Christmas Projects

I have been busy working on Christmas stuff, presents I am sewing for my family, bags to wrap those presents in, and as you see above a tag to identify who the gift is for.

I belong to several Yahoo groups and on one of them there has been a lot of discussion about making fabric bags to wrap Christmas presents in. They are reusable, and over time cheaper then buying wrapping paper. I have a stash (just a small one) of Christmas fabrics and almost no Christmas wrapping paper left from past years, so I decided that I would make bags this year to wrap my gifts in. I can either leave them with my Chicago relatives for them to use next year, or I can bring them home and reuse them myself next year. They are so easy to  make that I have made around 9 or 10. They are just flat strips of fabric (I have been using fat quarters, or half yards) folded in half, sew along the bottom, sew up the side, leave a gap in the side sewing about 1 1/2 inches from the top which is about 3/4 inch long. Then fold down the top on the inside and stitch it down to make a casing for a ribbon or whatever you want to use to close the bags.  See photographs below for some of my bags and one "wrapped" gift.

The top image is the name tag I created for these wrapped gifts to indicate who they go to. I used Adobe Illustrator to design the tag, and stopped when I liked it. They are printed on Bristol board so are heavy and shouldn't tear off before Christmas morning. I used a small hole punch to create the hole that I can pass the ribbon tie through. Not very fancy but I think they look as nice as some of the sticky tags that can be purchased. They were sort of a pia to print, the printer doesn't really like the heavy Bristol board but I managed to get enough printed that I should be all set.

I have decided to join another Sketchbook Challenge for 2011. This is a blog created by artists on the Quiltart list who will post a monthly theme that artists who are following along will use to create pages in their Sketchbooks and then post to their blogs or to I think a Flicker account. Since I don't have a flicker account I will probably just post to this blog.  I should get a new sketchbook for this project, but will probably wait until after Christmas to do so. Anyway visitors to my blog should notice the new block identifying my blog as a participant in the Challenge.

I have also been attempting to make a Facebook page for Katwalk Designs, not sure I have succeed with that or who I should ask to "like" it. But it is a way for people to link to me on Facebook without becoming Friends and being subjected to all my game activities.  I will explore this a bit further next year.

Enough for today, per usual comments are always welcome I am always interested in hearing what my visitors have to say.

December 6th Drawing Session

Above is last nights drawing. I am semi pleased with it, I don't think she looks like she is lounging on the sofa in my drawing, not quite sure where I went wrong, because other wise I think the figure works. I had a hard time with her face last night, it was slightly angled away from me which makes it a bit of a tricky view. That's OK, I need the practice and I think in the end I managed to get it right. I also had issues with the hands as usual. However I think the foot works as a foot, it might be a bit large but otherwise is OK. This isn't the best photograph, I will have to try and get a better one at some point. We have sun today but I waited a bit too long to go out to do the photograph so had lost the sun on the front porch and had to lighten the photograph in Photoshop.

We had a smaller group last night then we have had for the past couple of weeks, though it ended up being larger then it looked like it was going to be as folks dribbled in. In the end we actually had six artists (including Scott), though when the session started there was only 3 artists and the model.

Because I had a few issues with the drawing I didn't do any pen work last night. But I thought you might like to see two photographs that I made yesterday. When I was out on the porch photographing the finished challenge quilt there was a squirrel in a tree making loud chattering sounds. Because the squirrel was basically on the same level that I was I took the opportunity to photograph it. See the photo below.

 After a making a few photographs I glanced down into the street to see what the fuss was all about. A cat had paused in the middle of the street and was looking up at the squirrel. Obviously the squirrel felt the cat was a danger and was warning the neighborhood.  I managed to get this single photograph before the cat took off across the street.

Both photos are cropped but there are no other manipulations. That is it for today. Comments are always welcome.

FFFC # 50 - Winter Crows

Above is my quilt for the FFFC October Challenge which was Challenge #51. The challenge was to write or select a Haiku poem and then create a quilt to illustrate the poem. I made a pretty liberal interpretation of the poem I selected. My poem was written by Basho, a famous Japanese poet.

A Desolate Scene

The end of autumn

And some crows

Perched upon a withered branch.

I found this poem in a book which I have had since childhood called Little Pictures of Japan. The book is mainly illustrated poems, some Haiku but some not, with a few short stories, mainly folk tales from Japan.

Before I even started sketching this design I went looking for reference photographs. Some of trees I found in photos I have been making over the past few years. For the crows I found several different photos on-line that I combined to create my drawings.

Below is the drawing I ended up with for the branch that the birds would be "sitting" on. Though I decided that one crow wouldn't be sitting, but coming in for a landing. I fell in love with the landing crow image and just had to use it.

The next image is a composite of 4 in-process photographs that I took of the making of this quilt. First is the layered background fabric with the tree limb templates laying on top. The background fabric is from a large piece of Skydye fabric that I had in my stash. Probably purchased at Houston Quilt Festival several years ago, and it was the perfect fabric for this quilt.

The next image shows the tree branch templates ironed onto the grey batik I used for the tree branch. The next image is of the top after I had machine appliqued the branch and the crow images to the top. The last image shows the top after I had done the machine quilting, but before I finished the hand embroidery/embellishments to add the crow legs and feet, and to quilt the crow bodies to the background. I used pearl cotton for those embellishments and King Tut quilting thread to quilt the background. The tree branches are not quilted which gives them a sort of 3-D look since they puff up a bit. My next step was to add the binding and sew that down. Then I added the 3 dried leaves and the branch that the leaves were attached to. This branch was done using pearl cotton. The leaves were machine stitched down.


There was an additional step that I don't have any pictures of, that was adding shading to the tree branches using Shiva paint sticks. The shading was done after I had attached the fabric to the background but before I attached the crows. I used a stiff stencil brush and was careful to not get the paint on the background fabric. The paint was allowed to dry for a couple of days then I heat set it with a hot iron. The crow fabric is actually the back side of some black print fabrics that I had in the stash. I didn't want the visual distraction that the print side would have given so I used the back.

At this point I am not sure how I feel about it, I am just happy that it is done. I am sure that in a few days I will have some ideas of things I should have changed. In the meantime comments are welcome.