Work in Progress: Hexie Quilt From Recycled Men's Dress Shirts

This is my slow quilt project. It's my first attempt at English Paper Piecing (EPP), which I was scared of but I LOVE it. It has a special feel to be doing all the piecing by hand, I love hand stitching and seeing the piece build slowly.

I also loooooove cutting shapes so this has been great fun. I probably have cut several hundred fabric hexagons.

I'm using hexagons with 1.5 inch sides. I found a template on Pinterest...which after using for some time I realized the sides of the hexagons in the template are not exactly the same length! Ack! This will teach me not to be cheap! Next time I will buy the pre-cut templates :( I have a workaround for now, I am just very careful to place all the hexies all facing the same direction. It's a little more of a pain though.

My process for this quilt so far has been:

1) Cut paper templates and also a paper "cutting template" with the seam allowance built in to use to cut the fabric around. I reused scrap printer paper which is nice because it is flexible enough to bend/fold when sewing pieces together.
2) Get used button-down shirts (more details below on shirt sources).
3) Deconstruct the shirts using Bonnie Hunter's awesome and efficient technique (discovered courtesy of Pinterest). This method helps you get the maximum usable quilt fabric out of each shirt.
4) Cut shirts into hexagons.
5) Pin fabric hexagon pieces to paper templates.
6) Baste fabric around (not to) the paper templates.
7) Stitch hexagons together as carefully and evenly as possible. Arranging them as you go is sorta fun to see the patterns. I'm keeping it somewhat random.
8) (This is fun too!) Pop out the paper hexagon once that piece is surrounded on all sides by other hexagons.

9) Rest hands. This has been a bit hard on my hands at times (Carpal Tunnel issues) so I can't do too much stitching at once.

I prefer using shirts that have some damage so that they're not wearable. I feel bad cutting up a nice shirt that could be donated to someone to wear. Although sometimes if the shirt is REALLY cheap and/or ugly I won't mind so much :) The larger the shirt, the better...it's more fabric. I love finding the ones that are like a men's 3X size. The shirts/fabric I'm using comes from a variety of sources:

• Flea markets (got a huge bag of shirts for $4!)
• Thrift stores. If you can find damaged shirts sometimes they will give you a bit of $ off the price...although it's going to charity anyway. Most of the stuff I have seen in thrift shops around here is in pretty good condition though.
• Shirting sample cards (for some variety). Can find online sometimes in large lots.
• Friends who had old dress shirts of their own around the house that were stained, holey, etc. This is my favorite! Because after it's done you will be able to say, "That blue hexagon is from Mark's work shirt! And that striped one is from my friend Ken!" So you get to keep a memory of your friends and family in the quilt.

More pictures soon!

Dog circle painting

A few weeks ago I heard from my friend Janel that she was having a bad day...my first thought was, maybe I can make her something to cheer her up. I was thinking of a circle painting and this one turned out to have a bit of a Mardi Gras feel to it.

Janel's favorite color: purple

Janel's favorite animal: puppies

Now I can't remember the last time (if ever) I tried to seriously draw a dog, let alone a puppy. Turns out I have no idea how dogs are shaped. Most of them came out real faily and either dumb looking or birdlike.

I got a bit frustrated at one point...hahahhaha


Yep. Dogs.

materials: pencil, Prang semi-moist watercolors on Canson Montval Watercolor Block, Faber-Castell PITT artist pen (brush) in #177.

Penguin paintings in watercolor

After doing the fox circle paintings, I wanted to do something similar with penguins...



















I think these also came out pretty cute :)  I love baby penguins...they're all fluffy and awkward. Here are my sketches beforehand:

 Some detail:






















I think I prefer this look for the sky:

Yay penguins!

ZOMBIEPLATE

Here's another pottery piece I painted recently...this one was a special request by my friend Ryan. I'd never drawn a zombie before so I wasn't sure how it would turn out but I FRIGGIN LOVE IT. Definitely one of my best pieces :)

My favorite part? The dead fish carcass!
   

Finishing old projects: decoupage boxes

Recently I've been doing a lot of cleaning projects...and in the process, I found a bunch of old craft projects in need of finishing. Last night I knocked out two decoupage pieces: a set of drawers that would make a great jewelry box, and a shadowbox frame (courtesy of IKEA, of course).

I've been using a crap abridged illustrated copy of The Mutiny on Board HMS Bounty that I cut up and glue in pieces...for these two projects I was using just the text, no illustrated pages.

I love the look of black & white lately and have been wearing a lot of black/white/gray...no surprise that this theme continues here. It's sort of a wintry look :P

Sometimes I like to collage the book pages in small pieces for a patchwork effect, but for the drawers on this I wanted to use one solid piece of text...which was a pain in the butt (particularly with the little drawer knobs), but I like how it turned out.

More book ruining later, perhaps...

materials: IKEA wooden shadowbox frame, wooden mini dresser, black acrylic craft paint, books, Plaid Royal Coat Decoupage Finish in 1401 Clear.

PYOP (Paint Your Own Pottery) ladybug jewelry box

Things have been pretty busy--I'm studying for an exam, switching to a new office at work, and how does the laundry keep piling up? In between all the craziness I did find some time to go paint pottery with Juli at The Pottery Stop. Thursday is ladies night so gals get 20% off the price of the pottery, and you can bring your own wine or beer.

I wanted to make another jewelry box since the last one with the butterfly turned out so good...I wanted a similar look and feel like they were part of a set. I used my usual wax resist technique to give it that stained glass look. On this one I did a ladybug with some leaves and flowers. It turned out so pretty!

On the bottom I don't like to just put my initials (boring!) so I painted a little bee picture with them...get it...bzzzzz...

 

 

 

 

Next time: PYOP coasters!

Custom owl orders

I recently had two fun custom orders of my embroidered felt owl ornaments!

The first was an etsy order for 10 pink and brown owls for a baby shower--what a cute idea! The owls are great for decorating, and can then be given as favors to attendees after the party.

I did a bunch of color variations. I actually cut out 19 owls to give the customer a chance to pick which combinations she liked best.

 

 

Here are the finished owls in the color combinations she selected.

So cute!

 

The second order was a set of blue owls for my friend Mary (they were a gift for her daughter who goes to UNC). It was Mary's idea to do them in her daughter's college colors...also very cute!

 

 

I love doing custom orders! Sometimes customers have great ideas for color combinations or uses I hadn't thought of yet :) Plus I love making these owls, they are a lot of fun to sew.

materials: DMC, eco felt, grosgrain ribbon, thread, polyester quilt batting

PYOP (Paint Your Own Pottery) Part 4

My friend Angie was in town this week and she is also crafty so we spent an afternoon at The Pottery Stop. I finished two pieces that came out pretty darn cute, if I do say so myself! Angie had never tried PYOP before and she had a great time and may be hooked on it too :) And her piece came out amazing!

Angie painted this lovely bowl (as part of a vertical spoon rest) with a Tuscan countryside scene.

 

I just love the koi on the inside of the bowl, what a beautiful touch! Angie has really meticulous attention to detail which paid off here, especially since the bowl is actually quite small (about 4 inches in diameter). It looks awesome.

 

This time I thought to take "before" photos of my pieces...partly to show the difference, and partly to remember what paint colors I used and how they looked before they were fired. I tend to use blues that are too dark and hide the black outlines and don't want to make that mistake on my next one.

 

Here's my three-section tray, with a ladybug, bird, and dragonfly. Before:

 

 

And after:

The ladybug was my favorite section on this one once it was fired. See what I mean about the overly dark blue sky in the other sections?

 

I also decided to paint a cute little design on the back.

 

After I finished this piece, I had some extra time while waiting for Angie to paint her tiny trees, etc. So I started a new tray (wavy sushi plate) with one of my favorite little scenes that I've painted in watercolor and other media before...whaley!

My little whale scene before:

 

 

And after being fired:

 

 

I love how bright all the colors turned out! And I did a little bit of a dotted texture detail in the coral, which came out better than expected. I added a silly little chicken legs box signature design on the back for fun:

 

 

We really had a great, relaxing day painting our pottery! What a nice way to spend the day with a friend :) And then picking up our pottery pieces was like a surprise present all over again, to see how they turned out!

PYOP (Paint Your Own Pottery) Part 3

I went back to pick up my latest pottery piece from The Pottery Stop and was sort of surprised with the results. The vase turned out great on some sides...on others the design did not come out quite as I intended...but overall it was a pretty successful experiment!

 

The side with the red bird is the one I'm happiest with. Even though the branch near the top didn't come out quite as visible as I would have liked (I underestimated the darkness of the dark blue I used for the top), it looks pretty close to what I had in mind. The birdie is so fat and cute!

 

 

Here are some of the other views...

 

I'm not thrilled with how the side with the monarch butterfly below turned out...I think I was rushing to finish on the leaves and they didn't come out quite right.

 

The colors on the leaf were not what I was expecting for some reason! Haha. Otherwise I am happy with the dragonfly panel though. 

 

 

This side has a bird on it but you can barely see the top because I used too dark of a background, unfortunately. Otherwise it looks really pretty...sigh.

Vase bottom...I guess it got a little scratched in transit to the kiln?

Overall the vase was sort of an ambitious project for a beginner at PYOP so I'm fairly pleased with it...and ok with the slightly imperfect results. Hey, I can always go back and do it again! It was lots of fun to work on :) What a great crafty activity to do with friends!

Paint your own pottery, Part 2

Brie and I went back to The Pottery Stop on Friday and finished up our new pieces (a rectangular vase in my case). Also,  we picked up the pieces that had been fired the week before and they came out AWESOME. I friggin love mine, it turned out pretty much exactly how I pictured it.

 

 

  

 

 

First I painted the jewelry box all black for a base coat. Then I used a diagram of a butterfly I googled to figure out what the wings should look like, and painted the outline on  with wax resist. I added some leaves to the top and while waiting for it to dry, painted a ribbon of flowers and leaves on the bottom piece using the wax resist. After that it was just a matter of coloring it in with paints.

 

Such a cool and unique piece, I'm so pleased with how it turned out!  It really has the stained glass feel I was going for. Yay!

 

Can't wait to pick up my vase next weekend and see how that turned out too :)