I love that I am able to support my art by selling things…but most of the things that I sell are of the “Everyday Art” variety – the scarves, bags, journals and soon pocketin boards (I hope!). It definitely took me awhile to not feel bad that I wasn’t selling more actual art, but as I’ve continued along this path, I’ve found that the “Everyday Art” is very useful – not only in the monetary sense, but it allows me to work with and through color palettes and motifs in a way i wasn’t doing when solely making art.

Be that as it may, I really needed to get some art made for the Mini Multi Meida Show my local Art Association sponsors every year. I am one of the very few textile artists in my area, and love to expand the horizons of the folk working in the more “traditional” art media. This show receives entries from not only the local artists but from folk near and far. The “mini” aspect of the show is that idems must be 14.5″ or less in every dimension. This stipulation was what got me to make my “Home is Where the Art Is” series last year.  I love this series, and part of me can’t believe that I haven’t been working more in 3 dimensions…it’s so sad!

So with a deadline over my head and a week of Spring Break, I thought I’d really get going and continue the Home…series. But, it was not to be. The horrible news about faculty cuts at my university consumed and depressed me, completely derailing my ability to think about new houses. I was about ready to throw in the towel on entering this show when I got a call from Julie, my friend and awesome customer on Friday. I talked with her for a bit about why I was feeling so glum and how stuck I was…and she blurts out…”Why don’t you make a tree?”

AHA! That is what I needed! Thank you Julie! Not only did I make a tree, I went on to make 2 more pieces, each one different, but all using the same color scheme and revolving around the idea of home. So for today, I’d like to show you my tree!

The pictures are way less than ideal – I ended up finishing the third piece 45 minutes before they end of the take in for this show, so I had to snap a few shots and hope for the best. I’d love to play around with the shadows that can be cast from the branches – I’ll just have to make more trees!

I’ve got a little skeleton of Peltex (the stuff baseball cap brims are made of) with fused fabric cut a bit larger so that when I fuse the fabric together the white edges of the peltex don’t show. I could have zigzagged the edges, but I wanted to try this first – for some reason I really don’t like the strong line of a close zigzag stitch very much. Anyway, I cut a slot in the bottom half of one tree and the top half of the other and slotted them together. The tree is held onto the base with some small glue dots, and a fused leaf at the top holds it closed.

I’m exhausted – I had a successful show today, but I was up very early! Here’s some more pix, I hope the pix I took of the other 2 pieces came out!

You remember the mod house Christmas ornaments I made for the Things We Make recycled Ornament contest?

Well, I WON! WaHoo!I was just chuffed, and feeling a bit justified…these little houses have been bouncing around in my head for months now, and I just haven’t found the time to make them. Well, that contest just lit the fuse, and if I didn’t make them, I was going to EXPLODE! That was the real prize…having the fire to see these guys through to completion. However, the prize itself is awesome…a few books that are on my Christmas list, some specialty Modge Podge (dude, I don’t even have regular old Modge Podge, so the specialty stuff…who knew it existed, but I’ll bet it’s awesome), something called a stuff bucket – woohoo, a stuff bucket, sounds awesome! Obviously, I’m stoked!

Still excited over my mini modern houses, I did a guest post over at Natalia’s Piece n’Quilt blog, summarizing the development of my 3-d work – that was fun! The last of the presents that needed to be mailed are in the mail, now – on to making some commissions!

But 1st – one more look at these cute little houses!

There’s nothing like a deadline to get those creative juices flowing! Things We Make was having a recycled, repurposed DIY ornament contest, and I have a huge amounts of scraps of prefused hand dyed fabrics and Peltex. Although as an art quilter I can always use the fabric scraps SOMEWHERE, a big basket of small, oddly shaped scraps of peltex has been sitting in my closet for just such a recycling project as this! I’ve also been yearning to get back to making 3-d art houses, so this was my chance. Now, I don’t care about winning the contest, as I’m sure there are some clever people repurposing in a much more creative way than I, but my boys understand a contest deadline, and were much more forgiving of me ignoring them last night than normal, which let me get them photographed. In fact, between the pix I took last night (and processed and sent in to Amy 1 minute before the deadline!) and the ones I took this morning, I do believe I’ve spent more time photographing them and processing the photos than it took to actually make them!

Here’s my helper, holding a branch STILL, precariously close to the pool (this is my favorite spot for hanging things outside, it gets very little direct sunlight any time of the day).

In the future (like next November) I may formalize a couple of these into a tutorial with a pattern, but to make them I cut each house shape out of the peltex pretty much by eye. Then fused the fabric to the peltex, inside in out. I then created small, abstract art quilts on each side by collaging more of the fused fabric and then free motion quilting  for emphasis. I then fused the sides together using strips of the fabric, glued the roof on with hot glue and stitched a loop through the top!

I’ve learned that I need to place the design elements further down when there’s a roof overhang (which I love). Duh – the difference between 2 and 3 dimensions! I’ve also learned that i need A new glue for the roofs – I don’t like the big globs of hot glue peeking out.

I took a TON of pictures, here are a few of my favorites! I’m loving the many levels of composition you can achieve with many objects and 3 dimensions. I also appreciate that HANGING things MOVE! A LOT!

(RSS readers, you’ll either have to click through to see the gallery posted here, or I’ve got a Flickr gallery of these as well!)

[View with PicLens]

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I’m so happy I had time to do them…ART in the middle of all this pre-Christmas making! Phew!