Artist Inspiration!

I just found the BEST blog.

Brittney Lee of California makes papercuts (and other equally awesome stuff)!

Just a couple of examples of her work:

From an Edward Scissorhands piece

This one's part of "The Introduction to the Owlry". LOVE IT.

I WISH I could make papercuts like this! I made some for wedding party invitations but they were child's play compared to this lovely lady's work.

So scurry, scamper over to "The Art of Brittney Lee" and be inspired... or possibly just fall in love.

Cheers!

Red

Zoom-Zoom

I did something a little different the other day. I tried my hand at still-life and I sketched one of our motorcycles. I haven't attempted motor vehicles in years. There's something about the inherent symmetry of them that I can't capture.

I worked on this for probably close to an hour.

I would say I did pretty damn good.

I guess I just need to practice more :)

Cheers,

Red

How I did it:

Pencil and paper

Christmas Revisited: Snow Bunny

Last Christmas I made a knitted hat and scarf for AV's sister.

Pretty standard winterwear :D

The hat is a beenie style and the scarf is a super long skinny scarf, maybe five feet long?

Cheers,
Red



How I did it:
Find some yarn! I used the super cheap tie-dyed acrylic kind.
     Scarf - knit two, pearl two, repeat 4x. Continue to your desidred length
     Hat - follow the pattern in this excellent book!


I STILL cannot figure out how to get my photos to stop getting rotated TT_TT

Quilting Class: Grandma-tastic

There is a really nice quilting store in the city AV works. I've been in it a few times (approximately as many times as I have been in that city...) and I've been wanting to take a class there. They do a table runner class which I'd really like to do but there isn't one scheduled until next month. So instead I decided to do the "Take 5 Quilt" class. It's a set of three, three hour classes. So today, I went to my first quilting class!

I really loved it, but I do feel a bit... old... now. In the three and a half hours I was there, I was by far the youngest person in the store... by like fifty years. At a few points some younger people came in, but only because they were visting/talking to the store owner who was their grandmother/mother. So, as the stereotype would suggest, quilting is for grandmas.

Any way... When I got to the store I had to pick out 5 fabrics to make the main part of my quilt. I picked different blue/green/purple batiks in the hope that my quilt would look a bit like water. We shall see...

The class was taught by the owner of the store, and since the other woman who was going to attend was unable today, I got private lessons! I learned how to cut out squares of fabric today. The way she showed me is so much easier than how I would have done it, she had me fold the fabric twice then cut instead of trying to do each block individually. CRAZY!

After I got all my pieces cut, we laid them out and started to make the bigger quilt squares.

Some pieces laid out at the quilt shop

Next I made up all the big squares which will make up the quilt, twenty in all.

All my blocks laid out!

Now I have to decide how to set them out for the whole quilt. The directions specify which way to put them out but I'm not sure if I want to do it that way. I'd hate to spend all this time on something I won't like.

This is how the directions specify the blocks.

But maybe turn them around a bit more?

I want to have more of a "wild" look I think, since I want it to be a bit like water. I'll just have to keep playing around. Next week I'll be making the rows and then connecting them into the big square for the center of the quilt.

Exciting!

Cheers,

Red

Learning new skills!

I just signed up for a quilting class. It'll be somewhat expensive, but I'm not nearly as good at learning from books as I am learning in a class/hands-on setting.

I am very excited!!

Cheers,
Red