Saturday, April 23, 2011

Saturday, March 19, 2011

The beginnings of a Test Run Quilt

I want to make a king size quilt for myself and I want to make it in the "watercolor" style.... so since I generally don't sew much (despite two of my last posts this week being fabric-related) and I certainly don't consider myself "a quilter", I figured I should buy just a small amount of fabric to test my ideas/theories in a more "safe" way than immediately committing to the BIG project..... so here is the beginning of my new lap blanket.

Starting with this sorted fabric:




Here's what I ended up with after a day of sewing and ironing (and a rather sore/stiff neck):



I think that this proof of concept came out pretty well! Good stuff that came out of this baby quilt business:
  • I did notice that I was missing a couple of shades here & there, so I could go buy a few more pieces of fabric for the "real" quilt

  • I found out that I'm not the world's most consistent seamstress and will have to pay more attention to sewing straight lines consistently straight

  • I realized that buying the diagonally biased square interfacing is harder to correct (if you sew crooked :) so I'm going to do the "real" quilt "on the square"


Next steps = figure out what to use as a border & actually quilt this little lap blanket together.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Two cranes



(hee hee, made ya look! Yes, I know that there are more than two cranes on this lightswitch ... but I bet you counted them before I admitted that - eh? :)

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Monday, March 14, 2011

Yellow city scene

I've been having some trouble with the epoxy messing with the clarity of my pictures..... this used to be a city scape..... now it just looks like a yellow light switch:


Sunday, March 13, 2011

Rag rug - complete!

it's been a while since I posted anything here.... let's see if I can get this blog rolling again.... this will *also* require getting *ME* rolling again in the "actually makes/finishes art stuff" category.....

remember this post?

That was the half-finished rag rug.... which is now finished and living in my bathroom!

Sunday, January 02, 2011

New toy!!@!

Merry Christmas to meeeeee....



(This is going to take some practice and some getting used to ----- my first 10 attempted prints were......inconsistent, to say the least......)

Friday, December 31, 2010

Warm Windows --- 68% complete!

Another "not art, but definitely a project!" post:



These warm windows have been a long time coming....... and are not actually finished. Window on the left is held up by velcro and has no mechanism for being raised yet. I ran out of plastic rings but couldn't wait to see what both of them looked like when they were up! Window on the right is more done (and can be raised) but I was too tentative in some of my sewing because I didn't think about the mechanics & need to go back to sew the rings such that the thread holds ALL layers of the cloth together... My bedroom is sooooo dark at night now. It's nice!

Thursday, December 30, 2010

New coat hangers!

Not art, but definitely a project:





I'm so happy to have these on my door!

(Potential problem though = I'm not sure how much weight they can hold before ripping out of the, presumably hollow-core, door)

Saturday, November 13, 2010

New sidelight!

I got tired of the old, malfuncitoning, (semi)motion-sensing light at my side door, so a little more than a week ago I replaced it with a NEW light! It's so bright! And doesn't look at all like I thought it would on my house, but that's oK, I like it anyway. Thirty bucks well spent!


OLD light vs. NEW light

Thursday, November 11, 2010

A cement mushroom in progress...

Played with cement just a little bit before it got cold outside.... and now I have a 70% finished mushroom hanging out in my kitchen....

First, create a plain (if lop-sided) mushroom from a lightweight cement recipe that you just happen to have the ingredients lying around:



Begin attaching "reject" glass pieces around the edge with mortar:



Fill in the rest with pieces of broken and leftover kitchen tiles (these were really fun to smash in to smaller pieces with a hammer ---- though next time I think I need to break them in to even smaller pieces):



NEXT UP: grout the cracks & seal the mushroom...... someday when I get tired of having a half-finished mushroom in the corner of my kitchen :)

Sunday, November 07, 2010

Latvian Bazaar in Newtown Square PA

My dad and I went on a road trip to Pennsylvania this weekend. Here's a picture of what our booth at the Latvian bazaar in Newtown Square looked like: