Skinny book - more pages

There have been quite a few new pages for the skinny book swap - I am nearly done! This swap proved to be so much fun.

Trip to France

It is already a week since we returned from our short trip to l'Alsace. The weather was splendid, in fact so splendid that after having been to all expositions in St. Marie aux Mines we decided to let it go at that and instead the other day visited Ribeauville, Colmar and a beautiful Burg in the vicinity before heading home.

Thank god for gesso!

This time when I started to make a new background it went horribly wrong. I had wanted to create a moody, mostly blue-green page, but both the colors and the way I tried to mix them were decidedly not what I had intended. I ended up with a background that was way too dark and much murkier than I liked. I rememberd just before I started fuming and tearing my hair out that I could make it undone - just squish some gesso ono the mess and bingo! you have a practically new page to start from. After that I mainly played with yellow and red and later on did a few dry brushstrokes with white before adding a little metallic touch. It was not what I had intended, however, I like the outcome quite a lot.

Vintage pages

Whodunnit

This is so far my favorite page because of it's tongue-in-cheek-character. When I stumbled upon the foto of these two kids, one looking slightly rebellious, the other one very mischievous, I could not help but think of my three kids when they were that age. Whatever happened, the question of who did it was always answered by "not me", "don't know", "wasn't here", "nobody" or "who did WHAT???" It took several years before those kids (we called them the other kids, those that were always lurking under the table or just around the corner) left the house.

Baby quilt

At least a change from the book pages! This is a quilt I made by order from a colleague of mine for a little baby girl.
Within the next three months I will have to make two more baby quilts, one for a boy, one for a girl, since two of my colleagues are going to have a baby. With scans being as advanced as today both can be sure of the baby's gender. It is absolutely fascinating: one of them even had a video of her unborn she could watch at the computer, looking at him grinning and sucking his thumb! When I was expecting my children you could not understand what the scan was showing without your doctor pointing details out to you.
I love watching those two - they could be my daughters, and it is so nice seeing them together discussing the progress of their pregnancy and showing pictures to each other....
Don't get me wrong - I really would not like to become a grandmother yet!

Afraid to repeat myself: More pages...

New background

Since my two very large sheets will not be sufficient for 26 pages I made a new background. This one is very lightly colored and evoces feelings of spring and cheeriness.
With these pages a development sets in which is quite similar to the one I experienced with AMCs and ATCs: There is no limit to experimentation at all. Even if one of these pages would go horribly wrong - so what? It is a piece of paper 4 x 8 inches, and I have been working on it for what? 1/2 hour or 1 hour maximum. Write it off as a learning experience, no harm done. So far, I was lucky. There were some small mistakes that could be mended, some things I will have to keep in mind as for instance not to take a heat gun to a page that was painted with acrylic paints - they blister!

Still 20 to go!

Further pages

While it took me quite a long time deliberating what to do with my first pages ideas now keep popping up. Quite a lot of "what if's" are taking place, too. And what I absolutely love is making the background for the pages. I keep experimenting with gesso, acrylic colors, watercolors, and intersting things like distress ink spray and salt.

Back page

For several days I have been racking my head for an idea how to decorate the back pages for the skinny book. It had to have general information such as name, address etc. and perhaps a personal accent as well. I did not want it to be too selfconcious, rather a little humorous or funny. Now I did something a little crazy. I inserted my face into Botticellis famous Venus - she may be 20 kilos lighter and 30 years younger than me, but my hair is red, too, and my skin is very white... For the general information I made a tag from one of my cards and inserted that into a small pocket.

Skinny book - first pages

These are the first two pages I made for the skinny book swap. I was not exactly looking for a theme but rather trying to meet the images to the mood of the background. Every page has to be an original - and there are to be 26 of them! So the last few days I have been browsing through my stash of fotos and transparencies as well as small charms in order to decide what to put on my pages. It is not easy for me, since collage is something I never did so far. But I like these first pages, they seem to have some kind of atmosphere. The left 1 1/2 inches have to be free from embellishments since that is the part where the book is to be bound.

Skinny book

This is a new field for me. I am going to participate in an exchange for a skinny book (measurements 4 x 8") as decribed in the last issue of Cloth, Paper, Scissor. So for the last days I have been working on my backgrounds with gesso, acrylic paints, watercolor, stamping and metallic paints. By now I am quite satisfied with the results and will now raid my stashes of embellishments, stamps and other paraphernalia to decorate my pages with. Since there are 25 pages to make this will keep me quite busy, I suppose.

Fabric book

This fabric book was made during a class with Christa Rolf. It is based on a short poem by A. Schnitt called "Im Wechselspiel der Gezeiten" (the play of alternating tides). I especially like the small envelope containing a seashell.

Joi de vivre

I made this small wall quilt as a birthday present for my aunt. She is a very outgoing and enthusiastic person which is why I chose very cheery fabric. Everything is freecut and later machine quilted. My aunt was quite happy with it and told me that she changed the decoration of her "wintergarten" in order to fit the wall quilt in. She is one hell of a person to gift with quilts: When presented with a large quilt at her 70th birthday she had a whole room refurnished and redecorated around this quilts and its colors....

Trip to Scotland

This years trip took us to Scotland. BBC informed us that this has been the wettest summer since 1914, and we cannot contradict that. But it made for really good fotos! Rains over the lochs, whirling mists around tombstones and ruins - very impressive.

Minibook

This minibook was a gift for my friend, too. I just tried to enter some of the emotions we have been sharing during the years of our friendship. To start was agonizing on how to do this, but then it was real fun to make it. She was really taken aback when I gave it to her.

Garden angel

I made this darling little garden angel from the Scandinavian book "Tilda's Hus" which features adorable small gift, several angels and a beautiful quilt. This is a gift for a dear friend of mine.

Quilt Show

When show quilting at our group's quilt show I took the opportunity afterwards to make some fotos from my quilts hanging there. You seldom have such a good way to display quilts at home - the light was just right, the hanging well done. Okay, in some places there was a bannister slightly in the way. But this is a home for elderly persons and the bannisters have to be there. Nevertheless this show is very good for our group - we have the opportunity to display about 60 quilts for 5 weeks.

Freehand cutting

This is a new exercise in freehand cutting. I like the look and even my family approves, which is not often the case. Especially my husband commented favourably - that is something I will have to mark in my calendar!
Since the whole thing went together rather quickly I will do a second one with even stronger constrasts - I chose mainly black background fabric and bought several fat quarters in very expressive red and orange hues. This should be even more expressive than the first try.
Somehow the colors remind me of a volcano, so the title will be "Lava" or "Magma" I think. Strangely while working on the first piece a format developed which I usually do not work in - this is a horizontal piece, while I usually make vertical ones.

Dying

For my City & Guild course I had to dye some fabric. This was the first time I did this in small plastic bags. The process was not as excruciating as I would have thought, and not messy at all. However, the colors were very pale. The next time I will have to use quite a lot more dye to get more intensive results. Since pale fabric is not really overrepresented in my stash, the outcome is not wholly unwelcome. And I will sure try this in the next future, because the gradations you get when dying yourself are truly amazing.

Links

Finally I managed to add the first links to my blog. Good to have someone teaching how to do it, even from a distance (thanks, Peggy!) I will have to invest some more time because there are quite a few people I want to add yet whose blogs or homepages I think are worth looking at.
Just realized how long I have neglected the blog! This is mainly due to the work I did on my challenge quilt and the inchies swap. I have to recharge my batteries in order to put up some photos of several things to share.

So this is the finished wallhanging I made from the stuff I received from Helen - plus two or three of my own fabrics. It was done in free cutting technique and I deliberately made the outer border not symmetrical either. This piece was fun to do and I am a little sorry to give it away! It looked quite good on the wall where I could look at it while eating.
The overall quilting in the variegated thread improved the design quite nicely. The floral character it was meant to have was more pronounced - and it helped to get the quilt flat!

Orange

With orange the first 1" swap is finished. I am really looking forward to the day I will receive the goodies from my swap partners. It is quite amazing what you can do with these tiny squares. I always find new things I can put on them. It is a good thing that I will be participating in a second 1" swap since I have so many ideas I want to try out.

Light red

This is kind of addictive! It really is quite fun to make these tiny itsy bitsy teeny weeny.... ähm got carried away it seems....

Green & black

Red and white

For the 1" swap I finished white and red today. It is funny: I always thought that a 1" square is rather large. However, when trying to sew or embellish these tiny things one realizes that - like time - size is relative. Nevertheless is is fun to make these little goodies.
-------------------------
Heute habe ich Rot und Weiß für den 1" Swap fertig gemacht. Es ist merkwürdig: Bisher hielt ich ein 1" Quadrat immer für ziemlich groß. Wenn man allerdings versucht, diese kleinen Quadrate zu nähen und zu verschönern, dann stellt man fast daß Größe - wie Zeit - relativ ist. Trotzdem macht es Spaß, diese kleinen Fitzelchen zu machen.

1" swap

With the start of a new year I also start into something new: a 1" swap. The art4card group pointed me to this adventure. I was quite faszinated by the pictures of these tiny little fabric squares, each more beautifully embellished than the other. They remind me of petits fours. I just had to participate in the swap and am now going to produce 63 of the calorie-free sweeties. The blue ones are already finished.
-------------
Mit dem Beginn des neuen Jahres beginne ich auch etwas Neues: einen 1" Tausch. Die art4card Gruppe brachte mich auf dieses Abenteuer. Als ich die ersten Bilder dieser winzigen Stoffquadrate sah, jedes einzelne hübscher dekoriert als das andere, war ich fasziniert. Sie erinnern mich an Petits Fours. Ich mußte einfach an diesem Tausch teilnehmen und werde jetzt 63 dieser kleinen kalorienfreien Süßigkeiten herstellen. Die blauen sind schon fertig.