tiny worlds class

Make your own Tiny World! February 28, 10am at my house. (Boston area) $60 includes everything but the teacup- you can bring your own. Limited to 8 people.

Email me at mimik@pobox.com to sign up or for more information.

a crazy kind of week

let me see. We had loads of snow- that was last Sunday. I love it when it snows like this- it looks like cotton balls in the azalea bush.

The snow made for lots of icicles on every house-

There was the wonderful day of the inauguration. I loved watching it on TV and then a neighbor had a celebratory tea- such fun. The day took a turn though- a bit before 5 I got a call that my son had cut his hand at work and the rest of the evening was spent doing the adrenaline mom thing. Table saw + finger= bad combination. It really wasn’t bad but I totally freaked. My husband took him to the ER. I am such a wimp. I couldn’t even bear to hear him describe what happened. So now I will probably always remember that as part of Obama’s inauguration.

And, what else? I have been working very hard on a project that you’ll know about in a few weeks- so that is boring to blog about. I am planning to do a class on tiny worlds but have been too busy with that other project to post the info. I will try to do that tomorrow. And, lastly, I am going to New York City (and Brooklyn) next week- Wed. 1/28 to Saturday. Got any great ideas for what I should do or see?  I am planning to go to this embroidery show. And, if anyone is interested, I am always up for a meet-up.

the rest of the houses

that I’ve finished-

this one is on it’s way to Texas-

I had some thrift store fun today- a bag of woolies and more teacups. The local Goodwill makes me crazy because they separate the cups and saucers, so I find a perfect cup but the saucer is nowhere to be found- arg! But, I managed to find 5 which is actually pretty great.

I am thinking I might teach a class on making these tiny worlds- maybe at the end of Februaryish?  Are you local to Boston?  Would you be interested? Leave a comment or send an email- I am guaging interest at this point.

starting the new year right

2009 isn’t even one week old yet, but so far it’s a good one! On Sunday I invited Tracey over for a studio visit. She had commented on my blog a few times and I knew she lived near me. We got into an email conversation and I knew we had to get together. We did that wonderful blog friend thing where the conversation starts where so many other conversations would end. So much is a given when talking to another art/craft blogger- like how great the online community is and how clueless so many other people are about why we do it! We can move right on to other important stuff.

First, Tracey brought me this wonderful gift inspired by the interview in Craft magazine-

I’ve hung it up over my desk. Here is her description of the inspiration for the piece and also her report of the visit. I think it is too funny that she photographed all the doll bits that never got finished…

We talked photography (among other things)- she is doing some amazing work with ttvthrough the viewfinder (tutorial if you are interested). It sounded intriguing and, of course, somewhere in this house I knew I had one of those cameras where you look down into the viewfinder. I’m pretty sure I bought it at a yardsale with a red leather camera bag that looked like a child’s doctor kit, in the early ’80s. Yep, there it was on the shelf in the living room. I tried looking through the viewfinder and it was so dirty I couldn’t really see anything.

I took out a few screws and cleaned it up as well as I could.

It is now significantly better and here are some photos I took from off the back porch-

Everything looks so spooky!

not so sure what to do about the grid in the viewfinder.

I think this uncropped one is my favorite-

Lots of fun but probably not going to pull me away from dollmaking.

Yesterday I had fun outing. A local fashion designer, Deborah Parker, invited me over to her studio to go through her scraps and see if there was anything I could use. Yes! I came home with 2 large bags full of wool, silk, linen, and some little pieces of cotton. Delicious! There are some very inspiring pieces in that pile- like, have you ever heard of wool corduroy? I hadn’t but now I have some to play with- it looks like perfect hair fabric to me.

Hurray- what a great way to start the year!

wing it quilt tutorial

This quilt is made out of old wool shirts. I had 8 plaids in different color schemes. Red and green predominated. I love color and when I am doing non-figurative art, I tend to do color studies. The idea here is green to red to green again. I first used this way of designing a quilt 30 years ago when I made this one. (blues, dark to light and back again) When I posted about it last year, I couldn’t remember how I did it, but somehow it all trickled back since then.

I am not an expert quilter. I have never progressed beyond squares or rectangles. This is a very easy and, I think, non-scary way to approach patchwork. Careful measuring, cutting and/or piecing is not required. This is one of those “wing it” projects.

The photos are mostly underexposed so you can see the different fabrics, even though they are dark.

1. Make a template. Mine is 12 inches by 24 inches and made by taping 2 pieces of 12 x 18 inches of paper together. It can be any size but take into consideration what size fabric scraps you have and what size quilt you want to make.

2. I cut up my shirts, trying to get any piece of undamaged fabric that was at least 13 inches in one direction.

3. I piled them up by plaid and arranged them in order from most red to most green.

4. Then I laid them out in order on my template,

5. sewed them together, and

6. ironed them flat.

7. I trimmed each block so the sides were straight across

and 8. when eight were done, laid them out on the floor and played with the arrangement.

9. I sewed the blocks together- first matching the red centers and then sewed the four strips together lengthwise. Iron everything.

Now your top is done! Here is the rest of what I did to finish it-

10. Here is the top laid out on an old blanket that I used instead of batting.

11. Here is the back- I used the biggest pieces that I had and put them together with the least amount of sewing and thinking that I could manage.

12. And now, here are the three layers quilted together and ready for a binding. I hand-quilted the layers together because I never could have managed it on my sewing machine. The edge is basted together at this point.

13. I folded over that part over on the right side of the above photo to make the binding on one side… since it was so conveniently just the right size!

14. I cut bias strips from the last of the shirt backs that I had and used them to bind up the 3 other sides. And here is another photo of it finished!

Let me know if I left out any important information or steps and I will edit this tutorial.

the last present is finished

It is another lap blanket for our cold house. This one is made of Ben’s old Pendleton shirts- which, of course, I could never throw away. They are all wool.

When I pulled them out of the closet, there were 9 of them in 8 plaids. They were discarded because of moths and worn elbows and various other issues that I needed to be aware of while I cut out the pieces.

I was going to use a pieces of plain wool fabric for the back but couldn’t find anything in my stash that seemed like a good match. Instead, I used large pieces of what I had left- which was still quite a bit! Most of the big pieces were from the backs of the shirts and were in excellent condition.

It is a 3 layer quilt- I used an old wool blanket for a batting and it is very heavy. I’m not sure how functional it is going to be but we’ll see. I did the minimal quilting by hand. I sewed 2 of the labels into the corners of the back. I have 7 more and thought about sewing them randomly all over the back but I controlled myself.

I made this quilt the same way I did this one. I am going to do another post about how it all went together- I remembered to take the pictures!

2008 review

Bear with me- I find this kind of analysis very helpful.

I finished 72 dolls this year-

and some cookies.

There were 23 tattooed men in various modes of fashion-

18 girl dolls-

11 babies

15 ladies-

2 gifts that inspired 24 more tiny world pincushions-

And the other stuff- I went to NYC, London, Portland, OR, and Chicago. I met Diane, Melissa, Jan and Susan in person. The paperbag swag project got finished after a long delay caused by 4 out of the 6 participants having babies- a pretty good excuse I’d say. I grew tomatoes! I did 4 shows. I was mentioned on Design Sponge by guest bloggers in January (Thanks Kath!) and then again in December (Thanks Camilla!). That was a little freaky. And, one of my dolls is Mr. April in the Whip Up calendar. All in all, it was another great year for my artwork and for my own crafty blogging universe.

Thank you so much to everyone who stopped by and visited and left comments or not in 2008. Happy, healthy and creative 2009 to all!