Here's Leverett

I finally finished my first Santa for 2006. His name is Leverett (that’s French for “young rabbit”). He’s dressed in tea-stained vintage ivory chenille trimmed with antique lace and cool vintage mother of pearl sequins and a large mother of pearl button. I’ll be adding two antique postcards for him to display: one for Christmas and one for Easter. He’s not sure whether to he wants to go to EBAY right away or to my Shanty Clauses site…and I wish he’d make up his mind…

Leverett

Busy Bee

The magnolia tree is blooming! I love spring! The temperature is in the 70s today…

Magnolia Blossom and Bee

The Periwinkles are in Bloom...

It has been over a week since I last blogged! I really lost track of the time. The weather has been below average for awhile and I am getting cabin fever! I want to play outside. The periwinkles are in bloom - a little cheerfulness on an otherwise gray day. Here are a couple of watercolor sketches and a photo of the periwinkles growing under the foundation plants.

Nature Journal: Periwinkles

Personal Symbols Lesson Five

This painting on lutradur was created for the Personal Symbols class and is meant to be cut down into smaller pieces, stitched and beaded. I used a stylized sassafras leaf for my symbol. I had an awful lot of fun just playing in the paints and not being perfect!

Big Spider!

DH found this beauty today while he was bringing in some logs for the fire. He/she is around three inches long (including legs). I have no clue as to identity…

Vintage Hankie 2 (Stash Sunday)

This week's theme is "green." Here’s a vintage hankie with green crocheted trim just in time for St. Patrick’s Day! And there’s an old pressed four-leaf clover just for luck…

Vintage Hankie - Crocheted Trim

Vintage Hankie (Stash Sunday)

I posted this to Stash Sunday at Flickr and forgot to post it here, too. This is a vintage hankie with a corded, embroidered initial and cutwork corner. If you look closely at the detail, you can see a very pretty scalloped "shadow" inside the “E” and the surrounding design motifs. I bought this at an antique store a few years ago with the intention of making something for dear MIL. Since I haven’t been able to bring myself to cut into it, I’ll probably just tie it around a jar to make an informal vase for flowers. I saw that idea in a book I have, Affordable Heirlooms (Creative Sewing with Old and New Linens). Goodness! I just linked to that book on Amazon and you can get it for as little as a penny! It’s a great book!

Vintage Hankie

Personal Symbols Lesson Four

In lesson four, we were to create stamps from our word association doodles to print on fabric. This course is a lot of work but I’m loving every minute of it! Here is my first attempt:

Lumiere Paint Stamped on Painted Kona Cotton

Personal Symbols Lesson Three

The object of this lesson was to use painted lutradur to create a Matisse-esque collage using some of the personal symbols created in the beginning of the course. This will be embellished with hand stitching and beads.

This was fun - just like playing with colorforms when I was little!

Matisse-esque Collage