I find that my creativity takes a nose dive around holiday time with so many other things crowding my mind so I confess that I love to see January and February arrive - bad weather and all!
After my shows were finished for the year, I finished working on an art quilt I had started in the summer. It has been a long time since I made an actual quilt. I entered it in the SAQA show - My Corner of the World Canada. It didn't make it into the exhibition but I still have plans for it. It was mostly machine stitched with photo transfers of a caribou and park sign and is approx 21" x 26". It was a good exercise for me and there were a few technical issues along the way which always add to the challenge.
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| Protect Our Parks |
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| Photo transfer of Caribou taken in Gros Morne Area |
The sign says "Your fees at work. Thank you" with a Parks Canada logo. It was placed at the entrance of one of the trails. When I saw the sign I knew it needed to find its way into a quilt.
Before Christmas I took out some tissue that I had glued and layered,and I painted and hand stitched them. They became my Christmas cards. The cards themselves were pretty odd colours I admit but they worked well with the colours of the tissue.
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| I splattered paint on some for snow flakes |
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| I added birds and/or squirrels to these later on |
After Christmas I gave myself the gift of time. First I cleaned my work space and once everything was sorted and new discoveries were made, I started playing. First I took out my felting tools and did a couple of small felted and hand stitched landscapes just for fun! I had to stop myself from stitching too much and covering all the felted bits and I did feel that they were never quite finished - being so used to major stitching on my pieces. But I enjoyed the process.
When shopping for gifts I couldn't help but notice the proliferation of colouring pages, colouring note cards etc for adults. So I grabbed my 4 x 6" sketch book and started designing my own pages with a pigma pen then colouring them with markers. Oh my, what fun!! I spent hours just drawing and colouring. It really is addictive!
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| this one might be upside down:) |
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| Woodpecker and Fox |
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| Feathers and foliage |
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| Flowers and more flowers |
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| Rocks and Trees and Water..... |
I made copies before I coloured them in and am toying with the idea of printing the uncoloured pages on postcards for sale. I would need to work on refining some designs first of all. I made some 8.5 x 11" pages too which I left uncoloured. Not sure if this will go anywhere or if I just needed a break from working towards shows and sales, themes and deadlines....
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| This one is not quite finished |
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| Flowers! |
I just ordered a couple of GELLI printing plates because I am taking part in a workshop in February. I am excited about this new learning experience and how I can incorporate it into my work which is leaning more and more towards painted backgrounds and hand stitching. Nevertheless I did buy some new fabric with Christmas $$.
I also hope to work on some of my UFOs this year .........and Out of the Box Fibre Artists have an exhibition next December at the Textile Museum with the theme of Colour Unboxed. Hope I have some inspiration in that direction soon.. I am thinking about entering pieces in Threadworks too because I love the theme - 'Flashback'.
Sounds like a busy year shaping up - must remember to maintain some balance.
A Happy and Healthy New Year to all!
