It's almost Easter so we decided to take Zoe to see the Easter Bunny. She will be four months old next week, I can't believe how fast time has gone by! She is our big little girl and is absolutely wonderful. She was so happy with the Easter Bunny, I am so happy with her picture! My maternity leave is over but I had such a wonderful time off with her. Only the past month or so was I able to get any actual sewing done. It took us a while to develop a routine. But I loved every minute of it. I made some soft books for her and joined the Stuffed Team. Below is my contribution to our calendar which will be coming out later this year.
I am currently in the Stuffed Bunny show in St. Pete at the Eve N Odd gallery. I also have work hanging for the "Hip to Be Square" show at the Bricks in Ybor. Local peeps check it out! During my maternity leave I started experimenting with my 3D modeling, printing on fabric, and quilting. I think it turned out great, we'll see if it sells!
I completed the "Life is a Stitch" quilt a while ago and sent to my mom for long arm quilting. I love piecing quilt tops, but can't stand the actual quilting together part! The pattern is from Kimberley Enimo's Jelly Roll Quilts and More book. Fun pattern, pretty easy to do. It used Honey Buns to make the quilt. I changed it a little to use up some of my strips and put blocks in the corners instead of solid red. If you look closely the fabric has scissors, little irons, pin cushions, I thought the sign went perfect with it!
This will be Zoe's wall hanging quilt! It was a lot of fun to make, I really enjoy doing applique. I adapted the pattern Annie's Garden from Material Obsessions. I only did the top half of the quilt pattern and then with help from my mom scaled it down 50%. It being a baby quilt/wall hanging, it didn't need to be huge! I used the dark purple as the trim because the upper wall it will be hanging on is pink! It should look great above her crib. I loved the overall look of the original quilt and thought it would go well with the fairy garden theme we have for her nursery. When I originally bought the book I wasn't pregnant yet. But when I saw the pattern I knew it would be above my daughter's crib one day! In the pattern she uses more flowers and hearts. I took out the hearts and a few flowers from the original pattern to add the fairy and mushroom houses. Even better I have lots of left over fabric to make a plush lady bug, mushroom house, and flowers!
I am 31 weeks and can't wait for December to get here! I'm starting on making Christmas presents this weekend for the homemade touch. That and when the time gets closer I will be so big I don't want to do Christmas mall shopping!
For the locals, I will be selling at this year's Atomic Holiday Bazaar! I went as a shopper last year and couldn't believe the indie talent. This year I am a vendor and will be huge! Come out to it if you're around the area, it's our biggest indie craft show!
This past weekend was the opening of the "Six degrees of Kevin Bacon" show at The Bricks in Ybor. This was another project that took a long time I was keeping secret. I didn't want anyone to know I was making the Great Gonzo! The show contained 18 artists making portraits of famous actors/ characters that can be tracked back to Kevin Bacon. Most actors can be tracked back in three or less moves, but we had to come up with six moves exactly.
If you are interested, The Great Gonzo was in “The Muppet Movie” with Steve Martin who was in “Sgt. Bilko” with Dan Aykroyd who was in “Sneakers” with Robert Redford who was in “The Sting” with Paul Newman who was in “The Color of Money” with Tom Cruise who was in “A Few Good Men” with Kevin Bacon.
While I was making Gonzo, I had a clear picture in my head of what I wanted. I was first going to make him in his caper outfit that he gets shot out of the cannon with. But doing some research and Muppet Show watching I realized he actually didn't do that that often. He was usually wearing a suit. I found a photograph of Gonzo in a maroon suit almost in a 'Kramer' pose. I thought this would be perfect! Jason (my husband) had the brilliant idea to add the chicken feathers around himdue to his love of chickens.
When I finished Gonzo, I was happy with him but not 100%. I was afraid he would look 'crafty' compared to the other fine artists that were accepted into the show. Well apparently I had nothing to worry about! Gonzo sold the day of the show, even before the opening, in the the middle of the afternoon! While at the show I sat in an area where I could watch my piece, partly because I was afraid someone would bump his nose, but kept seeing great reactions to him. People smiled, laughed, and kept saying how much they loved it.
Apparently I am doing something right! Gonzo with his magical red "sold" sticker. My husband and I only stayed to 10 pm, and at that point were the only two that sold! Below is his piece which sold while we were there.
I have been slowly creating more plush items, but a few other projects took priority. Since the wedding has now occured I can finally show off the wedding quilt I made for my husband's cousin! The pattern is called "Fandango" and in the orange borders and backing are little love birds. It turned out amazing but took way too long!Next I received the wonderful order from the Florida Museum of Women Artists! I was able to make 10 cats very quickly, but the quilted dolls took a bit more time. Here are the finished 8 in their color varieties!Since then I have just completed a piece for the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" show at The Bricks in Ybor. The show isn't until September 24th so I'm not revealing it yet! Since I was doin all of these projects I wanted to get back to sewing something for my upcoming little girl. Here is her Christmas bunting, hat, and matching stocking! Let's hope she is here before Christmas! 25 weeks down!
Last Friday's Art After Dark was a great event, and it even got me into the local TBT - Tampa Bay Times! Thanks TBT! I really appreciate you posting my shop link, let's hope it leads to sales!
More good news, I have been accepted to the Atomic Holiday Bazaar in December! It's a long way away, but so far my first scheduled show. So excited! I went last year to shop and saw amazing artists and a huge turnout. I will only be doing a table to help keep cost down so I must concoct more vertical displays. I think I will work on more wall art too, they are so cheery! Check out Atomic's blog for more info!
Hi there! In a few weeks I will be exhibiting at the Tampa Museum of Art, Art After Dark :Cause an Effect show. This is a pillow I made for the event! I will be donating a portion of my proceeds to Making Strides Against Breast Cancer. I have never made such a large pillow before! It's 26" x 26". The back is a white fleece.
After I brought the pillow back inside I thought my rocking chair looked funny in the backyard so I started having fun taking pictures for a bit. It's spring! the bird are back, the lizards are back, and I even saw the blasted black snake - eek! This is my favorite corner of the backyard. The fence is falling over, in the summer their are vines all over it, and it has a good view of the neighbor's tree. Wiley was helping me take pictures as well. He wanted me to see what was on the other side of the fence. I didn't see anything, but two houses over someone does own some loud birds!
This past week my mom and I went to the Tampa Bay Sewing & Quilting Expo. It was a blast and I learned a lot of new techniques and made some great projects. Oh, and let me add almost all of these projects are now on my UFO list. Three hours for a class is just not enough!
My first class was with Karen Pharr, entitled "Zany Zinnias." This class opened my eyes to new forms of quilting. I always see quilts with straight lines, blocks, strips, etc. Zany Zinnias let us create more of an artistic quilt. We used applique to create the zinnias. The original format we were following had the zinnias floating in space. I decided to add stems so they appeared to be growing. This piece still has a lot of work to go, including finished the flowers and then quilting and binding. It was a great start to the class weekend!My second class was "Purrfect Fun with Kitty Claudine." I have always wanted to try a "Melly & Me" pattern but never got around to ordering one. This class included the pattern and materials to make the cat. Again three hours is not enough, but she will be finished eventually! Reading through the pattern gave me some ideas on how to complete and finish my pattern. For example in the pattern the designer had you hand stitch on the ears at the end. For me, the less hand stitching I have to do, the better! I added the ears in when we sewed the bodies together. The class was taught by Colleen Casey, who runs the Some Art Fabric internet store. Great person and great fabrics! I shopped at her booth at the expo, but more on that later.
This year my mom and I decided to add night classes to our list. We tried to get in as many classes as possible! My first night class was with Allen Smith from Keep Me In Stitches. He was a great guy, whose store donated the use of Janome sewing, embroidery, and felting machines for the expo and classes. In his class we use three different machines to create this felted purse.
I enjoyed the class so much I got an early birthday present from my mom! A brand new felting machine! But sorry Allen, were Pfaff girls. We are loyal customers of Tess's at Scrap and Sew. The machine is just so pretty, the Janome version doesn't have a butterfly! I foresee felted monsters in the future!
Day 2 - woke up exhausted but so excited for more classes! My first class was with Nelly Vileikis to create her "Small Whirligig" pattern. The pattern we used was a miniature of her larger pattern. The pattern was pretty simple to make, and again without enough class time I wasn't able to add the 'whirligig' part. At each point is a pocket, and imagine these pockets slightly stitched over to create more of a curve. That way the pinwheels will appear to be in motion. While doing this pattern I had a great idea result from its making! Each point triangle is folded over to create a pocket. Monsters can have pockets!
In the afternoon I had my least favorite class of the weekend. The class was well taught and many of the other students enjoyed it, but it wasn't what I expected at all. The class was called "Mixed Media Meets Machine Embroidery." To me I expected playing with different types of fabrics and adding embroidery designs. I didn't expect a pillow out of it. Going back on the site I see an image that looks exactly like what I created, so shame on me I guess! The class was fun and I will more than likely give it to my husband's grandmother for Christmas. I did learn you could curl fleece, how cool is that! And besides, unbeknown to me, my faith in the instructor Pam Damour will be completely fulfilled in a class on Saturday. For my second night class, mom and I not knowingly, signed up for the same class! That of course made it extra fun. The class was "Mixed Media Journal Quilt" with Kim Montagnese. This class was a lot of fun, we started the quilts with stamping a saying we had brought with us. My mom did a cat saying and I chose a quote from the Cheshire Cat! WE also used iron on transfers from vintage photographs. I found this moon girl and thought she just looked extremely out there! The angry eye on the moon was a pure happy accident occurring after I transferred the image. Next will be quilting, a fun binding and fun holder. Mom plans on adding some cat toys to her holder. What would a mad person have, a mad hat perhaps?
On to the final day, day 3. At this point I can't wait to be able to sleep past 6:30 am (morning classes start at 8:30) but also sad that it's the final day.
The first class was with Debby Kratovil teaching "Coffee Filter Fans." This was a bring your own machine class, and luckily mom had a class with her right after mine where she needed to bring it too. This was my first attempt at paper piecing. Her technique using coffee filters broke down into such easy steps, I found it very easy to accomplish! I was a little sad to add the points to the fans, never have I had such good points before! She gave us a pattern to use with these to create a 'Drunkard's Path' quilt, but I see crazy lollipops instead!
My last class of the expo was by far my favorite, and again as I mentioned, refueled my faith in Pam Damour. This class was called "Thread Painting" and was exactly what I had hoped for. I have always wanted to try thread painting but never experimented with free motion before. The class started a little hectic due to confusing/conflicting schedules, no fault to Pam. But once we got started I was hooked! She gave us options of flours to paint onto fabric. There was an assortment, one of which was daises in a vase. As soon as I saw it, my brain screamed "Vangogh!!" Since I knew I wasn't yet comfortable with free motion, I could make my base painting layer much looser to fit with my thread style. The painting as rather fun, we used Fantastix applicators that I have never used before instead of straight brushes. I used a yellow, blue, and red to create the base fabric print. Then after drying we went to sewing machines and did free motion on top of the painting. I started with the vase first to get in to the motion, since I knew it was the most controlled line I wanted. Then I kept switching thread colors and went to town! I have one layer left of a bright orange to add a bit more highlight. Again this being a class with Pam, her use of the fabric was to then create a pillow. But me, no way! I'm framing this baby. This is too cool to be a pillow I'll never use. I just adored this class and want to do more like this!
So after all the classes, it was time to shop at the vendor's in the expo. What fun! I got a lot of precut fabric from Some Art Fabric's booth, a dog Christmas jelly roll quilt kit from The Gypsy Quilter. I got Amy Butler's Liverpool pattern, fabric to make it, a book on needle felting, and a most surprised find "Quilting with the Muppets!" Who knew!!
All in all it was a fantastic three days and I must thank, thank, thank my mom for helping it happen! After this rough last year, with out her support I would not have been able to go or gasp, shop! Love you mom!
This spring my first show will be a Munny vinyl toy show at the Skatepark of Tampa on Feb. 27th. When I signed up for this event I was very excited about creating a munny based on fabric. I had all intentions of having my munny for sale at the show. That is no longer accurate. After I created this munny, she is now my munny.
I knew I wanted to create a munny girl. I wanted to use my signature eyes, which I knew I could probably draw on her. But then I thought my work is known for fabric, so why not make the eyes of the same felt I use on my plush dolls. From there I thought why not make a little dress for her. Then I found this awesome fabric that could be a bandanna. Knowing how small this outfit would be, I first made a practice piece from muslin to get the overall shape and size down.Once I had the template, it was time for fabric! I played with a few options, but found this stripe fabric remnant I had left over from a plush. I thought the stripes worked well for a skirt. On the pieces went and then time for the base. My original idea was for her to stand on a spool of thread holding a needle, which connected to the spool. I played with some spools I had, building a couple up, but it didn't look right. I bought the wooden spool off of etsy and filled it with batting and then the chosen thread color. I added her needle and button earrings. She doesn't have a name yet, but oh is she crafty!
Schwabbie is a pillow monster I made in the summer, with long floppy arms and sweet green ears. Schwabbie went for sale online with no luck, and traveled with me to some craft shows to see many smiles. But he got his biggest smile this week!
A few weeks ago I had plush work accepted to a Christmas show at the Tampa Artist Emporium, a local indie gallery. I dropped off some holiday inspired plushies as well as ornaments. The week after, for Thanksgiving, my parents flew in so I took them to the gallery to see my work. While there the owner remembered my work and asked me to bring in more plushies, some un-holiday inspired and more weird designs. I decided to take my big pillow monsters since at craft shows they gain attention, but didn't ever sell.
This week Jay and I went to the gallery to drop off Schwabbie and some friends of his. Shelby, the gallery owner, loved him and his friends. They were setting up for an event this Friday, the Winter Wonderland, and one of the volunteers that was helping setup saw Schwabbie and fell in love! She put him aside immediately and bought him for her niece. So after all this time Schwabbie found a home! And I may have found a new niche to sell! :) If you're in the area, the Winter Wonderland event is this Friday evening, but the show is going on all month.
I told a friend this story and he suggested that I post some of my progress work of my plushies. So as a treat, I have below some skecthes I came up with when I originally created Schwabbie. In the sketches you can also see Huggie the Hippie, who sold online a long time ago!
It was a hit! A success! Smashing! I exceeded my own expectations. I originally signed up for this event knowing it was at an elementary school function. I had a few reservations about it, but thought it would be geared towards my prime audience. And boy was I right! The event started at 10 am, and I literally sold my first plush at 10:01 am! There was a steady stream of viewers and sales the entire day. Thank you everyone that helped make it a success! Here are some pictures from today's festival: See that frog and bird there? Sold! You can also see the tip of the bear's ear. He was the first sold!This time I tried a different price point and tactic for the little PJ's and boy did it work! Overall I sold 19 plush items! That included 3 turkeys! Fantastic day and hope the luck continues! Most of the new guys will be in the shop soon.
Today was my first craft show! It went very well and was located in St. Pete. It was incredibly hot, but we had enough shade for most of the day. We did have to keep moving with the shade though! We ended up sitting on three different sides at different times!
First the setup, tons of energy and excited! Up front we have the Halloween corner! So many people loved the mini mummies! Next came the newest item, giraffes! Lots of people loved these, their necks are positionable so they can look anywhere! In the corner we have the pillow monster and the another new item. Thinking about calling them hooded plushies, but not certain yet.
And on the right corner we had the pink collection. Be sure to look up! Those ninjas are sneaky hiding in the corners! And here is the final result! In the pink closet organizer are more plush. Some small pjs and some belly plush monsters. The overall day was a lot of fun. I made back the booth fee and then some! Can't wait for the next show, but boy do I need a break!P.s. We were right in front of the food, great traffic!
I have been sewing like crazy! I think I will be able to make my goal of 100 for next Sunday, the 11th at Art-Oberfest. I have 34 left to make in 7 days, I think it can be done. See my work this week below! There are a couple duplicates, but not that many. I love making originals! I used all of my small printed fabric eyes up. I still have a few larger eyes left over from my Gotcha's which I may or may not use. I have two black belly monsters sitting next to me waiting to be stuffed.
After sewing straight for a few days, well almost straight. Had to finish off a syllabi and work a little on a 3D project, but sure felt like sewing straight. Anyways, today my husband and I went out to an art festival for creative inspiration. He's trying to finish up his first level of his ipod game and I needed some inspiration to finish the last 40 plush. We went to an art festival and saw mostly the same type of 'florida' art we see at all art shows. But a few booths stood out, and one in particular. Please check out Ed King's work on his site! His work stood out from the croud, just like I hope to next weekend. He has some great, fun designs and I just love the line work. Fun bright colors have always appealed to me and now I'm inspired to make more plush! Creativity is striking again, time to get out my sketch book.
I am one step closer to my first craft show on Oct. 11th at St. Anthony's Park in St. Pete. I completed my banner over the weekend! I initially was going to have it made, but my motives with the business is to create plush designs by hand. So I made it myself!
The overall banner is quilted together, pink letters appliqued, and purple letters embroidered. Hopefully people will see it from afar and go "Let's look over there!" "Buy me a monster, Mommy!"
This has been a very productive weekend! I have gotten a lot of work done. Two plush monsters added to my shop and finished the covers for my craft show tables! Last weekend Jay and I went to the local Flea Market looking for tables for the craft shows. I found one online that I absolutely loved. It was 6 ft long, and folded in half with a handle to make it easier to carry. We both have short cars so thought this would be perfect. However, cheapest we could find online was $80 a piece! And we would need two! That's a bit expensive for the tables. So we went to the flea market thinking we could find some of the old 4 ft card tables to use instead. But low and behold we found the exact table I was looking at online! And there were two of them! A total steal, because they both still have great condition. $25 each! We were amazed and got bought instantly. Quickest trip ever to the flea market, loved it.
So this weekend went to Bed Bath and Beyond looking for a sheet to convert into a table cover. Sheets are so expensive! And who cares how soft it is for covering a table? So instead we went to JoAnn's and bought fabric to make my own. Now I didn't save any money, probably spent more than would have at Bed Bath. But I love them! They turned out perfect and will coordinate with my sign. As soon as I put the cover over the table, Thirteen ran under. She just loves pretending to live in forts! You can see her in the back left, contemplating her next adventure.
I have a matching one in pink which will be the main table when I do 1-table shows. Still working on my sign, have to learn a bit more about my new machine and wait for a hoop to come in.
My luck is on a roll it seems! I was accepted as a vendor at the Handmade Holiday Bazaar in St. Pete! Mark your calendars for December 5th to come and see my display along with many other local artists!
In front of Fiberolgie 411 15th Ave N St. Petersburg
It's almost Easter so we decided to take Zoe to see the Easter Bunny. She will be four months old next week, I can't believe how fast time has gone by! She is our big little girl and is absolutely wonderful. She was so happy with the Easter Bunny, I am so happy with her picture! My maternity leave is over but I had such a wonderful time off with her. Only the past month or so was I able to get any actual sewing done. It took us a while to develop a routine. But I loved every minute of it. I made some soft books for her and joined the Stuffed Team. Below is my contribution to our calendar which will be coming out later this year.
I am currently in the Stuffed Bunny show in St. Pete at the Eve N Odd gallery. I also have work hanging for the "Hip to Be Square" show at the Bricks in Ybor. Local peeps check it out! During my maternity leave I started experimenting with my 3D modeling, printing on fabric, and quilting. I think it turned out great, we'll see if it sells!
