February 2005 Archive

Monday, February 28, 2005

Alice All Told
Here's February's addition to Loobylu's Month O' Softies with the theme Alice in Wonderland. I know I'm stretching the definition of the "softie" with this mini quilt. I promise I'll be stricter in March. It took a few tries to get this one right, but I like the end result. My favorite parts are that she's looking at the White Rabbit to her left, who started the whole adventure. I'm also keen on the circle of a queen playing card sewn on and that all four suits are represented. And while I think letter beads can be overdone, I really like the A-L-I-C-E spelled out along a bottom border. Gives it a sense of a bookplate. Once I switched gears and when flat, I wanted to evoke a book illustration or a playing card. I think that comes through.

	11.5" x 13.5" • Qty 5 • Price $60

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Someone Framed Alice
Progress on my Alice softie. Plan C is progressing well. I put four borders around Alice: black, white, red/white stripe and solid red. Then decorated it with two ribbons: the black and white stripe tucked under the black binding, and the thinner red ribbon with the black and white slanted stripes. And here's one with half of it's adornments. I still need decided on the other half.

Introducing Alice
Yikes. This month's softie is daunting. I guess I got off too easy the first three months. I was superexcited to hear that February's theme was Alice in Wonderland.

Great. Iconic characters. I had illusions of grandeur, of making a set of pillow dolls of several characters on my Print Gocco. Plan A.

Then I read the book. Now I know why I never read the book. I don't like it so much. I get that it's all wonder and silliness and contradiction, but I still wanted there to be a bit more logic behind it, coming from mathemetician Lewis Carroll. I know its genesis was Carroll telling the Liddell children a story on a picnic. It reads too much like someone trying to explain a dream to you. It is interesting to the storyteller because they are trying to make sense of something very vivid that happened in their head. It's just nonsense for the listener.

If Alice in Wonderland is a beloved book. Good. Enjoy. It just didn't ruffle my flamingo feathers.

BUT -

I'll still give the softie challenge the old college try. I made a drawing of Alice:


Then I tried to make a Print Gocco screen of the darn thing. Two attempts, two failures. I know it's partly because the variation in small and large lines within the image, partly because I'm not accostumed to the looseness of the textile ink.

Drat.

Plan B.
I colored the image in Photoshop and then printed it on transfer paper. The transfer looks great! I'm not keen on the shiny, plasticness of it up close, but the line quailty is very good. Since Alice pretty much boils down to "it was all a dreeeam," I added the bubbles/circles floating around Alice's head to hold pieces of her dream.



As I laid out the pieces, I'm thinking of a Plan C -
Rather than a pillow doll, she's very likely to become a tiny quilt. Still soft. Still doll sized scale. I like the flatness in reference to the page and the book. And I think it'll give me a chance to frame the image of her in a way I couldn't in a doll.



Back to the Agerbeck Industries sweatshop...
posted on 2/23/2005 10:47:00 AM

Monday, February 21, 2005

Since I woke up sick Saturday morning, I told myself I had to sit still all weekend. As my friend Anne said, "You suck at that."

She's right. But I did a noble job. Drank fluids, watched movies, slept lots. But I did draw this girl last night, after too much stillness:

I'm not much of a doodler. I rarely draw without an idea in mind. Daughter of a hairdresser, I'm prone to drawing hair.

Friday, February 18, 2005

Ta da! Here's a necklace made from seven Afghanistan pendants from Bead in Hand. Funny thing is, they are obviously these Czech beads inverted and set in silver (silver?). Despite the look on my face, I'm pleased with the results, just tuckered out.


I bought the pendants because I thought the subsequent necklace would look good with the three favorite shirts to pack on graphic facilitation gigs. I'm wearing the red one above, I've got it's sibling in orange, and a bias cut red-orange shirt. I wore two of the three shirts for the gig I finished yesterday. Now, I curl up in my quilt and continue watching mooooovieees til I zonk out. Ahhh...

Treasures!
Hillary of Wee Wonderfuls, Cinnamon of Poise.cc and I spent a lovely Friday together. We had it in the works for awhile and it was great to tool around together - lunch, a bead store, a thrift store, a snazzy gift shop and back to Hillary's. All good.

And Hillary gave me two treasures -

This great bear-ette. When I saw her, I knew she'd be fast friends with the strange little ceramic elf I got on eBay last year.

Red Elf: I've got a joke.
Bear-ette: Uh-huh?
Red Elf: Where doesn't Napoleon keep his armies?
Bear-ette: Dunno. Where, Red Elf?
Red Elf: In his SLEEVIES!
Red Elf grins, clearly pleased with the joke. Bear-ette thinks the joke is too silly, but still has the stifle her laughter -


And a lovely, lovely, lovely Wee!!


Oh, man. I'm working on a package of fun for her in return.


I'm SO glad a rough week (and part of a cruddy month) ended on a lovely note. Now I'm going to chill and watch movies and make a treasure for myself - a necklace out of gorgeous pendants from Bead in Hand...
posted on 2/18/2005 06:08:00 PM

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Kindess For Your Eyes
Last Friday, I was on a mission to make my sister's birthday gift. I made her a keen pair of square pants out of this fabric:


They turned out beautifully, but I didn't get a decent picture of the pants. With the left over fabric, I made four eye pillows.

Oh, they are so soft and lovely. I made the covers out of the cotton stripe with zippers on the top. I even clipped off the zipper phlange to make it safer, substituting ribbon. Then I sewn cotton inserts filled with flaxseed. Just enough to be cool and heavy, Just enough that they still drape over your eyes.

	~ 8.5"x4.5" • Qty 2 • Price $20

Saturday, February 12, 2005

Warm Your Legs With Leg Warmers
Rose had some darn cute black legwarmers on yesterday, actual hand-me-downs from her mom! That inspired me to make my own out of a ginormous sweater this morning. Made leg warmers out of the body of the sweater, and armwarmers using the sleeves. The body of the sweater had slits in on the sides made a nice detail in the legwarmers. Especially cute with this black skirt with side slits too.

Cozy + Cute. Win!

Thursday, February 10, 2005

Hey Loobylu Readers!
Thanks for clicking over, folks. If you want to see my quilt prolifacy, here's my Quilt Gallery. Here's a better pic of the latest quilt, the heart quilt:

Saturday, February 05, 2005

Heart Quilt
I'm a quilting maniac. Finished this latest cuddlefest right in time for Chicago Craft Mafia's Valentine's Sale. Mo betta pics to come...

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

Larisa's Head is a Home
Here's a quilt-ette I made for my friend Larisa. I made it a couple weeks ago, but now that she's gotten it, I can blog about it! She hung it on her door. I must say it is perfectly door-sized.

Tuesday, February 01, 2005