Posted in drawing

Celebrate Equinox – Belatedly

Since I missed celebrating the equinox on the right date, I am belatedly posting pictures of spring flowers blooming in my yard. This one is the front yarn, showing multiple pansies, some grape hyacinths, and the foliage of daffodils whose blooms got zapped in the late February freeze.

Another view including late blooming daffs that just opened up this week.

Two views of the back yard.

On to more artsy subjects. I may have mentioned that I am taking a course in traditional art. It runs for ten weeks, five of which are devoted to drawing. Since I am nearly finished with the drawing portion of the course, I thought I would share some pages from my sketchbook.

Full disclosure: I am not really working very hard at this, due to other, more deadline-driven projects that have eaten away at my free time. Here are some pages with notes and examples of drawing adult and child portraits.

The first lesson was about still life drawing.

Next came portraits of children. I chose to draw three girls from a photograph I found on Unsplash.com. I was charmed by their expressions.

Last Monday, we moved on to animals. This drawing is based on a magazine photograph – probably National Geographic.

SNOW LEAPORD

It’s been pretty fun so far. There is a lot light-hearted banter, and no-one is stressing about their performance very much. From feedback I have received, I am encouraged to try more portraits. I’m also ready to have a go at drawing those frisky squirrels which make their home in our trees and regularly steal food from the bird feeders.

Posted in quilting

Finished Object Friday – Quilting

After three months, I have finished the pet-friendly quilt that started with this fabric.

Inspired by Rayna Gillman’s improvisational piecing technique and using a combination of log cabin and strip pieced squares, I designed a pair of blocks I call Dog House, Cat Barn.

The blocks finish at 12 inches square. But how can they turn into a bed quilt? After mulling it over for awhile and making several sketches on graph paper, I found that I could fit four blocks across five rows to come up with a twin-size quilt. To create balance, I staggered the rows by four inches with a spacing strip, alternating between left side and right side every row.

I also felt that the balance would improve if the center row was different. Thus was conceived the Pet Condo construction project in “mid-town,” (if you will permit my flight of fancy.)

Four inches of sashing in a grey polka-dot fabric between the rows made a “street,” giving the animal neighbors a nice boulevard for walking over to visit. With my concept complete, I re-named the quilt Animal Friends.

Oh, another group of animal friends were introduced via the background fabric: Our hardworking and very dear bees.

The Animal Friends quilt measures 57 by 84 inches. It was quilted with a combination of walking foot “stitch in the ditch” and free motion stitching on my Bernina.