Postcard Art

Little Bird

The Sky at Night

A local gallery holds a Postcard Art Show every February.  I have never entered before-intimidated by the small size.  This year I decided to give it a go and these are what I came up with.  Fun! 

Little Bird began as a block print on silk.  I added a wash of yellow and orange beads to the background, then fused the back, and applied the fused binding.  I am pleased with the hanging bracket-a twig, wire and beads.

The Sky at Night began with a piece of hand-dyed fabric.  I sewed lines of hand stitching across the cloth, gathered it as tightly as I could, then imersed it in dye.  The patterning is very subtle but once stitched and beaded I think it is effective.  I beaded a lacey border onto the fused binding then made the hanging wire by stringing beads on Aculon and making loops at the end for sewing it onto the quilt with crimp beads.

The show is at Emerald Island Framing and Gallery, with an opening reception on Friday evening.

Valentines

I have not been idle even though I have not posted in months.  I don't know exactly why I am doing this anyway.  I do have a couple of larger pieces in the works, but most recently I have been working on these little valentine quilts.  I carved the stamps and played around with the various paints that I have.  I really was surprised at how the paints layered-sometimes the first paint acting as a mask to subsequent layers.  I added some beads, fused a quote on the back, and applied a fast and dirty fused binding that I am not totally satisfied with but these are valentines, not great works of art.  Some day one of my grandkids will open a box full of all these silly things that I have made for them over the years and call to their brothers and sisters, "Hey, come see what I found!  Can you believe that crazy old Grandma made all this stuff."

Part of the exercise was to test my new sewing machine.  When I was in Anchorage for New Years I purchased a Bernina 440 QE. I have waited years for this.  I knew that I needed a Bernina but could never justify the expense before now.   I really have been to busy to play with it much-I have felt very virtuous that I have been tending to business rather than playing!  This project gave me a chance to play around with the stitch regulator.  It will take a while to become accustom to using that.  I knew that I loved my machine when I start using different metallic threads and she didn't eat them!

Anyway,  Happy Valentines Day to all of my friends.