Fabric bowls gone wild!

I have taken my fabric bowls to a whole new level, embellishments!!

The first bowl was a Halloween bowl with hand sewn beads and that crazy eyelash yarn (I finally found a use for it!)

The second bowl isn't finished yet but it's a pumpkin bowl with a lid.  I created the stem out of creative paper clay but haven't painted it yet.  The white piece of paper is the template for the leaves that I drew.  It will be cut out of olive green velvet and this weekend I hope to embroider the veins of the leaf and add sead beads.

My "wedding basket".  Again not quite finished because I think it needs more pearls and sequins but I'm thinking about customizing these for brides.  If your colors are teal or burgundy I could incorporate those colors into the basket as well.  It would sit on the table with the gifts to hold wedding cards.

Then I decided that it would be fun to sew beads between the fabric rings.  My inspiration was these wooden painted beads I got in Cozumel, Mexico on my honeymoon.  I then looked through my stash and found this butterfly fabric, perfect!  Again not quite finished because I'm going to continue upwards and do a few more rings.

Another Felt and Fabric Applique Piece

Under The Sea felt and fabric applique and embroidery is finally finished, hooray!!

To remind you, this was a photo of it almost completed but I still had to finish the embroidery inside the seaweed plus add more beads and shells:

I added little red pearls to the red fabric coral (and black beads to the fishes eyes).

See if you can find five real seashells:

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I also added more blue beads to the two blue waves at the top; and if you look closely I used green AND blue metallic thread for the seaweed embroidery.

This is now hanging in my studio space (and is for sale) at Olde Towne Art in Portsmouth, VA.  Under The Sea measures 20" X 24"

"Fixing Her Hair"

While on Pinterest I came across this absolutely beautiful watercolor of a ballerina.  I think what caught my eye was that it wasn't a normal ballerina pose.  The artist, Inslee Haynes, named it Tutu, Aerial View and I just fell in love!  This became my inspiration piece for my first art quilt. Please visit her blog The Sketch Book so you may learn more about this talented artist.

So the first thing I needed to do was to graph the image and enlarge it.

Next I traced the pattern and cut out the pieces:

From there I found fabric for the skirt and fused it onto a piece of light green flannel.  I thought about changing the colors to pinks but then decided that greens and blues (the original colors the artist used) were more interesting.

I then stitched green-with-gold-sparkle tulle into the center to make it look more like a tutu:

From there I decided that it now needed more blue so I cut strips of shimmery blue tulle and added them around the skirt:

It still needed more "bling" so I hand stitched blue and green beads onto the blue strips:

Her body was felt applique and her hair was "doll hair" found at my local craft store:

I picked my fabrics for my boarders:

And then quilted everything except her body and her tutu:

Fixing Her Hair is now hanging (and is for sale) at Olde Towne Art in Portsmouth, VA 

Doing a lot of hand sewing these days

I think the reason why I haven't posted in a while is because hand sewing takes awhile!  I am still in love with felt and fabric applique and this is what I am now doing most nights after my boys go to bed. 

I haven't worked on this project much more except for sewing blue beads into the water pattern and a few pearls into the rocks and shells at teh bottom.  As you can tell I still haven't finished the metallic green embroidery work in the the coral.

The reason why I haven't finished my underwater project is because I've been spending time In My Flower Garden.  Please don't be fooled, I don't have a green thumb... I've been creating a felt garden.  This was the the beginning stage:

I mount my finished pieces on stretched canvas (like I did with Gypsy Love) so that's what the white chalk outline is for.  This piece will eventually measure 8" X 10".

If you have been reading this blog for a while you know how much I love buttons and painting on them.  So after I cut out these designs I found 5 of my painted buttons that I thought went pretty well with the colors of felt I had chosen.  Then... let the hand sewing and embroidery (and bead work) begin!!

And this is my newest piece I finished a few days ago.  In My Flower Garden.

Close up of details:

And right now I would get back to my underwater felt applique but I found this adorable fabric the other day that I knew immediately what I was going to do with it.  First it involved making a 40" X 12" frame, buy felt to cover the frame then start appliqueing!
The cat laying on the branch on the left hand side caught my eye in the store.  Again if you see the white chalk lines, this is where the felt will be wrapped around the canvas.

I have also added 7 felt leaves to fill it in and to have fun doing bead work on them later.  Inspiration will be taken directly from the leaves in In My Flower Garden.  The two dark leaves are purple not black as they appear.

The only work I've done on this piece so far, besides sewing everything down, is to start sewing wooden beads onto the branch but I have lots more to go so stay tuned!

Not a new endeavor but putting creative thoughts together

My cousin Susan has always been intrigued by the thought process of my ideas, which I've never paid attention to, but am now more keenly aware of.  So just for Susan I'm going to write down the steps that lead me to today's blog post.

1.  Quilt convention in February ---> bought wool felt pattern packet to make a candle mat

2.  Wool Felt ---> Craft Felt ---> searched for an old project I had started months ago

3.  Small project became large project with beads and sequins and embroidery
     (See previous post called Gypsy Love)

4.  What else could I do with felt? ---> Searched for more felt project books online

5. Found my next endeavor, making little people!

This may be my cheapest project yet! 
All I need are pipe cleaners (now called chenille stems) from my kids craft box. 
Little felt pieces -  .30 cents a sheet 
Embroidery floss - have tons of from my cross stitch days
Markers for the face - who doesn't have a marker laying around!
Wooden balls for the head - 3.00 for a huge bag
And the last thing I need is time - PRICELESS!

First you have to measure and bend the pipe cleaners according to what size doll you want.  Her patterns range from a 1 1/2" doll to 4".  I'm going to start with the 4" size because I plan to do a lot of decorating on their jackets and skirts.  A good hands-on activity to do at night while watching tv is wrapping the pipe cleaners.  These are my first five that I will be "dressing" in the next few days:

The only thing I don't like about the little figures in the book are the way the faces are drawn so mine will be be getting a face lift plus more sequins and no acorn hats.

Here are some pictures from the book:

I purposely cut off the head in this picture so you could see the detail of the clothes:

I'm not sure I'll make any fairies but with some pink tulle I may design a ballerina

My husband and boys are out of town today so I may actually find some time to sit down and dress my little people.  But we have a huge art festival coming into town tomorrow (right near my art gallery) so I'm trying to finish up six of my fabric bowls for my studio too.  Oh the life of an artist... I LOVE IT!

Gypsy Love

I like deadlines because it makes me finish projects like the one I wrote about in the previous post.  I did end up finishing my felt applique in time for the show AND I decided to put a price tag on it too.  When I finished it, and mounted it on a stretched canvas, I still felt like it lacked something... more beads!  So I added the tassels at the bottom, again all hand strung.

Close-up of bead work:

Details, details:

Felt and Fabric Applique

Lately I've been creating for the art gallery but I've decided to take a break from that and create something for myself.  Eight months ago I started a felt applique project because I was inspired by something I saw on the internet. This is a picture of the beginning stages: 

To read my first post on this project and to see photos of my inspiration piece please go to:
 http://kimagination1.blogspot.com/search/label/Felt
I love the way this piece is coming along (since I rediscovered it) but how do I hang it?  This piece only measures 8 1/2" X 11" so what I decided to do was to buy a huge piece of felt, sew this to that, extend the design and mount it onto canvas.  It isn't complete yet but here's a sneek peek at how it's going:

This has inspired me to try fabric applique but still using felt as my background.  I like bright colors so my first idea was to do an underwater theme with bright coral and fish. I knew I was going to create the coral out of felt then I wanted to find fish fabric.  I've never appliqued before but I remember watching my mom create a beautiful wall hanging when we went to England in 2000.  (What a great idea for a future post huh mom?)  It seemed easy enough but time consuming because it was very tedius.  I love hand stitching now so I've checked out a few books at the library and bought a few online on applique and I get the general idea but I'm not one to follow a pattern so here is a sneek peek at underwater felt piece:

The embroidery floss in the coral is metalic green and really pops but the picture doesn't do it justice.  This piece isn't finished yet because I haven't added any beads yet but I have beautiful blue ones to add to the water (and little black eyes for the fish, etc.)

If I finish them by next Thursday they may be in our new gallery show starting Friday and I stress the word maybe.

I love when I am inspired by another artist

And this happened right before we moved so I had to put my ideas on the back burner for a time.

I have been a member of Flickr for about four years now and I have been inspired by one of my contacts.  Her name is Kerrin and she lives in Australia.  She does the most beautiful things with felt, beads and sequins I've ever seen!  I have asked for her permission to post some of her artwork on my blog so you can get a true sense of what she does.  This one is called Strawberry Sundae Wall Art:



Dream Fragments Close Up 4:



Terrain - Felt Textile Art:



I wish I could post a lot more photos but I just asked permission for these three.  On Flickr she calls herself A Little Bit of Just Because and if you click on her name it will take you directly to the rest of her beautiful work.

I know mine won't be half as good as hers but like my husband always says "Kim, if you have the desire to do something you won't let anything stand in your way" so here I go:

The first thing I did was to pick my colors (I choose 4) and decided which of the four I wanted as my background color.  Next I cut random designs from the other three colors and hand sewed them on.  Then I cut three different size circles from each color.  I didn't need a template I just used the lid from a spice jar.  If you look around your house you will be amazed at how many circular things you can find to trace... I'm thrifty like that.  

 I then started playing around with the colors and shapes of the circles and started laying them on my design.  I then hand stitched the smallest circle to the next size up and so on.  I then stitched the three piece circle to the background.

I haven't gotten to the really fun part of sewing the beads on it yet but I wanted to thank Kerrin for waking up another creative side in me that I didn't know I had.

This is a picture of how it looks today as I'm typing.  I've added a few more circles but it's still not ready for beads yet.  Please stay tuned because I'm in love with this project.