Friday Face Off

Welcome to the Friday FaceOff for this week.   I will start with a confession.  I have been sick with a mystery bug (not covid, I tested.)  When I feel badly it is difficult to create.   The spirit is willing but the body is resistant.    

Luckily I had put together this face a week or so ago and never have shown it.    My plan was to use up some almost useless scraps for as much of it as possible.  None of these pieces had fusible on the back of them.  Rather,  I layered a piece of batting under a sheet of Steam-a-Seam 2.  This fusible is sticky making it easy to work this way.  Of course I went about it the WRONG way.  I created the face first and then added the background.  That meant that when a piece touched the face, the edges had to be tucked under the edges of the face.  
There was a bit of careful lifting to be sure that the fabrics didn't fray.  

Aunt Lucille

Looking at the photo, I can see that this is not quite finished.  The eyes are lacking pupils and highlights. Ah well, that will be an easy fix as I draw in the pupils with a black sharpie and then use a spot of white paint for the highlight.  If  I felt better, I would just go add it and take a new photo. 
Hopefully I can do that and share the corrected version in a few days. 

__________________

I couldn't stand not fixing it.  So here is the face with the eyes finished. It amazes me how much that tiny bit adds a spark of life to the face. 

I am linking up with  DVArtist for the Friday FaceOff.

  Clicking the link will take you to her blog.  It is great fun

 to see how various people interpret the challenge.

Until Next Time,  

Stay Creative 

Comments are welcomed. I will reply when possible. Of course if you are a "No Reply Blogger"- I can not reply. Links in comments will result in the entire comment being deleted.

Nebraska, Birds and Flowers?

What a week this has been!  I had an opportunity to fly to Nebraska on Monday.  What is in Nebraska? you say.  Well it happens to be home to a product I use a lot. The AccuQuilt company is based in Fremont, NE.  So I got to take a tour of the company and met some wonderful people there.  I met everyone from the secretaries, to customer service, to IT (information technology -aka computer) folks, to the CEO and CFO of the company and others.  Today's post will not have pictures from that tour or even from the Nebraska trip. (Yes this part is a teaser for a future post.) 


While I was gone I did get a new die for my Go! cutter.  I got the cute little GO! bird.  I told a dear friend about it and she asked if I would put fusible on some scraps and cut some birds for her.  You bet I would! 

I told you that they are cute!  If you fold the fabric so that part is face up and part is face down, you get birds that face both directions. 
So after I cut these I said, now what to do with the scraps. Good fabric, good fusible - I am NOT throwing it away. 
Here are what the pieces looked like.

There are some nice pieces left.  So I said "What die has smaller pieces that I can layer these over and get extra play pieces from?"
Oooh...the Daisy die is a sure winner for that. 

Kinda ignore my sloppy outlining of the shapes on the daisy die. 


I also had some purple batik scraps with fusible.  So I cut these pieces.

Circles and petals - which may become something else altogether once I start playing fabric artist.  Some of the petals are not perfect as the pieces didn't quite cover the shapes.  Guess what- all leaves and petals in nature aren't perfect either!


There was one larger piece of blue left. But I saw possibilities if I didn't cut it with the die -so for now it looks like this.  I drew some wobbly lines on it with the photo editor. 

The black outline could be a head and torso. The aqua outline could be an urn or vase. So I will see if that plays into my plans when I start putting the "puzzles" together.  I am leaving the option open. 


There were some other small scraps too. I suppose most people would throw them in the trash.  But I used some very small pieces on the last fused piece I did.  So I am saving these:

I already see some little blue tree branches.... 


Reminder - stay open to creativity.  Look for unexpected shapes that delight your eyes.  Play! Create! Love life!


Oh yes...don't forget to sign up for AccuQuilt emails and get 22 free patterns. Click the picture below

Start Me Up

The play with the fusible applique cat has sparked an idea.  A while back, I read a book Simply Stunning Woven Quilts by Anna Faustino. I kept thinking that I would try the techniques in the book -but I never did. 
Since the play sparked my "why not just try it" mode, I took some batik fabric and tried it my way.  I did not reference the book at all since, although I own it, it wasn't close at hand. 
I put fusible on two pieces of fabric, then did the cutting and weaving. Then I fused it all to a piece of cotton batting. 
Wanna see?  Of course you do. 

Woven Batik Background

This will be the start of a fun applique piece. I plan to redo the Silly Play Saturday cat design.  However, I will make it a bit more fun and whimsical.  Several people thought the yellow cloud was blonde hair - those comments inspired me. Thank you! Your comments mean more than you know at times.  And you never know, I might do a giveaway based on comments made in the past!
Did you do anything fun this weekend?  Oh, and what do you think of the woven background?


If you don't hear from me for a couple of days - fear not - something fun is going to be going on.  (((grin))) I will tell you later!

Silly Play Saturday - Lessons Learned

Sometimes it is great to just play. So for fun  - to let my inner child play - I took some fusible web and a few pieces of scrap that I thought would probably never be used and played. 


I fused the scraps to a piece of Wonder Under (double sided fusible) and let it cool.  *Lesson1: it is easier to fuse a full piece of fabric than it is loose pieces.  


Then I sat down with my scissors and started cutting. I tried to do a circle - not exactly round  *Lesson 2: for perfect circles use the AccuQuilt GO! cutter and the circle die. 


Hmm... this not so round circle reminds me of a cat  - a particular storybook cat. 


I cut more pieces and made more mistakes *Lesson 3: making mistakes is a part of learning. 


I put together a silly storybook picture and took it (carefully) back to the ironing board.  I fused it.  See how silly:

The yellow cloud behind his head is just there to add contrast. 


Laura Wasilowski suggests always using hand dyed fabric.  I didn't have any in the scraps I was using.  Had I had some for the background, here is what it may have looked like:

It would definitely have made an improvement. (and the yellow cloud would have been totally unnecessary!) Maybe I will keep this piece and try using paint and textile medium to "dye" the background. 

Do you ever just play? If you do, good for you.  If you don't, you should try it.  It opens doors in your creative mind. 

Flutter by my Butterflies

The most comments on the previous post said to add the butterflies.  So I did some more fusible applique to make the butterflies.  They seemed to get lost in the design more than I liked, so I went multimedia on this piece.  
I took the piece to my painting area and got paint and fabric medium. I used the paint to change the color and tones of the butterflies.  What you can't see in the picture is that I added some paint that shimmers and sparkles in with the colored paint. This will be a fun wall hanging.  

Monet's Garden with flowers and butterflies.

Now, all I need to do is back it, quilt it and add a hanging sleeve. 

My Go! has arrived! Happy cutting!

I got a call that my big package had arrived.  So I took off work a bit early.  Actually two packages had arrived. One of them I had already tracked and knew it was at my door.  But for the GO! cutter I didn't have tracking info. So I had someone watching and waiting to call me when  a box arrived with the word ACCUQUILT on the side.
I got there and saw this box (which I sat in my recliner for the photo)

Inside this box was THIS Box!

And you can tell  how I felt about it:

 HAPPY!

The other box I didn't take photos of.  Inside it were some extra dies I had ordered - because I am impatient!

The dies are the Star cutter, 2 1/2 inch strip cutter and 5 inch square cutter. 

I cut some squares, then I ironed some fusible on the back of a contrasting fabric and cut some stars. 

I ironed the stars on the squares like this:

All I need to do is sew around the edges and these are ready to piece into something!  How fun is that????

I am thinking red strips around the blocks for a Fourth of  July table runner.  Does that sound good to you? 

I have not used the strip cutter yet..but I will soon enough. 

Now, I have to tell on myself.  I boo booed.  Oh, yes I do make mistakes.  But you see I don't care if you laugh at me, because I am laughing too.  And I want you to learn from my mistakes. 

I used MistyFuse as the fusible. (no I did NOT iron it to my iron!)  I used the teflon sheet to fuse so I could just peel it off and be ready to cut.  But I fan folded the fabric.  Oooops.   The pressure from running the fusible to fusible through the Go! caused it to meld together. Not gonna do that again. Luckily I still had some fabric with MistyFuse on it.  So I took some wax paper and layered it with the fabric. That put the fusible to an relatively non-stick surface. I rolled it through and lifted the mat.  Lovely stars with wax paper backings. Did I goof again?!??!?!?   Ha nope, it peeled off easily.  Lesson learned. And you see the results above. 

The largest star will fit on a 5 inch square but I am wondering if I will catch the points in the seam allowances. The two smaller stars go perfectly on he 5 inch square and the smallest would work on the 4 1/2 inch that comes with the Go! 

Okay.  So now I am thinking I need hearts and circles and...ALL the other dies they make for the Go!  And after seeing what Barb has done with the tumbler die, I really want it too. Oh yeah, and the tumbler quilt on the box just feeds that desire. 

First day, first use rating of the Accuquilt Go! ---Two thumbs WAAAAAY Up!