Handicrafts Fair

I have been asked by my talented friend, Laura Bergstresser, handcrafter, jewelry maker, printer, painter and proprieter of Antlered Rabbit, to assist her at the South Silver Spring Block Party this Saturday, October 3rd. You will find a map at the website. Come out and see us if you are in the area. We will have handmade semiprecious stone jewelry, hand dyed scarves, and handmade ornaments.

Thread Tree Art Quilt

I have been working on this art quilt all summer. While that may be hard to believe, given the quilt's small size (aprox 18 x 15 inches), if you have seen my earlier post, you know why. Shown here is another art quilt in my thread tree series, this time depicting a foggy early spring morning in a forest. All of the quilt's elements are hand sewn and quited except the border and then I machine quilted many of the elments again. The background is a commerical batik and I have layered fine tulle to suggest fog and the light green dusting the ground has in early spring. The trees are made from threads as my title suggests and also yarn, archival markers, as well as strips of commerical and handpainted fabric. I am considering additonal quilting over the tulle and also beading small transparent beads to suggest dew.

Why I haven't been blogging lately...

Above is a sonogram of baby #3 at 14 weeks and my excuse for not blogging much recently. I expect to resume more regular blogging soon on the theory that the 2nd trimester of pregnancy I will have more energy. This coincides nicely with the beginning of the school year for the boys and I hope that will help too. Never fear, despite the fatigue, I have been working on projects (albeit slowly), and I expect to have something to show for it soon. Happy Summer!

Children's ATC Swap

My older son recently noticed my Artist Trading Card collection and thought they were neat. He asked if he could make a couple. These are the designs we came up with; the upper left card is my younger son's "The Space Alien A", upper right is my older son's "Falling Ball" and the bottom card was designed by me, "The Trip." Artist Trading Cards are little baseball (or Pokemon) card sized artworks that are created to be given away or exchanged with others. Many cards are made of collaged items or stamped but I have cards of almost every media that can be put on some kind of paper. If you are collaging materials, I suggest recylcling some of your more interesting looking junk mail. Mirkwood Designs has a really great ATC template to print out onto cardstock to get you started.

The kids were excited to trade their cards and see what came back in the mail. I am a member of Swap-bot, so I logged on to my account and have set up a swap for the kids. Please feel free to join our Kids ATC swap. The account is free and they have many fun activities to participate in.

New Silk Scarfs for Spring

These are my newly dyed scarfs for spring. I intended the red be more pastel. Oh well, that is how tub dyeing goes. In fact, all my dyeing jobs have resulted in surprises with no two batches being alike. I can predict a little of how it will go, for example, I know that the first dye takes the best on the back ground and the overdyes will mostly take on the foreground. I am especially pleasedwith the color combination shown on the the lowest silk scarf--yellow, turquiose and azure blue.

Dotee Dolls

I belong to an online doll making club know as Dollstreet Dreamers. The Street hosts a friendly and helpful list serve, doll competitions and sometimes swaps. The Dottee Dolls above are made for a swap coming up on Dollstreet. They basic idea for the doll was started by Dorothy Christian (Dot) and the dolls have really taken a life of thier own. A pattern to make the dolls can be found on eHow. Or you can watch a video on Youtube. If you want to take part in a swap check out swap-bot, last I looked, there were 16 Dotee Doll swaps.
I really enjoyed making my Dotee Dolls freehand. I took some fabric scraps and just began sewing a little shape. These quicky projects really make one feel good and are nice in betweens. I took mine to the doctors office and handsewed the bodies of three of them right there! I did the stuffing and beading at home. I predict more of these dolls in my future.
Congratulations to Donna, she won the blogiversary giveaway. My son drew her name randomly from the list of commenters from his lucky leprechaun hat.

My One Year Anniversary Give Away!

Hey, I have been blogging for a whole year! To celebrate this milestone, I am doing a giveaway. That's right, post a comment on my blog in the next week if you would like to be considered for the book Cloth Dolls for Textile Artists by Ray Slater. This book is eye candy with beautiful photographs and simple patterns to get one started in dollmaking or just learn new fabric techniques. I will contact the winner for address information.