Happy New Year & Aaron's Quilted Nutcracker and Silhouetted pictures for my girls!

Aaron's Christmas Nutcracker !

One of my last big projects of this year was to make my Grandson a quilted nutcracker.   He has an extensive collection of nutcrackers in all sizes and shapes.   I have made him a nutcracker wall hanging and a quilt using nutcracker fabric.   This year he asked for a quilted nutcracker - one that was the real shape of a nutcracker and not one on a background!!!!   Well, what could I do?   We all know that when a grandchild asks for something, we will do whatever it takes!!  He asked and I set about to figure out how to do this project........something that I had no clue how to start.

So I found this picture on the internet..

I cut it into 4 sections and kept enlarging    
 each section...... until I had this...on the right!




 This is a tracing I made once I had the nutcracker from the internet enlarged to be 48 inches tall. I wanted it as tall as Aaron, but he is over 5 feet now. I had to stop somewhere.




These are some of the detailed pictures:

The star is made from gold lame.


The hair is a furry fabric with curly loopy yarn.   I was so fortunate to find that.
                                                       

The beard is white fleece. 





The belt is from a piece of leather and the buckle is from a belt I purchased at Salvation Army store - just to get the buckle!




                          

The shoes are more pieces of leather.  The feet were actually the hardest to do of the entire thing.   Not sure why, they just never did look right to me.

The final picture is the best!   The looks on his face is the best thanks I could have gotten.   I'd do it all over again for that look!!!

These are the silhouetted pictures I made for each of my daughters.   When they were each in first grade, the teacher had a local artist come and do silhouettes of each of the children.   They were done on paper and mounted to a sheet of white paper and sent home with the child as the Christmas gift for their parents.   Over the years, that paper has yellowed and tattered.   So, after seeing an article in Quilting Arts magazine, I decided to trace the silhouette and reproduce it on fabric.   I reversed one so they would be facing each other,   Karen, my youngest is on the left and Heather, the oldest is on the right.    They both loved their Christmas Gift this year.

In conclusion......my wish to you all for a Happy and Healthy and Prosperous New Year!   I love this quote......

 "And now let us welcome the new year full of things that have never been.”
                                                                                                     – Ranier Maria Rilke

 

YEAAAA!!! My computer is back!

Yea, my computer is home.   Now I have to try and remember all the things that I wanted to post before Christmas.

At our last guild meeting we exchanged our secret sister santa stockings.   My secret sister gave me a lovely quilt that she had made with attached beading (because she knows how much I like beads) and then left it with a note for me to quilt, saying I could do a much better job than she could.   I don't know - she is an expert handquilter, I am a machine quilter.   Oranges & Apples!!!   Anyway, here is the finished product, on my table with the advent wreath.   I think they coordinate quite nicely.

This is the quilt.   There is a String of silver beads around each of the purple squares.

I knew I wanted to quilt a wreath - as it was the Christmas Season and I knew I wanted to do a feather wreath.   Free motion - no pattern....a fun project.

This is a terrible picture color-wise.   The purple is a deep rich purple as seen in the other photos.   For some reason, I couldn't get it to show as dark in the photo.

The triangles around the edge.   The feathers continue - in the triangle and in the sashing.   I did a large scroll over the outside borders and sashing.  

Together, we have made a lovely quilt, I think.

Wahhhhhhh!

Wahhhhh! I have all these pictures of projects I've been doing and didn't post too soon because some of them are gifts.....and CRASH goes my computer!! Of course I haven't backed up things as I should so I'm really hoping it can be fixed or at least my data retrieved. I don't think Santa has any money left in his budget for a new one. Thank goodness for my IPad, even though I can't do everything on this things.....like get my pictures etc. So no pics until I get it bsck from the shop :(

Brown Bag Challenge Revealed

So, this is it!!   "B is for Butterflies"!   That's the title of my finished piece.   The photo on the above right is a reminder of the objects we had to use.

I chose to make a big purple butterfly!   Why, well, because that would be "so" me.   I love purple and I love butterflies!!

I used the brown man's tie to make the body of the butterfly.   I used the doily to stencil the coppery design onto the wings, the zipper is the antenna and I cut the lime green hair scrunchy into little tiny bits and glued them to add dimension for the spots on the wings!!!

The background of this quilt is a piece of fabric I created by snow dying fabric a couple of years ago.   The green is created using the rubber gripper from the brown bag.   I painted onto one side of the gripper mat, then put it on the fabric and rolled it with a brayer to release the paint.   I used the copper mettalic scrubbie to add the dabs of copper paint you see above the butterfly wing.

Finally, I fused a the letter "b" onto the flat wooden bead - hence the title of this piece.

This was so fun and everyone's piece was way different than the one before it.  You can see all of the pieces on the Museum Quilt Guild Blog

http://museumquiltguild.blogspot.com/