Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Modern Nature Inspired Quilts by Bernadette Mayr - Pyramids

The local Nifty Needlers group has a library of quilting books, in April I volunteered to make one quilt from the book.  This project was outside my comfort zone, as I make baby quilts, Alzheimer's touch quilts, bed quilts, place mats, oven mitts, bibs, art quilts are not my thing.
I choose the pyramids because it was an excellent opportunity to use up scraps.
 The instructions are well written and easy to follow.
The pyramids are cut at 30˚, 90˚, 60˚ and 45˚ degree angles.
I made the inside border wider and the outside one narrower, then the instructions.
The backing is recycled denim from old bluejeans.
The outside border was free motion quilted with heart shaped leaves and the inside border is half spirals.
 The blue sky was straight stitched with tight vertical lines.
 The sand was straight stitched with tight horizontal lines.
 The pyramids are not quilted.
The binding is only two inches wide and was applied with a Bernina #71 Flat Felt foot.  I used Lisa Yarost's binding tutorial.
If I made this quilt again, I would try trapunto on the pyramids.

Saturday, September 24, 2016

Adult colouring completed sheets - mermaids, owl, chameleon, butterflies and more.

This is my current favourite creative activity.  I started out with free pages from the internet, pencil crayons, markers and gel pens on hand from quilting and my kids' school days.  Very quickly I advanced to buying and trying several kinds of markers, pencil crayons, erasers, colouring books and a sketchpad.  There are lots of wonderful artists who review and provide free tips.  It was easy to find information on colouring supplies and free colouring pages.
I love angels.
The smear on the left side middle row of cupcakes is what happens when attempting to erase a pencil mark with an eraser that wasn't cleaned after blending.
 
The green chameleon was done using mostly Bic markers and only three colours.
Backgrounds are challenging.
These pictures were coloured with a combination of Papermate InkJoy Gel pens, Casemate pens, Uniball, Bic fine line Markers, CrazArt, Staedtler, Laurentien, Hilroy, Prisma Verithin and Prisma Scholar pencil crayons. 
Laurentien pencil crayons were bought out by Sanford who discontinued the line in 2012.  This company makes Prisma coloured pencils.  Compared to other hobbies, colouring is very affordable.
Dear readers, have you tried adult colouring?