Crooked Cabins progress

Well, for several days, I've been working on the Crooked Cabin blocks. Yesterday I decided I was done building up the blocks and was ready to start putting them together. After much fussing and fiddling, I finished the center of the first quilt top. I don't have a whole lot of the made fabric left, so I'm going to have to get a little creative with the second quilt LOL! I think I will work on the second one before starting on the borders ... I want to think about the borders a little more before tackling them.

My oldest (Emily) has claimed this one already!

Working on the crooked cabin blocks

Today I spent some time working on the blocks for the crooked cabin quilts for my girls. I sewed one set of strips around the centers. Though I only show a few in these pictures, there are a total of 35 bug centers and 6 daisy fabric centers. I think I'll go around the bug centers two more times and then around the daisy fabric one more time before moving to the next step ... maybe ....

Drawing with a pen

After reading Danny Gregory's book The Creative License, I decided to try using a pen instead of pencil for a few sketches. I drew these on Sunday on the way to my in-laws and at my in-laws' house for Father's Day. I liked drawing with a pen ... I thought that not being able to erase would hamper my drawing, but instead, it seemed to be more freeing ... not sure why ....

Crooked Cabins quilts

I've been quilting for about 15 years now, and yet I have never made a bed quilt for either of my daughters ... or for our own bed, for that matter! Well, I'm working on that right now ... one of my favorite quilt designers, Pat Sloan, is doing an online workshop on her blog using her book "Crooked Cabins". I decided to follow along and make a quilt for each of my 2 girls ... our own bed will have to wait a little longer! It's basically just taking a great focus fabric (a favorite print that you don't want to cut up, a novelty fabric, odd quilt blocks, whatever you want) and adding other fabrics in a very casual way to end up with a fun and funky quilt. Sort of like a log cabin quilt, but with way more attitude LOL! I chose this fabric for my focus fabric ... roughly 6" panels of cute little bees and turtles and smiling daisies. Because the panels are so small, I decided to take the daisy fabric shown in the corner (that I just happened to have in my stash ... love when that happens!) and cut out 3 additional centers for each quilt, making them rectangles of anywhere from 7"x9" to 9"x10" ... we'll see how that goes. The next step was to pull together a bunch of fabrics that look good with the centers ... I found 14 that I thought would work. These will be used around the centers and also a couple strips of each fabric are sewn together to make a "new fabric" that can be crosscut into strips for fun spacers when the blocks are sewn together later. I made my new fabric this afternoon ... it was fun to cut and sew with no precise measuring ... just whack off a strip and sew it to the last one LOL! Now I get to start building my blocks!

Weekend Sketches

While at my niece's 8th grade graduation party this past Saturday, I drew a bunch of boxes on a page and set about filling each with a sketch from around the room. It really forced me to zero in on details that I might have missed otherwise. A good exercise without much trouble. I'm going to do these little boxes more often!

Sketching with Markers

A couple of weeks ago, I borrowed a book from the library called Sketching with Markers by Thomas C. Wang, and finally took some time today to look through it. It made me want to dig out some markers (Sharpies ... all I've got right now) and try some sketching, so that's good LOL! Not that my sketches were very good ....

First I tried to sketch the petunia plant that is hanging on a shepherd's hook on our front porch. It turned out okay, but the background looked so empty that I tried to sketch the windows behind it ... definitely too much going on there! Not sure how I could have done it differently so it looked more like a window and less like a big hole ... maybe markers aren't the best medium for this one ... any suggestions?

Then I tried to sketch the car ... EDM #60 ... I'm on a roll! I can see that the proportion is a bit off, but, hey, my daughters can tell it's a car so it can't be too bad. The car is white ... I tried to use gray for shading and it just makes it look dirty. Maybe a lighter shade of gray would've been better?

Finally, I moved on to something I thought might be a little easier ... the mailbox. Again, the proportion is a bit off, but as long as you can tell what it is, I'm happy.

Of course, my almost-8 yo daughter just had to try out my markers, so she sketched a tree that was across the street. She's definitely got a head start on me LOL!

My first few EDM drawings

I joined a Yahoo group called everydaymatters about a month ago ... it's a wonderful group that encourages lots of drawing practice by drawing ordinary, everyday things. Each week, the moderator posts a new theme for members to draw. Shortly after joining, I printed out the list of past themes so that I could start drawing some of them. I did a couple right away, then nothing until yesterday when I took out the list again and drew a few more. Not too bad IMHO, but I really need to work on proportion. Here are the few I've done so far (all in regular ol' No. 2 pencil):
#56 self portrait
#10 hand
#34 leaf
#8 & #32 watch & something metallic
#13 phone