Panda Quilt

My granddaughter who regularly paints with me loves pandas. Some of her early painting experiences were painting pandas. You can see those paintings from when she was seven years old here. Now she’s twelve and her opportunities to paint are expanding even more. She has her own studio appropriately named Black Panda Art Studio.

She had hinted several times she would really like to have a panda comforter, bedspread, blanket- something! Since we could not find anything ready made, I started looking for quilt patterns. I found a cute pieced panda wall hanging from The Jolly Jabber. After downloading the free pattern, I made the panel to see how well I liked it and decided it was a winner.

After making six panels, that seemed enough for the main part of the quilt. I took the panels to my friend who owns a quilting machine for her advice on about how to put the quilt together. I thought I would probably be putting strips between the panels in another color fabric. She has a large piece of flannel on one wall that she uses to “lay out” possible quilt designs- the cotton fabric pieces stick to the flannel without having to pin in place. Everything looks very different looking at the design straight on the wall rather than at an angle laying the pieces on the floor. After playing around with several ideas, I decided the panels looked best all connected together.

The next step was trying to figure out what other fabrics to put around the center pandas. For this step, I took the picture of one panel and imported the image into my designer software. Here I could play around with colors and sizes of strips until I had the design just they way I wanted. The software also helped me know the sizes of fabric strips I would need to cut. This is the design I settled on with her favorite colors:

Sewing lots of long straight pieces together seems like it will never end! Finally it was ready to be quilted. My grandmothers and great-grandmothers made many quilts in their lifetimes (several of which I own and cherish). Some were pieced on sewing machines and some were pieced by hand, but all of them were quilted completely by hand. I remember visiting one great-grandma and her dining-room was set up with a quilting frame. Other ladies would come over to help her and they had a quilting bee. They didn’t have social media, but lots of social “news” was shared at those quilting bees!

I’d love to be able to quilt it all by hand, but I don’t have the room, the frame, or the time to do it. I wanted to give it to my granddaughter before she had kids of her own! Up to this point she knew nothing about the quilt. So I took she and her big sister on a field trip to my friend’s house to learn how quilts are made. She was in shock when she found out what we would be quilting. The girls got to help set up the backing, batting and quilt on the quilting machine frame…

…and then operate the machine by hand to baste along the edges.

Although the machine can be operated completely by hand to do the quilting in any design desired, we let the computer do it automatically with the design we picked out. It is an amazing process to watch! The machine can only stitch a few rows though before the fabric has to be rolled to allow it to stitch the next section- so it’s not completely automated. However, the computer knows exactly where to continue stitching!

When the quilt was quilted and trimmed, the next step was to sew on the strip of binding, which I did on my sewing machine. Then I turned the binding and hand sewed it to the back of the quilt all the way around. Finally, it was completed, washed and dried.

My granddaughter was so excited to put it on her bed! After she got everything set up, I heard her say, “Now I will want to make my bed everyday!” I asked her a few days later if she had been making her bed everyday. She sheepishly grinned and said no- but it was because she loves to cuddle up with the quilt, and not just on her bed!

The only thing lacking was a matching pillow case. I got that finished last night with the leftover scraps of fabric and now it is complete!

That was fun! Now I’m looking at ideas for quilts for my other two granddaughters.

Thank you Jolly Jabber for sharing an adorable pieced panda pattern with the world!

Colors of Fall

After a hard freeze last week, most of the the colors are gone outside. It’s sad to see all of my flowers and the rest of the yard getting ready for winter hibernation. I’m glad that through art we can continue to capture the beauty of nature no matter what the season!

A couple of years ago I captured the sun setting through one of our trees.

Even though the leaves of these trees don’t turn bright colors, there was so much amazing texture in this shot, I decided to try expressing it in watercolor. Here is my painting:

Then I wanted to paint some very colorful leaves and used negative painting to capture them. I first painted a wash of colors for the base and then used negative painting to define the individual leaves. The last step was painting veins to add detail to the leaves. Negative painting is a fun process to try!

Last month my granddaughter and I were given the opportunity to take a pumpkin painting workshop with local artist, Mary Evelyn at a lovely little flower shop called Flowers by the Stemmery. This shop is a very inspirational place to create! In this paint project we used acrylic paints and paint pens. I’ve always thought when I’ve seen photos of white pumpkins that they had been painted white. Perhaps some are, but I actually painted on a natural white colored pumpkin. We had choices of white, gray, yellow, orange, and even pink pumpkins to paint on! Who knew they grew that way?

My finished pumpkin! (above) My granddaughter’s pumpkin! (below)

How are you capturing the beauty of fall?

Painting Kitties

“Happy is the home with at least one cat.”  Italy

My grandkids convinced mom and dad they needed a cat (or two) in their happy home. So two sweet sisters joined the family. The kids got to visit them once a week from their birth til they were old enough to leave their mamma and watched their growth as they fell in love with them. Meet Luna (left) and Penny (right).

“Even the smallest feline is a work of art.” – Leonardo da vinci (1452-1519)

They look posed for a painting portrait so I painted them! I laid down the first color washes and let them dry and then worked on the first eye and nose layers.

When those layers were dry, I began adding more detail painting to the fur.

The next step I decided to concentrate on details on one kitty at a time instead of working both at the same time.

Last step was the whiskers, which I added with a pen (both black and white) in order to get the very fine lines.

After I had completed my painting, my granddaughter wanted to paint them as well. I let her look at my series of photos of the steps I took and she was able to follow them very well with only a few hints given by me. Here is her final painting:

The kitties have many similarities, but subtle differences in coloring. As my granddaughter was painting she exclaimed that she had never noticed while playing with the kitties that Penny had a black line across the top of her nose. I always had to look at their faces to see which had the darker fur between the eyes to know which was which. Now as the cats have grown more it’s easier to tell who’s who- Luna is the smaller cat of the two.

I tried doing a close-up of each of their faces.

Before Christmas I found some blank wooden kitty head ornaments to paint. We each picked a cat to paint with acrylics. My granddaughter still says she prefers watercolor to acrylic paints. I agree with her. It’s so much harder to get the blends and textures with acrylics.

Now that the kittens are grown, this is one of their favorite activities (especially after a nap!)

“If stretching made money, all cats would be wealthy.” – Ghana

Tunnel Book

A unique tutorial caught my eye using a process I’d not tried, so I ordered it. My granddaughter had recently asked if we could try doing something artistic in acrylic paints instead of watercolor. We both enjoyed making the In the Garden Tunnel Book following the tutorial by Kelly Hoernig. I’ll show you our finished projects and you can buy her tutorial to try it yourself!

These are my finished pages…

After painting the book in acrylic paints, I decided to try the same basic process in watercolor. The following are my pages comparing the two- with acrylic on the left and watercolor on the right. I really like the backgrounds we learned to do with the acrylic paint.

The following are my granddaughter’s completed book pages. She sewed the pages together to make the book and did all of the cutting by herself enjoying all of the process. However, when finished she said she wanted to go back to watercolor because it was so much easier! The acrylic paint was thinned down with water to make it more transparent for this project, but we both agreed we liked being able to blend colors with watercolor paints much better than acrylic.

The tunnel book was fun and I encourage you to purchase Kelly’s tutorial and try it yourself!

Summer Daisies

Daisies are my favorite flower. Last year I planted a small shasta daisy in my garden. It produced a couple blossoms. This year it shot up tall and was loaded with blossoms. Every time I walked by it brought a smile to my face.

After a rain shower, all the little water drops were clinging to the petals.

I want to learn how to paint white flowers and decided this was a good subject. I decided to only paint half a flower and this is the result:

After letting it set for a few days, it seems too dark on the flowers shadows behind the main flower and too pale on the main flower. Since I’m trying to learn, I decided rather than starting over I would see what would happen making changes on this painting. So I lifted some of the shadow color with a damp brush and darkened the shadows on the main flower and water drops. Now I think I went too far in darkening!

I like parts of each one, but neither one grabs me. Time to keep practicing and learning!

And with all the extremely hot days we’ve had for weeks, the daisies are long gone.

Puzzle Your Way to Creativity

It became somewhat (our family isn’t very consistent) of a tradition to buy a new puzzle when all the kids came home for the holiday. It would be set up so anyone could work on it whenever they felt like it. Last Christmas we received a 2000 piece puzzle from our daughter, but it did not get opened until Mother’s Day. We’ve never put together a puzzle with that many pieces! I decided to set it up in our screened pavilion so I could enjoy the sounds of spring and the comfortable temperatures.

Once in a while someone would join me but I put most of the puzzle together over the next three weeks (in between many other activities). As I worked on it, my thoughts turned to the ways puzzles can help with creativity.

One way is to notice details of the shapes. Maybe there are other (more complicated) ways of starting a puzzle, but we always sort through the pieces only looking for those with a straight edge, the outside pieces of the puzzle. Of course, no matter how closely you think you look, there are always those elusive outside “missing” pieces, especially in puzzles with over 1000 parts. Once the edges are found (or most of them anyway) you can begin to put the frame of the puzzle together. Some people like to put puzzles together without looking at the picture on the box- not me! I want to know what I am looking for, but even then, if the puzzle has multiple areas of similar colors on the edges, it isn’t easy. Even with the photo to look at, each little piece does not have much detail to necessarily figure out what it is a part of.

The pieces in the photo above are from the finished corner with the picnic basket below (disclosure: the photo of the pieces was taken after that corner was taken apart!) If each section of the puzzle pieces was bagged together, it would be easy to put together. But when these few pieces are mixed up with all 2000 pieces, it’s a different story.

After the edges are completed, I generally start sorting out the pieces according to basic colors, the reds, greens, blues, yellows, etc. I like to use cookie sheets for my sorting trays. They are easy to stack and move around. After sorting it’s easier to focus on unique parts of the image and begin looking for those pieces that look similar. When I spend time looking for tiny details on pieces, my mind is constantly jumping back and forth from the puzzle pieces to what the “big” picture looks like. After doing that a while, a puzzle piece that made no sense will all of a sudden jump out and my brain knows exactly where it should go- even in an area where I wasn’t focused. I liken it to playing memory match games with the kids when they were little. Good training for the brain!

Of course each person will have their own process of putting puzzles together. My husband likes to look for shapes that will fill particular places, whereas I am mainly focused on the colors and details. I don’t usually look for a specific shape until I am down to the last odd pieces to put in.

When I am creating art, I usually have some kind of picture in my head of what I want to do. But the process of reaching that goal requires mentally breaking down the steps and details to figure out what to do next- much like jumping back and forth between the small puzzle pieces and the finished picture on the box. No matter what type of creative endeavor, that process is required. For instance, working with watercolor paint is an opposite process of working with acrylics. Watercolor painting starts with the light colors and then darker colors because of the transparency of the medium. Light colors won’t show on top of dark colors and if you want white, you leave the paper unpainted in those areas. Your brain has to be trained to think through the little details (pieces) to get to the finished goal.

Once the pieces of the puzzle with distinct characteristics are put together, I end up with gaping holes of very similar colors and and not much detail. As you can see in the photo below, I am missing lots of green vegetation, brown wood with lots of shadows, and tan colored pebbles on the ground.

The piles of green pieces all look pretty much the same until you look closely. You begin to notice the subtle color differences between the greens and whether they are in shadow or sunlight. Then some pieces begin to look more focused than others giving you an indication of where they might fit in the depth of field of the picture. It’s seeing those tiny differences in the pieces and how they fit into the whole that improve your brain function.

For many people, putting together puzzles is a relaxing activity, and good for stress relief. My youngest grandson (age 8) helped me several times with this puzzle and in the middle of putting a piece in place he said, “There is just something so satisfying about putting a piece into it’s right spot!”

So finally the puzzle is completed, and you just sit and look at the masterpiece you’ve created!

And then after a few days, it’s time to break apart the puzzle and put it back into its box, thankful for the hours of peace and joy spent solving (creating) it.

A favorite local thrift store received a huge donation of used puzzles and I bought a few. This time I started working on a puzzle with vegetables and fruits- looked like it would be a quick, easy one to do and it only had 1000 pieces. Do you know how many close shades of reds and shades of greens and shades of yellow were in this “easy” puzzle? Again I had to work on training my eyes to see the tiny differences.

I have an app on my phone that an art teacher recommends to his students to help train their eyes to see the blends colors can make. The first blend puzzles are easy, but then they get tricky. It is amazing though how much your eyes can begin to see blends, shades, and tints of colors. If you are interested in improving your creative skills in use of color, it is called Blendoku.

The next puzzle was a much harder one. It was a pile of crayons. The box was small and did not have a full image of the finished puzzle. So this one was a challenge for me just putting together the outer edges- I did not know what corners went where! I did discover while sorting through the pieces that some of them had a shiny coating on all of the piece or partial pieces. That seemed strange until I realized that several of the completed crayons were shiny and that gave me staring points for putting the inside of the puzzle together. Again- lots of detail and subtle changes of colors to focus on!

After pondering how puzzles were good for developing your creativity, I looked online to see if I was right. Well, I found several articles about the benefits for brain improvement and helping you live longer! So, instead of passively sitting in front of the TV, pull out a puzzle and help improve your brain!

“Puzzles are also good for the brain. Studies have shown that doing jigsaw puzzles can improve cognition and visual-spatial reasoning. The act of putting the pieces of a puzzle together requires concentration and improves short-term memory and problem solving. Using the puzzle as an exercise of the mind can spark imagination and increase both your creativity and productivity.” (Jill Riley, M.S.N., senior clinical operations associate in the Michael E. DeBakey Department of Surgery at Baylor College of Medicine


https://blogs.bcm.edu/2020/10/29/a-perfect-match-the-health-benefits-of-jigsaw-puzzles/)

Are You My Mother?

On one of our warm sunny days a few weeks ago I was weeding one of my flower beds. Suddenly around the corner came a baby squirrel. As he came closer I pulled out my phone to snap a picture and he just kept coming closer to the point I thought he was going to climb on me!

I thought of a book I read to my kids when they were young…Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman (love this author’s stories!) The squirrel proceeded to follow me around. I called to my grandkids and their visiting friends who were playing in the yard. They fell in love with the little guy. A few of them did let him crawl on them. He loved shoes and shoe laces!

I gave up on doing any more weeding that day because he wanted to crawl on me whenever I knelt down and I wasn’t too keen on that idea! My husband was working on our lawn mower across the yard so I walked up to see how he was doing. Little squirrel followed me and decided to help him instead, crawling all over the mower and tool box.

The kids looked up information on baby squirrels online. They decided to name him Charlie and give him some food and a safe place to sleep for the night since he couldn’t seem to figure out where his mother was. He had played with the family all afternoon and evening and was sleepy.

They left the door open on a cat crate so he could come and go as he liked. He slept most of the next day, but didn’t make it. We all decided he must have been too young to have been away from his mommy. The kids were heartbroken but felt better knowing that Charlie had a great time the last day of his life.

My granddaughter and I decided to paint a watercolor picture for memory of the day with Charlie. We liked the pose on Pa’s glove.

We got lots of practice making fur! She did a great job learning to capture the shadows and highlights. I love watching her creative skills grow. In order for her to concentrate on painting skills and not worry about the drawing, we traced the shape of the squirrel from the photo using the light table. She’s working on drawing skills, too, but that was not what I wanted her to focus on. It felt very freeing when I learned that even professional painters will trace shapes from a photo to get dimensions more accurate. So if you feel you are lacking in the drawing department, don’t let that hold you back from painting! Keep practicing on increasing your drawing skills though because it helps in the long run!

Here is her finished painting:

And this is my finished painting:

R.I.P. Charlie! You brought joy to many people the day you spent with us!

Apple Blossom Time

Spring, my favorite time of the year… when the yard springs to new life! From the tiniest little blue and purple wild flowers growing in amongst the grass to the blossoms opening on the apple trees, everyday is a new discovery. Even though I’ve lived in the same place for thirty years and have a pretty good idea of what is going to bloom next, it is still a joy to me when each plant bursts forth in color. Winter has a way of making us appreciate spring with new eyes.

This is how the apple trees look this year. Hopefully, the blossoms will turn into apples that last until harvest. The past few years the weather has not been kind to the blossoms and we ended up with apple-less trees.

I was inspired to paint some blossoms. I am trying to learn how to paint white flowers giving them the right shade coloring.

Do spring flowers inspire you to create?

Tea Painting

Ready to try something different? Heat up some water, pull out your favorite tea leaves, make yourself a cup of aromatic tea, and sit back to relax and think…. Could I use tea to paint a picture?

My granddaughter and I decided to try it. We pulled out one of every kind of tea in my cupboard and steeped each one in little bowls with a small amount of hot water. To make the concentration of tea stronger we let it steep for about 30 minutes.

While waiting for our “paint” we tried another experiment. We brushed a layer of water over a piece of watercolor paper and sprinkled a couple different kinds of dry tea blends around on top of the wet paper. I especially love the rich blue/purple colors produced. This was the result after it dried:

Watercolors could be painted on top or this technique could be used to add a unique background to a painting. I’m going to keep this idea in mind for the future!

When our teas were ready to paint with, we started playing. The aroma of all our flavors of teas made for a lovely art time.

My granddaughter laid down a background of tea paint colors first and let them dry before painting some detail. Here is her finished painting:

I painted roses and as each flower began drying I added other tea paint on top to create depth. We were not sure what colors we would end up with because each tea dried very different from wet color to dry. The way they were layered created new colors as well.

I took a couple tea bags and dragged them around on paper making an abstract design. I wanted to see if the color would come out stronger directly from the bag than the brush. When they dried I played around with making various marks on top with other teas using brushes. They look like some strange creatures.

Then I wondered if various textures could be made with the tea like we do with watercolors using salt, plastic wrap, or gauze. It worked!

Am I ready to start painting regularly with tea? Probably not, but it was a fun afternoon of creating. And when I need a more subdued color for a painting, I just might heat up the tea kettle! I now know I should have made a chart showing which teas made what colors. Might have to play again!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

The month of December I painted watercolor Christmas cards and I decided to share a few with you. Pick a card you like and consider it my Merry Christmas to You!

If you don’t live where it snows, here are some snowmen enjoying the weather!

I had fun making a bokeh effect for my backgrounds. It’s a simple technique that can be used on cards for any occasion. With stencils of varying size circles, I placed the circle over the dried painted background and used a damp brush to lift off the paint and then dab it with a tissue. If you have a “Magic Eraser” you can use it to remove the paint as an alternative. Just get the eraser wet and wring it out well. Be careful not to rub the paper too hard! The snowflake textures were created using salt on the still damp watercolor, prior to using the bokeh technique.

I also combined stamps and embossing to create fun cards.

Joy to the world, the Lord is come!

May you find peace, joy, and love in Jesus this Christmas.