QUILTING. PART 2

I ended up not having to cut 160 triangles. Instead the book taught me a trick on how to go from 80 squares directly to 80 squares made out of 2 triangles each without having to cut the squares into halves first.

Do you want to know how to do it?

First, you put two squares on top of each other - the right sides together.
Then you draw a line diagonally thru the middle, pin both pieces together and sew on both sides of the line (about 1/4" away from the line on each side - you can barely see the seams in this picture).
Finally you cut along the line and when you open up the pieces you have new squares!

In the end you just iron the seams to one side. I felt like this was an awesome trick that saved me a bunch of time. So now I have 80 squares made out of 160 triangles:)

Whats next? The fun part! Putting all of these together to create one side of the quilt!

QUILTING. PART 1

I'm trying something new. I decided to try quilting. My friend and I are making a quilt for another friend's of our who is an absolutely wonderful lady. We're using T-shirts from all the Habitat builds we've done together and then some fabric for the spaces in between them. She's doing the front and I'm doing the back. Less pressure on me I guess:)

I've gotten several books from the library to get a grasp on how quilts are made and really liked "Little bits quilting bee" by Kathreen Ricketson.

I chose one of the patterns that I liked best and felt like it would be a good one to utilize the different color T-shirts and started cutting. It took me 2 nights. The first night I was cutting the fabric into 40 squares and the second night 40 squares out of T-shirts. Cutting the T-shirts was double work since first I had to cut the fusible interfacing, fuse it and finally cut that same size out of T-shirt.
Have you ever wondered what 80 squares of fabric look like? Quite frankly, they don't look like much:

What's next? 80 squares will become 160 triangles:)

PHEW...

My goodness! I've been seriously busy lately. Haven't been posting here at all. As a matter of fact, I have blogged 5 times as often as a guest on the Poletsy blog than here on my own blog! Bad, bad, bad girl!!!!

Anyway... I just finished this cover featuring Kate Moss as vintage Bowie. I'm so glad that I got to do this. True, I've been painting a lot lately but as much as I love doing commissions, painting just something, anything out of pure desire to do it feels so good. 

I'm also quite ashamed to admit that tomorrow is the due date for sending in the sketchbooks and I won't be sending mine in. I've only done one more drawing since that last one and just couldn't find the time to fill it up in time. It feels terrible. Hopefully I'll get to try again next year!!!

IF ROUND

I finally started working on my sketchbook for the Sketchbook Project. My topic is Forks and Spoons and this was the first idea that popped in my head and I just had to do it. It also seems round enough to make it my this weeks IF submission:)

IF SILENT

I'm sort of cheating out here because this is not a brand new drawing but something I did several of month ago. Couldn't resist though when I saw this weeks topic.

THE SKETCHBOOK PROJECT

It arrived!!!! My Sketchbook arrived...

What is The Sketchbook Project? It's like a concert tour, but with sketchbooks. The tour will start in New York in April 2012. Thousands of sketchbooks will be exhibited at galleries and museums as they make their way on tour across the world. 

It's an annual thing. I've been wanting to participate in the last 2 years but then I've always decided not to, too worried about my busy schedule and whether I'd be able to do it. Not this year. This year I'm doing it!!! Paid for my book and it's already arrived!!!! 

There are 30 themes you can choose from for your sketchbook. I chose "Forks and Spoons". Not sure where it'll take me but I'll post photos on facebook as the ideas start to unravel. 

I have to mail the book back by the end of January. There are 32 pages in the book plus 4 cover pages - 36 pages total, meaning I should complete a drawing every three days! 

The best part? After the tour, my sketchbook along all the other ones will enter into the permanent collection of The Brooklyn Art Library, where it'll be available for the public to view. I may need to take a special trip to NYC...

EVERY MOTHER COUNTS

Every 90 seconds, a woman dies from childbirth. Fully 90% of those deaths are preventable. The Aid organization Every Mother Counts is training midwives in Afghanistan, opening health clinics in the Democratic Republic of Congo and shipping unused medical supplies to South Sudan. These are tangible, practical projects designed to combat maternal mortality and injuries worldwide.

Daily paintworks is having a fundraiser for Every Mother Counts and I've decided to auction this painting (one of my favorites actually) for the cause. Please click here to see all the works being auctioned and to find out more about the fundraiser. 
I'm going to donate all my profits from this sale to Every Mother Counts. I'm also planning to donate 50% of all my profits of all prints of this painting to the same organization. 

SWAPPING ART FOR A HAT

Last year I swapped art for a bag with Ifona. This year I'm swapping art for a hat with Ella Gajewska. Ella is a milliner and she makes all these awesome hats. You know, the royal wedding type stuff. I love those things but I really had a hard time justifying buying one especially since I'll probably wear it about once a year. And I guess Ella felt the same way about my paintings. So I'm thrilled that we ended up talking about it and decided on a swap.
She's asked for a painting of one of her models wearing one of her hats that would look like a Vogue magazine cover. Here's the picture I worked from and the final product:

I just finished it yesterday. The size of the original is 16"x20" so it's looking pretty big and pretty awesome quite frankly. I had a lot of fun working on it.

On the other hand I've asked for a hat that Ella was offering for sale at her store, but in purple instead of red. Here are the two pictures of the two hats:










I can't wait to get it. I'm not anywhere close to being as beautiful as Ella's model but I'm hoping to be able to pull it off.
I love swapping. It's like modern day bartering via internet:)

FOOTBALL BABIES IN BELLY

With the football season going on for a while now, I've decided I needed to shape up and get the rest of the football babies going. I've been working on the NFL teams first and I'm pretty much finished. College's next. Whew!

This guy is my favorite so far. Not because Cincinnati is my favorite team. To be honest, I have no clue about football. I like this design the most because of the stripes I've added to the ball to make it a little extra Bengal like:)
To see all football babies available for sale now, please click here.
Also, feel free to contact me for custom babies.

INFERTILITY & I

Have you ever wondered how I came up with Babies in Bellies? Well, they were for me. I wanted to be able to show off my unborn babies so much and I couldn't find anything online that matched what I envisioned so I drew it out myself. I mean I had already been trying for over 2 years and on prenatal vitamins for 3 at that time, it was bound to happen any day...

See, here's something that I haven't shared with too many people. I've been trying to get pregnant for a long, long time. If you're thinking that you're about to read a story that ends with a baby - you're wrong. Why am I coming out with this information then? Well, I've searched all over the internet and there are plenty of happy endings and lots of forum discussing the as you go failures and next steps, but almost nothing about those who said: "I've had enough" at some point and chose not to have their life centered around menstrual cycles anymore and came to terms with an idea of the childless future. So, I'm sharing here, something very personal, because I'm sure, I'm not the only one. There must be others. 

This was going to be my last year trying anyway, but with 3 months to spare and one final trick to go for (the IVF - the mighty procedure that would raise my chances to whooping 40%!!!), I'm saying: I'm done, I'm finished, no more. There will be no more people looking at and into my privates several times a month, there will no more hormones, hot flashes, mood swings and crying. Neither there will be any more shots that are also used to give to boys if their balls don't drop and that made my arm hurt for about 5 days.  But mainly there will be no more of the crazy unknown that maybe, hopefully, it'll happen this month...

 "It'll probably never happen for us" - I've said it several times in the past, but I never really believed it. I always thought that by some miracle it would happen, that yes I would get pregnant, even better yet, I would get pregnant with twins so that I can have 2 babies right away instead of 1. I never really thought that at some point I will have to realize and come to terms with the fact, that this is not what I want to do anymore. Because at this point I'm not"giving up", I am getting a life back.

So, as I'm throwing away the twenty or so remaining ovulation kits, I don't feel guilty or sad or even disappointed, I actually feel quite liberated. And so I sprinkle them with prenatal vitamins and to top it all off, I trow in the unused pregnancy test still in it's pink wrapping.