Make Love Not War

This is the image that materialized while I was at the Holland Performing Arts Center in Omaha listening to a Mozart symphony. You never know.

I can see that the butons might not be bright enough, but they are the ones I chose from my mother's and my mother-in-law's button boxes.

I did originally mount the front on a quilted flowered square with the fringe hanging down, but it wasn't working for me, so I just made it into a flat bag, with a plain piece of denim on the back and two simple handles. Everything is stitched from the top. I even know who I'm going to give it to - she will love it because she's a 21st century hippie!

Blue Jean Journal

I am taking an online journal class with Sue B. (By the way this class has been great.) You can check some of the journals that have been produced by the class at:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/suebjournalmaking0308/pool/

I dug into my hubby's closet and pulled out a pair of jeans that were un-wearable in public...and begged for them. I cut them up and looked for areas that didn't have holes. I decided that I would make a journal cover for my Friday Challenge.

I was able to use both back pockets and the button.

After making the journal I was fixing to trim off all of the frayed threads...but then I decided that they added to the over all design. I did add a few choice phrases to dress the journal up a little.

Best of all I still have a few hunks of jean fabric to use in another project.

Ann Morrell

"Star Spangled Banner".

The stars are recycled jeans with a gold metallic knit behind. The background is a "sky" fabric that I painted. The bargello is cotton, velour, lame', silk dupion and metallic brocade. I echo quilted with monofiliment.This was a lot of fun to do...especially the 'pockets'... LOL

As always, I welcome any comments and suggestions...

Cherie

Challenge #20 - April 2008 The Jeans Challenge

Challenge # 20 - Friday, April 25, 2008

Guest Hostess – Priscilla Stultz

Theme or Technique - Continuing on the recycle theme from last month.
“The Jeans Challenge: Recycle, Reuse, Reinvent with a pair of discarded jeans”

Design Concept - Using the elements of design create something using line and shape.

Due: Saturday, May 3rd

Recycle "Keys"

I finished this FFFC on time but was leaving for the IQA quilt show in Chicago and didn't have time to take a photo and post.

For the background I used a muslin machine practice piece. The hotel "keys" my husband made holes in them for me to sew them on...old car keys and even an old skelton key..and a couple of old buttons. We were following our grandson Jack around for his college Tennis... he's in his first year at Lake Superior State. Maybe I should have named it Keys to Tennis!! Size is 9 x 17"

Janice Simpson

challenge 19

Party time was made from a collection of beer caps collected by my son in law. He loves micro brews and wanted to save the caps in a way that he could hang on his wall near his home computer. I quilted a fabric sandwich first then added the caps with holes punched in them and added large beads in between the caps. It was a fun project and he appreciated the time that I spent to make it. Great Challenge

Leave No Trace

When we are camping, we are always told to leave everything as though we had never been there. We always take a bag a clean up our camp area before we leave, sadly, often leaving it cleaner than when we arrived.

I took a picture of the desert near Borrego Springs, CA and enhanced the color. I then extended the horizon with similar fabric. After slashing and inserting strips, I collaged several "found" items - bottle tops, corks, Cal Trans fencing and some odds and ends.

Spring is in the Air!

16" x 15"

This is the season which seems to take forever to get here, and then is over too soon! The spring was torn from an old school notebook and touched up with some green paint. The styrofoam balls were left over from last month's challenge, with fabric paint used for the buttons and carrot nose and some twigs for snowman arms. And while I started. this time, with a square, I framee it with some stuffed polar fleece like a frame cut from a big snowball.

Challenge 19 - Journal Cover by Joanna Strohn

Front cover: 8" x 10 1/2"
Fits a standard composition journal

I didn't think I'd be able to participate in this challenge as I'm busy making samples for classes I'll be teaching. However, Friday night (when all the shops were closed, of course) I discovered that I had mismarked one of the projects -- a journal cover. The inside was finished but the outside was just a tad too small ... I'd marked the wrong journal. Gnashed teeth!

I decided to make lemonade. Grabbed my container of scraps that had fusible on them. ("Always keep your scraps," I tell my students, but I'd decided I'd better do some clean-up in the studio and these were going to the garbage.) Looked for inspiration. Leaves, of course!

Started cutting leaves. Decided to make this a practice piece for some thread painting and free-motion quilting. Couched a yarn scrap for a stem.

The thread painting is inspired by Ann Fahl, the journal cover technique is from Jake Finch, and the leaf quilting motif was from a recent workshop by Frieda Anderson.

This was fun, educational, saved some scraps from the landfill, and will be more ammunition when I tell students to never throw anything away!

I always appreciate comments!

-- Joanna Strohn in Tucson, Arizona

Objects: Lost & Found by Penny Irwin

8.5" x 11"
Classified ads from a newspaper glued to cheesecloth and appliquéd to a sew & flip base.
I was going for the look of a neighborhood message board that used to be outside a small local grocery before WalMart came along.

Originally I thought to list on this message board things I see when I walk; "Lost" many trash objects. And "Found", signs of Spring and returning life. This proved overwhelming.
Objects lost and found are a mixed message from the Earth. It still has business with us but we are hanging by a thread.

Lost:
one green bead
9 CO2 cartridges
thousands of beer bottle glass shards
uncounted aluminum beer cans and glass bottles
plastic soda straws
plastic cup covers
plastic chewing gum container
3 single gloves, no matches
nails
plastic coated wires
1 single shoe
sunglasses with one lense
Arrowhead mountain Spring water bottles
cigarette butts and empty cigarette packs
2 children's lunch boxes
several short lengths of plastic pipe
a dust pan, ironic?
3 Christmas trees
several tires
road kill fawn, tossed into wild roses.
Black plastic garbage bags filled with leaves and grass clippings (yes, I forced myself to look)
chunks of broken cement, brick and sod
piles of black asphalt and red cinders
Paperback: "Riddley Walker" (good book)
pair of children's mittens, placed together on a large rock

Found: Many familiar birds, insects and animal tracks. (It was all I could do to remember the trash) Found: the willows have returned to life. They have survived many fires and drought years. They once stood as single trees and now are a dense mass of sucker growth; taller and more massive each year. They might one day be single trees again.

Green flowers

I finally was able to finish another piece. I am a packrat anyway never throwing away the smallest piece of fabric. I made 'flowers' from old pop tabs that I colored, used buttons for their centers and twist ties for the stems. The leaves are from an old Christmas decoration. The background is all snippets of fabric I just couldn't toss and it came in handy for this challenge.

Challenge #19 Rhoda Forbes

I am posting my 'something from nothing' challenge. On the urging of a teacher I went to the Salvation Army and purchased old clothing. This piece is made from snippets and pieces of that old clothing. The piece depicts some of my favorite things.
I had hoped to have it stitched etc., but just haven't had the time, so am posting it in it's raw state.
Thanks for the challenge Wendy.
Rhoda

PAINTED LEAF

This piece is about 18" square. It was one of my first attempts at making an original art quilt about 4 years ago. It was moldering in a closet with some other "failed" attempts. I brought it out and attacked it with paint after reading "The Painted Quilt"by Laura and Linda Kemshall. I painted the leaf with two colors of metallic paints and the body of the quilt with some acrylics mixed with textile medium. It made the leaf and the quilting pop and greatly improved the quilt so that it is no longer bound for the trash. I will note that the painted areas are now pretty stiff so using the acrylics prior to quilting probably wouldn't make for a pleasant quilting experience.

Thanks for any comments. I'm snowed under with work for the next two months so won't get to comment like I usually do.