Friday, April 29, 2016

For a swap: Clowing Around

WARNING:  This post contains CLOWNS.


Twisty offered to give Orangina a little hair cut.  Orangina looks he's ready to escape on his tiny bike!

These were made for a swapbot swap.  It was circus themed art dolls.

I used the same clown pattern I used previously (from the book Sock it to Me).  But this time I added arms made from the toe pieces.  The pattern calls for cutting off the heel and toe for each shorty sock, so I had enough leftovers to ame arms, no problem.


This is Twisty.  It wasn't until I started calling him that (because of his pretzel shirt) that I remembered Twisty from American Horror Story: Freak Show.  My Twisty isn't evil.  Just a little devious (and lives dangerously, he runs with scissors!).


This is Orangina.  He's quite proud of his flowing orange locks, so Twisty's "offer" to take a bit off the top was just not well received.  He can, and will, escape on his tiny bike if necessary.  (and my sister reminded me of the Simpsons episode where Krusty the clown rides on that tiny bike. . .hadn't even thought of that but damn, that episode is so funny!)

Their hair is wool roving, which worked like a charm.




Of course, Feline Inspector Number One had to get all up in my face when I was taking the pictures.  Then he tried to eat their hair, the dirty little wool sucker that he is.

What's up next?  I have a two swaps to work on (one is short/easy, the other is multi-tiered and should be really fun to do).  I'm also still doing Fluff sewing.  Need to take a weekend and just churn out some stuff.

Monday, April 11, 2016

Rochester Contemporary Art Center 6x6x16 Submissions

The internet is great and brought to my attention the Rochester Contemporary Art Center 6x6x16 art show.

What is that?

Well, the link gives you tons of details but long story short, the Rochester Contemporary Art Center has an open show (meaning anyone can send stuff, no jury) but the catch is your art has to be 6x6 in size.  Any medium (except no glitter or unfixed charcoals/pastels) but it needs to be 6x6.  If it's smaller you need to put it on a 6x6 mat.  Bigger?  Don't even send it, they only want 6x6.

They collect up the art and then have a big show and each piece is available for purchase ($20 each).  The funds go to the art center.

How fun is that, right?

When this crossed my radar my first thought was PATCHES!

I've had two patch ideas in my head for a while but no real reason (no, making them just to make them wasn't reason enough for me, sadly) to make them.  But with this opportunity, the time was right.

You can submit up to four pieces.  I made three.  Two of them were the patch ideas I've had for a while.

Here they are:


"We Come in Peace"

I've wanted to make this patch for a while.  Ever since I made the Lizard/Spock patches and the "Oh My" George Takei patch.  I needed to make an Uhura patch using the funky peace loving alien fabric I bought just because it was fabulous (oh, how many times I've used that reasoning to buy fabric. . .that's why my stash is so freaking fun!).

Super simple.  Just heat and bond Uhura to the sweet alien fabric, add some embroidery (and some machine stitching) and add some beads to Uhura's ear area (to mimic that giant ass communicator thing she used to have to wear on her ear. . .that thing was NUTS!).  I gifted off all of my peace symbol fabric (I think it was all of it) so I used some funky flower print for the back


"The Caged Bird Sings"

Yes, that is a farting cat.  Yes, I've wanted to make this patch ever since I used this same fabric and made a similar patch (only without the fart, if memory serves).  I think the original patch was a cat with a fish in its stomach and one with a bird and I called it Fish or Fowl.  But when I was making that patch I noticed the butt in the air cat and immediately thought he was cutting a fart and those other cats were talking about how nasty he was.

This one was even SIMPLER.  I just added the button, embroidered the music notes (and fart lines) and that was that.  I used some scrap fabric for the backing.




"I Want You"

This one was thought up when I was gathering the fabrics for the other two.  Of course once I started thinking about the Uhura patch I remember how awesome the "Oh My" (George Takei) patch was (it had a sexy man's torso with the Sulu image from the Star Trek fabric looking at it and the catch phrase "Oh My!" embroidered on it.  There were also french knot nipples which amused me because deep inside I'll always be a 14 year old boy) and how great that sexy man fabric is.    (let me pause for a moment to note how the entire line of beefcake boys fabric is fabulous and more risque then you notice at first. . .I love when I find it at Joanns because Joanns just feels like such an uptight old church lady store and there are bolts of fabric with shirtless men with pubey happy trails. . .HAPPY TRAILS!  yeah, that amuses me a lot)

So I really wanted to use some more of my patriotic beefcake boy fabric.  At first I wanted to be less subtle and take one of the shirtless men and put the rocket pop in his hand.  I even had one guy who was playing a flute and I wanted to put the rocket pop in his hand instead of the flute but I was worried that might be too R rated for this event (even though there's nothing in the submission info that you have to keep it "family friendly" but I didn't need to work blue, really).  I was also worried it just wouldn't look good (like it would look stupid, not just silly/fun).

Then I noticed the fully clad sexy uncle Sam beefcake.  He's looking all cheeky.  The way he's winking and pointing.  Yeah, he knows what you're thinking when you look at that rocket pop with its glistening red tip.  Oh, he knows and he approves.  God bless America, land of the free and home of sweet phallic treats.

I debated for a second about using the text from the fabric (under the sexy Sam image it read "I want you to love yourself". . .I think that's what it said) but that seemed too obvious, too.  And there really wasn't room for the "I want you" text.  I didn't want to cover up his pointing hand so I saved that bit of text for some other project.  Less was more with this one.

Super simple, too.  Just heat and bond Sam to the rocket pop fabric and that was it.  Then I used some of my very favorite heart fabric for the back.


I also did something I never do with my patches and I signed them all on the back.  I made little iron on name tags and added them to the back.  Hey, if someone wants to follow my instagram because they saw my silly patches, that would be cool.

I really hope someone buys them.  I think they're cheeky and fun enough someone (with a glass or two of wine in them) would unroll a 20 and buy one.  It would be cool if the art center could make $60 off these silly things.

Teesha Bag for a Swap

I can show this off now that it has safely arrived at its new home (I didn't want to accidentally spoil this one since it was a big project type swap).

For the swap we had to make a bag using TM style patches.

Just like there are different acceptable (for the folks I swap with) types of TM style patches (well, there are two basic types:  puffy "original" style that are more like the TM tutorials and flat style which are more like little mini quilts) there are also different acceptable ways to make bags.  The standard (more TM type way) is to sew patches edge to edge to make the bags.  The way I prefer is to apply patches to a stand alone (basic) bag.  I think I like that way better because it lets me show off the actual bag a bit and since the bags we make usually have themes, I can get some fun theme fabric to act as mortar between the patch bricks.

My theme was Minions.



That there is one MINION-tastic bag.  I used the Green Bag Lady bag tutorial (only a bit smaller) since it's a very easy bag but always turns out nicely and is sturdy (but I always make my straps a bit longer since I prefer a longer strap).

Let's get a closer look at those patches.


Cyclops minion.  CHECK.


Wild hair minon.  CHECK.

(I forget their actual names but I wasn't really trying to make "bob" or "carl"  I just wanted to have at least one cyclops and three different hair styles for the yellow ones and one purple one).


Since I was being all matchy, matchy with this bag (I wanted all the patches to have the banana border, to have two minion faces per side and two "little minion/banana" patches per side).

I knew I'd end up using the minion beads and the banana beads again for this bag.  I also realized that some of the beads are cyclops and some aren't.  Very cool discovery.


The "bead/banana" patches are fairly similar per side but a little bit different.  I only had so many fabrics to work with and since I was going matchy, matchy I was ok with similar.


Purple minion.  CHECK.

I made all the minion portraits from felt and for the purple one I took the metal bristle brush and scratched up the felt to make it fluffy.  It wasn't as wispy as I'd really like (ideally this hair would have been like the mega block purple minion I have that has the best fluffy purple hair EVER. . .ask my cats, they grabbed it and lost it under the entertainment center and I had a mega embarrassing childish fit over it. . .hey, we all have our moments, right?) but I like the slightly more controlled hair on this.  Ultimately it will probably be better if this bag gets used with any regularity.  (the hair is glued down but still fluffs out a bit).


Comb over minion.  CHECK.

I love this one a lot, too.  The hair is what I love.  So stupid simple, too (it's just a few embroidered stitches. . .none of these minions are that complicated to make, just felt and glue, a bit of embroidery for the hair, and sew on google eyes).


See, similar but a little different.  I had to add something to the minion bead ones so they wouldn't be so boring.  A spot of embroidery does the trick nicely.


I really like the minion jumping for the banana.  It's so cute.


The lining was the low volume fabric.  I really like that fabric.  I still have a little bit of it (I have a little bit of all the fabrics) but this one is my favorite.  It's subtle in its novelty-ness.  I look forward to working it into some low volume quilt projects (I'm really into low volume prints right now. . .I'm late to the trend but that's nothing new).

What is that little gray blur there at the top of that picture?


"Hey, that's my paw, mom!"

Yes, Gene, yes it was.  The minute I started moving things around on the table to take pictures you know a Feline Inspector had to show up to oversee.  It is their duty and they take it very seriously.

"I'll just hold this for you."

Oh, so helpful.  Thanks.

Gene does look ravishing in that pic, though.  My new phone does take nice pics (and the lighting was good for this one. . .it's hit or miss depending on how I'm holding the camera).

"Dude, I'm looking GOOD."

Yes, yes you are, brah.