Jens Arty Life

Ok, a bit more than a week since my last post - but look!!!!! I finished it!!!! I even made the family keep the Christmas tree up an extra week so I could see it on there. I had a few problems; the red beads were very irregular and they made it wibbly wobbly, and the cabacon in the middle was too small and kept falling out of my Bezel, so I had to adjust like crazy putting the five points together, and it is still a bit wavy, but I still love it, so I'm happy to share it with you. I learnt so much doing it and instead of getting frustrated, it has just made me want to do more. And so on to the next one...doing a bead embroidery at the moment.

Happy New Year! I finished some great projects last year, and I have some new ones already on the go. I thought I'd show some photos of what I am working on, which illustrates perfectly why this can't be a quilting blog or a painting blog, or whatever. Just recently finished: An art journal for my friend Linda in Canada. I have utilised book making skills, quilting, textile painting, stenciling and beading Also for Linda in Canada, a crochet scarf. Just for fun, a watercolour. The design isn't mine, it comes from a Dover colouring book  (Ed Sibbert jr) and I traced it onto watercolour paper to experiment. And this is what I am working on currently: A peyote beading project which was supposed to go on my Christmas tree, but probably won't hand there this year as it's taking longer than I thought. But I'll finish it even though the tree will go down so I don't lose momentum on it (it's quite a complicated pattern for me)

well the top of the quilt is done I'm happy with the way it turned out, and I'm happy it's done...well the top is. I plan to put it on my quilting frame over Christmas to do a custom job. And so on to the next one. I've been doing embroidery for a friendship quilt I'm making with a friend in Canada. I had my first go at crewel embroidery and I'm happy with how it turned out - which is good because I have a long term plan to make a piece of clothing with lots of it on there. That lotus is part of a larger embroidery piece which I will show when it is done - it will go on a quilt eventually. Thanks for reading.

So the hand sewn hex part is all done. Tomorrow I will be adding the coloured border and the appliqued corners and I will decide if I want to do any more borders, or call it quits.

I am so excited! My samples finally arrived. These are from spoon flower where I have been able to put my artwork onto fabric. The small berry like pattern in a vine is actually the art work of my friend in Canada Linda Kinsella. She was the one who gave me the inspiration to start this project, and she will be working with me too. So the idea is to put our art on fabric (printed here on 8x8 samples, but will eventually been on fabric in yardage). And we will each sew some blocks, then swap half of them and make a quilt each. I am also designing the quilt (haven't gotten that far quite yet. I ordered the samples to make sure the quality was OK - to test it by sewing, washing and quilting them to make sure they were just like the fabric in the shops. So far so good, I threw a few commercially available fabrics in the mix to go with our very busy fabrics.... ...and then quickly sewed up a checkerboard piece... I'm sure happy with this and I can't

This double page is in my art journal, but is kind of a mix of art journaling and scrapbooking, as i wanted something a bit quick because for me the most important bit of this page is the writing (which I hadn't done when this photo was taken). On this page i wrote all the things I am proud to have achieved up to this date. There were big things on it like having a book published in Germany and some small things like 'I'm proud I am much better at finishing things now that I am older'. I used to be terrible at starting stories or art projects, or quilts, or embroideries and never finishing anything. Don't get me wrong. i still have UFOs but there are less of them and they have a MUCH higher chance of being discovered or my passion rekindled and the thing getting finished. ANYWAY...to make this page I used some scrapbooking paper, tore it in half, stencilled in a few layers in a colour to match the purple bird and flower on the paper, stamped a few messy circles