Welcome!

Thank you for visiting artful embellishments. This is the third year for this blog and I am so happy to keep publishing. I started in 2011 and began with a quilt of the week, this lead to the leaf of the week for my newly designed paper tree that is located on the wall of my garage in 2012.......2013 is going to bring a lot of excitement and positive change. As a personal challenge for 2013, I plan on designing a artist trading card each week to be featured on the blog.
With so many interests, there will be quilting, art quilting, leaves (and more leaves), as well as experiments in thermofax screen printing, fabric dying, and tons of DIY recycle projects. I may even enter that altered fashion scene. To a happy and healthy 2013, may we all find happiness in those things we create....thank you for stoping by artful embellishments.

Monday, July 25, 2011

Week 26 Fly

This weeks art quilt was a new challenge for me. I had read the book Fabric Embellishing, The Basics and Beyond by Chandler, Kettle, Thomas, and Vlcek. This book is so full of interesting ideas with step by step instructions. I borrowed their technique called Tic Tac Toe Tucks for the background. This was an alternative to just a plain piece of fabric. I then used a scrap embroidered butterfly. Usually, before I embroider on the final product, I test the design on plain white muslin. This was about to be thrown into the trash, when I it occurred to me that it would be just terrible to waste this cute butterfly. The butterfly was sew on with a zig-zag stitch and colorful, thick quilting thread. The letters were on clearance in a craft store. I just love the word "fly", it is so freeing. The border was finished with hot pink leopard ribbon! I hope you all can "fly" in your creativity.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Bingo Bag

One of my good friends is an avid bingo fan. So I decided to take a pattern for an a tote bag, resize it and add pockets so she could carry all of her daubers and good luck charms. The bingo fabric was obtained from equilter.com, the source for all your specialty fabric needs. The bingo bag was a hit!

Week 25 Fly Free

Week 25 Fly Free was serendipity at it's best. I was cleaning out my fabric stash and organizing my scraps for this journal quilt project. I found this embroidered design. I had attempted to use this design which came on my new Husqvarna Viking Diamond sewing machine. This design in it's entirety is very large, requiring the hoop to be flipped. Unfortunately when I flipped the hoop, it bumped the wall and half the design was ruined. Instead of throwing this out, I cropped the design which was perfect for this journal quilt. I loved the colors and the bird in this design. Echo quilting was used around the design and it was finished with velvet trim.

Week 24 Unlock the Door

Week 24 utilized the grocery bag technique. As I said, before, this is so addicting. The paper bag was painted with Tulip fabric spray paint. This was done with two colors, pink and purple. While the paint was still wet, silver glitter was sprinkled on the surface. A stencil was used and black tulip fabric spray paint achieved the design. Tim Holtz key and key holder embellishments were added. Finally, the sizzix die cut machine was used to cut the letters. Unlock the door to your happiness......