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Getting out of 2017 and into 2020

Yes!  I finished the 2017 ICAD challenge, and I am so far keeping up with the 2020 challenge.  Here is what I churned out in the past few weeks to close out 2017:

Week 7 prompts: lyrics, denim or blue, night sky, love, layers, intersection, charm bracelet.

Week 8: sun or moon, swim, adjective, mirror, greetings from…, sepia, ghost or zombie.

Week 9: spring, summer, autumn, winter, sunset.

On Tuesdays through the next two months, I will post my progress on the ICAD challenge.  My goals for this year are to try combining art media and truly explore mixed media more and to make an art quilt inspired by one of my index cards.  Of course, the quilt will happen after the challenge ends.  For my mixed media goal this week, I have combined stamping, collage and lettering; ink drawing and watercolor pencil; fabric, stitching and paint; iron-on thread and paint; collage and watercolor pencil.  The prompts for week one were hopscotch, marigold, album, sequins, 1980s, dreamcatcher and highway.  It is not too late to pick up the challenge, why not give it a try?

Finally, I’m still rolling along with my 4×4” squares.  Here are the ones from May:

Onward to something else on Thursday, see you then!

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Close to Finishing…

It looks like I am on track to finish the index card collages from 2017 by May 31, in time to immediately start the annual challenge for 2020 on June 1.  As I look around my sewing room, I am realizing that these side challenges get finished at the expense of other projects, but the important thing is that I am still making something, reinforcing a daily creative habit, and learning more about materials, composition and design along the way.  Those are all good things that will positively influence my bigger projects.

Here are the cards from 2017 Week 5, prompts were polka dots, gyroscope, faux wallpaper, desert or dessert, orange, Fourth of July, favorite type of apple.

Week 6, prompts were perfume, kaomoji or emoji, charcoal, ampersand, steampunk, roots, onomatopoeia.

Coming soon, I will have some more musings on music to visual art, thoughts on combining vastly different influences, of course the 2020 ICAD challenge, and so much more in the upcoming weeks.

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Those Index Cards Again!

Well, I got a bit lost in creative projects over the past couple of weeks!  Among all the other things I am attempting, I am frantically finishing up a project from 2017.  That was the first year that I attempted the annual Index-Card-a-Day challenge.  It did not go well for me.  I started late, managed the daily creation of a collage on an index card for about one and a half weeks, then I wandered off.  The challenge ran for two months.  The time is near for the 2020 edition of ICAD to start (June 1), so this month I am trying to finish what I started three years ago.  I fared a little better with my ICAD completion rate in 2018, and I was even more disciplined last year.  I have all the cards for the past two years finished.  I don’t know why I waited so long to finish the 2017 cards.  Here is what I have so far from the 2017 challenge.

Week One – prompts: sunrise, lost and/or found, vintage, lavender, kawaii/cute, detour, alliteration

Week Two – paint chips, ombre, sunshine yellow, tetrahedron, wings, echo/repeat, leaves

Week Three – starburst, rainbow, sprout, alphabetize, gear/gadget, yin/yang, simplicity

Week Four – vanishing point, Alice in Wonderland, caravan/RV, portrait, green, farm, dashboard

I’m off to create, I have a long way to go.

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April Squares Bring… More Squares in May?

OK, just ignore my poor attempt at a pun in the title!  Another short and sweet today, here are the 4×4 squares that I have stitched this past month:

Out of each group, which square do you like the best?  Which one do you like the least?

How do you feel about the color combinations?  I definitely notice that certain colors attract me on a certain day, but on another day, I wonder what I was thinking.

Do you like the stitch selections that I chose for the pieces?  What stitches would you have used?

If you love hand stitching like I do, I hope that you will try a few squares.  Even if you haven’t done a lot of hand stitching, give it a try!  These squares do not take long to complete, and who knows, you just might discover a new passion.

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Springtime in Stitches

Short and sweet today.  I just finished a small, dual-purpose project:

This is a future class sample, and a teaser for some embroidery patterns that I hope to have available soon.  The base of the above piece is an example of fabric weaving from Fabric Embellishing: The Basics and Beyond by Ruth Chandler, Liz Kettle, Heather Thomas and Lauren Vleck (Landauer, 2009).  I’d love to teach a monthly workshop on fabric embellishing, there are so many surprising techniques to have in our art quilt skill sets.  I really enjoy learning and sharing new things with others.

From my “finding inspiration anywhere” files, here is a random snapshot I took last week of spring beauties and a few violets that I found on a walk around the countryside:

There is a little composition lesson here, this is an example of crystallographic balance, where there is no main focal point.  Look at it from a short distance, and there are still areas of negative space, where there are gaps in the flowers.  Visual interest comes from those gaps and in the contrast between the short star-like petals of the spring beauties against the long blades of grass sprawling in every direction.  Of course, the pop of color from the violets adds an element of surprise.  Yes, I am imagining how to turn this into a little stitched piece… someday.