Pink & Green for College

Our daughter is leaving for college in a few weeks and she and I worked together to make this quilt for her new home. She chose the fabric and design, I did the sewing and quilting. I love that she will have a homemade quilt as she begins this new chapter. 

It was also fun to see her choose fabrics and realize these pinks and greens are the very same colors we used for her nursery before she was even born! 🥰 

The fabrics are mostly from Brenda Riddle's "Abide" line. We mixed in a bunch of low volume favorites with lots of soft pinks and greens. 

The backing is a soft flannel to make this quilt feel extra cozy. 

We will miss her so much but are so happy for her! Luckily she will only be about 3 hours from home, so we will be able to visit often.

Aqua Quilt

 

This quilt is all 4.5" half-square triangles made from various Bonnie & Camille aqua fabrics. It feels like such a happy quilt. I wish I could have taken it to the coast for photos... isn't it just beachy?!

The backing is one of my favorite vintage sheet finds, ever! It's such a pretty print and the colors look just perfect with the aquas on the front. 

You can view all of my quilts at https://sew-handmade.blogspot.com/p/completed-quilts.html

Learning Pastels

I took an pastels art class at my local art center. It was taught by LaVone Sterling, who is an award winning artist. I've tried pastels in the past but never really gotten the hang of how to use them. 

This is a photo of LaVone's pastels pallet. Isn't it beautiful? I love COLOR! 

We started with a photograph (I chose one that I took my husband's family cabin) and did a pencil sketch.

After the sketch, we used watercolor underpainting to provide a background to build on. 

Then we started at the top and worked our way down, adding layers of pastels to be blended together.

LaVone showed us how to use stryofoam packing peanuts to blend the pastels, which worked so well! I was amazing! We also used plain white bread - like Wonderbread! - to blend and remove color when we had added too much. 

I tried to take lots of photos along the way to document the process. I was amazed at how quickly it went from scribbles of color to looking like real artwork. This is with the trees and sky blended, but still just the watercolor background on the barn.

 And as much as I tried to take photos, then I got excited working on the barn and grass and didn't take any more photos until the end. 

Here are the other pieces made by the rest of the class. I was so impressed! 

And here's my finished piece. I hope it doesn't sound too braggy, but I am SO happy with how it turned out. I keep looking at it, amazed that I made it! 

LaVone is planning to come back for a second class in the fall and I hope I can attend. She was a great teacher and I loved learning all of her tricks. I can't wait to try another one!