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By Jackie, January 24, 2009 3:25 pm

Life has been very busy in our household this week, far more than usual. Lots of doctor appointments, an ER visit, some stitches and medications involved as well. The fact that I have art deadlines next week hasn’t helped at all. I keep trying to focus on my projects but I haven’t had all that much success. So while out for a short time this morning I stopped in at yarn shop that is a few doors down from a bead shop and got a few items to play with.

No, I’m not knitting anything just stitching here and there, never really knowing what I’m going to come up with sometimes. I have been working on the red doily project and it is just about done. I’ll post that soon – well, let’s just say that I plan to post it soon. And the fire project needs to be finished up ASAP – so that should be appearing soon as well.

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By Jackie, January 16, 2009 5:50 pm

We’ve had lots of family and weather and life items taking priority lately over our creative activities. But I keep trying to push forward on the numerous projects I just had to go start with the new year. The red doily is today’s project. I’ve been painting, stitching, coloring with various mediums all over this. But it needs something to make pop a little. So I put together a small box of options that might work. The two year old LOVES the beads, so I try to work with them in small quantities to minimize any damage should he break into them or I leave them out by mistake.

But that will have to be all for now.

Stay warm everyone.

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By Jackie, January 8, 2009 10:38 am

I have been putting off making this for months. The idea of making fire out of this really cool felt that was given to me just scared me. I was scared of messing it up and wasting the material. I realize this makes little sense because the stuff would be going to waste if I didn’t use it. So here is the fire. I created a sketch first then built from there. You will see the whole project complete in a few weeks.

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By Jackie, January 5, 2009 8:29 pm

Yeah, I’m excited. This camera is just cool. Not a digital SLR but lots of the same features and fun. We had a coupon too! Ever since I accidently left my other camera out in the pouring rain it hasn’t been the same. The only excuse I have is that it was the day my six year old broke his foot, so I was a little distracted. But I felt really, really bad about it.

The pictures I’ve taken so far have been really great quality. I’ve had the hardest time getting a good photo of the celtic tree art quilt I made a few months ago. I take one shot of it in a dark room and it comes out near perfect. I haven’t actually downloaded it off the camera yet, I’ll get to that soon.

I’ve also done more art type stuff that I will post soon.

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By Jackie, January 1, 2009 2:36 pm

Well it has been a little while since I’ve tended to this blog but I’m back with the new year and lots to keep me busy. There are several new projects on the table right now and even more stewing in the back of my mind. One of my goals is to keep this blog a bit more active than I did last year and show more of what I’m working on.

I’m in a show in February at the Northville Art House. So I am hoping to create some pieces in time. Whether I achieve that goal or not remains to be seen. With the tough economic times going on I’ve been looking more to the materials I already have for ideas. A lot of it is vintage quilt squares and fabric. Some of it I inherited, some of it was given to me and some of it I acquired on my own. So with that in mind I started working on two pieces. One is an old doily that I hand dyed this past summer. I dig the color. I don’t really know how this one will look when it’s done.

The other piece involves an old log cabin quilt that I purchased at an antique sale several years ago. It has been in a closet for awhile. It is not in great shape, several pieces have shredded, disintegrated, or just turned to fabric dust with old age. So I set out a few days ago to start taking it apart. I found lots of thread colors, fabrics and even two different pieces of batting. It was a utility quilt, meant reuse old fabric items to make a warm blanket. Some points lined up, some didn’t but it didn’t matter if they did at the time because it was never meant to be a show piece. I enjoyed seeing that aspect of it. I can’t make points line up to save my life. Traditional quilt sewing is an art that causes me pain. I admire it, I respect anyone who can do it because I can’t. But ripping seams apart – that I can do! I’ve had lots of practice.

So here is the quilt before I attacked it with a seam ripper.

One of my cats, Rocky Rocket, thought it was just fine as it was. He purred away while I hacked the threads.

At one point I stopped to admire all the work that had gone into this quilt. I also like taking macro shots with cameras.

So when I pulled out the squares I wanted I ended up with these.

Then I pieced things together with an old feed bag (another antique sale find). This one hasn’t really gone beyond this point visually yet. I’ve been building up the backing and getting it ready to work on. I’ve also been skimming through my grandmother’s old recipe books for ideas to embellish with. I found a great image of a chicken that may end up on there somehow.

So for the moment this is where things sit on the project list. There is another one on the side for the Weird Michigan Challenge I issued to my art group. It has a little ways to go yet.