and low and behold the quilt was on fire.

I wasn't too unhappy when I saw that it was small, so I started to cut away the burnt parts.

Here it is all fixed.

The top is all squared up and ready for quilting.

DIAMOND STAR QUILT

I have been working on this quilt since before Christmas for next Christmas lol. I call it the Christmas Star Quilt and the purpose is to use up the Christmas fabric entirely. I think I have to make a couple more quilts to accomplish that feat.

This is what I have so far. All the main Paper pieced blocks are done and all that remains is to figure out the plain print diamonds and what value and where. I have it on the board to see the effect and I will switch it around here and there.

I love seeing more than one thing in a quilt. I love the box look and then the star and who know what else one can find when it is finally finished.

I might make a tutorial.

Pumpkin Seeds and Pumkin

My neighbor gave me two pumpkins the other day. I decided they must be dried up but the seeds would still be good. Sure enough they were. Where I grew up, we always had fresh pumpkin seeds to eat.

The seeds, however, came with their own superstition. They were actually called Macobi Seeds and those who were love sick or their lover left them, they would be eating these seeds. They were said to have Macobi. They were also called pepitos for those who were just eating them to eat them.

When one would eat these seeds, one would be quick to say, "I don't have Macobi" lol. I am just eating them.

I don't know what effect these seeds were supposed to have on love sickness. Imagine the seed itself, it may have some properties that was good for the feel good hormone " Serotonin". I would see people eat a whole bag full and say they felt much better lol.

How I made the pepitos: I washed and drained them and them put them on towels to dry. I then put them on a cookie sheet and all spread out and baked them for ten minutes on 350 to dry some more. I then removed them, sprinkled some olive oil (tiny amount ) and some sea salt and stirred them good and put them in for another ten min. I would stir them again and check to see if they were done. I think it took 20 to 30 min, depending on your oven.

To crack the peppitos (I am assuming that you don't have Macobi lol) put the seed between you teeth on the sharp end of the seed and bite down just a little and the seed will pop open and you can just pull the seed out with you teeth, it's all in the learning lol.

The pumpkins, were also good so I put those in a pan with a rack with water and steam baked them for pies and cakes at a later time. Here is one all done and scoped out.