Zentangle Tuesday

I have not done much sewing lately - work life and family life have been too time consuming. I did take a few minutes for myself and draw a couple zentangles. This is really helping to aid my creativity and give me short creative outlet.

Another busy day ahead. Might be able to sew this afternoon, but might need to take a nap instead. This time shift has really messed up my internal clock!

UFO Bust Report

I finished putting the label and binding on the Clifford Quilt.

It is called the Clifford Quilt because the blue print is Clifford the Big Red Dog and letters. All of the fabric used for this project was given to me and the batting is provided by my guild to be used for charity quilts. So it cost me nothing except the thread and my time. Ahhhh! Another one off the list.

Quilt Show Wednesday

Usually my favorite quilt I have made is what ever I am working on at the time. However, I made this one in 2007 and I still really like it.

My version of VanGogh's Starry, Starry Night. It was made for my guild's challenge in 2007. The theme was your favorite song title. It measures 28" wide by 24" high. I'm not sure Don McLean's Starry, Starry Night is my favorite song, but I do really like and I like the painting. It was a real challenge for me at the time. There are things I would do differently if I was making this today, but this was the best I could do at the time and better than I thought I could do at the time. It was the first art quilt I made that actually turned out even close to what I envisioned in my head!

Zentangle

I first heard/read about zentangles about a year ago. They sell kits for $49 plus shipping but at the time that was too steep a price for me. In the past couple of months I have been encountering zentangles more frequently and recently decided to just buy the kit. It came last week.

The kit is very nice. I'm such a sucker for good packaging! It comes in a beautiful box.

The box is designed to sit flat like this or you can stand it on end and put it on a bookcase. Inside the kit is a DVD, an instruction booklet, a legend card (shows examples of different fill designs that are numbered), a die (roll the die and draw the fill design that corresponds to the number rolled), two pencils with a sharpener, a blender stick, two Micron pigma pens, and a generous amount of tiles made from very nice paper for drawing your zentangles on.

The DVD is just 28 minutes of watching someone draw three different zentangles while music plays. No words are necessary. Just watching someone do a few is all the instruction you need. The instruction booklet and legend card give many examples of fill designs. However, any fill design you can imagine will work. This is why I decided to go ahead and get the kit. Any free motion quilting design is a fill design! I am learning that drawing helps me with my quilting and zentangles are fun to draw.

Do you need to buy the kit to draw zentangles? No. In fact I have done some on regular paper and on water color paper. I wanted the booklet, the nice paper tiles and pens and was curious about the DVD. I like using good quality materials and the paper tiles in the kit along with the pens are very nice. You can buy these separately though.

Here is my very first zentangle creation.

At first I thought the 3" by 3" tile would be too small, but after doing some larger ones I think this smaller size is the perfect size for getting the hang of drawing this way. I can envision doing these patterns on cloth with stitch, beads, buttons and other embellishments. In fact, I know there is a new book just out on this very same subject.

Zentangle for Fabric and Quilts on YouTube

You can watch the video here or go to YouTube and search for the title. You may be able to view a larger version directly on YouTube.

Goldie likes zentangles too.

She also likes water.

I finally had to put her out of my room and shut the door so I could finish. I did a 6" by 6" zentangle on watercolor paper and colored it with my Inktense watercolor pencils. This is my first try at the "Spilling Over" theme for March in the Sketchbook Challenge.

My idea is that the color is spilling over. I like the way the orange "spills over" and the blue isn't bad, but the others are not at all what I envisioned. I'll have to try again. I'm having a hard time with the theme this month. It just isn't speaking to me.

Bunny Slipper Transformed

Last week I showed you my son's old bunny slippers. I made a first attempt at turning one into a pin cushion.

First I looked at the bottom of the slipper.

I measured the width and length then drew an approximate copy to use as a pattern.

I drew my pattern on freezer paper, ironed it to a doubled piece of white fabric and cut out two pieces leaving a generous 1/4" seam allowance. Then I sewed the two pieces together leaving a hole for turning and filled it with aquarium rocks.

I think this 5 lb. bag of aquarium rocks cost between $3 and $4 at Walmart. I did open the bag and lay them out on a towel because they were a bit wet when I got them home. I'm not sure if the water was in the rock bag or from something else I bought that day, but I let them dry a good 24 hours before using them.

After filling the pouch with rocks I hand sewed the opening shut.

This went into the slipper first to give the pin cushion some weight. Next I added some stuffing to fill out the slipper a bit.

Then I made a little pouch for some play sand.

My sand is pink because it is Crayola colored sand. I asked my husband to buy me some play sand last year for some other pin cushions I was making. He came home with a 20 lb. bag of pink play sand! He said this was all Walmart had that day. Play sand is my favorite pin cushion filler because it fits well into any shape, it is cheap and it has some weight to it. I would prefer it to be "sand" color, but this pink stuff has worked out fine.

This pouch will be the part pins are stuck into. To make the pouch I cut two circles and a rectangle from my white fabric. My plan was to make a short cylinder, circles on either end with the rectangle in the middle. First I sewed the short ends of the rectangle together to make a tube. Then I sewed one circle onto one end of the tube. After struggling through this I decided that just sewing the other end shut after filling it with sand would be fine. My sand pouch looks like this.

With the slippers there was a lone baby sock.

I would prefer to use white or gray or blue or orange, one of the colors from the slipper, but this is what I have. I stuffed the sand pouch into the sock and then put it into the slipper.

Add some pins and I'm done!

I have not altered the actual slipper at all so all this can come out. I may try to locate a better color sock at some point, but for now I am using it as is.

Amended Tote Bag Pattern Review

Have you seen my amended post about the Stand and Stow tote bag pattern?

I made another one using the correct fusible product this time and the pattern worked beautifully. Please go here to read my amended review of the pattern. I tried to edit my original post, ended up overwriting it. Then I tried to publish it but Blogger was acting weird so I don't know if anyone actually saw it. I want to make sure that those of you who read my horror story of the putting together the first bag get an honest review of the pattern. Unbeknownst to me, I was using the wrong fusible product which is why I had such trouble. With the correct fusible product the pattern is excellent. So please go read my amended pattern review.

UFO Bust Report and Leprechauns

Finally this week I have UFO progress to report. I worked on two of my projects and finished one. On Monday I basted the House Charity quilt and the Clifford Charity quilt. On Tuesday I quilted both of them. I just used what I call "git 'er done" quilting on both of these. I think most folks would call it meandering.

The house quilt is finished!

The Clifford quilt still needs to have the binding sewn to the back and I'll finish that this soon.

I used my new Supreme Slider to quilt these. I love it! It is more flexible and less flimsy than the Original Slider. It also stays in place with no tape! I'm not sure exactly how it stays put so well, but it just clings to the machine and table, kind of  like one of those vinyl window clings. I also used the Bobbin Genies for the first time. They must do something because I had to adjust the machine tension from my usual free-motion quilting settings. And I quilted both of these with one of the spools of Signature variegated thread I bought recently. I had no problems at all with this thread but it is very linty. I'll spare you the sight of my filthy bobbin housing after quilting two baby size quilts with this thread, but I had no problems with breakage or skipped stitches. So thumbs up for all of these products.

With St. Patrick's Day coming up, my son is trying to catch a leprechaun. Here is the outside of his trap.

There is a gold rope that leads to a hole on the left of the box. You will probably need to click on the photo to enlarge it be able to see the rope. The bricks are suppose to help the leprechauns get in, but prevent them from escaping once inside. Here is what the inside of the trap looks like.

Inside there is plate of food for the trapped leprechauns. Apparently leprechauns like candy cane. There is a small bottle of water for them to drink (above left of the plate). The scrap of fabric is a towel/blanket. Below the towel/blanket is a cup of water with a K-nex ladder and a bar of soap - so the leprechauns can take a bath.

He leaves some fake gold coins in the trap as bait. So far he hasn't caught one, but last night one of them lost his hat.

The leprechauns usually leave a small amount of candy in exchange for the "gold" coins.