Hand sewing in Tampa

I spent this entire week in Tampa for work. It was a long week that felt even longer because I had to fly down on Sunday. Flying for work on the weekends always seems to make the week seem so much longer!




I decided to bring along my little Art quilt from the Jane LaFazio class I took last week at Create Chicago. I was at a place in the project that required a lot of hand sewing, the joining of all the smaller quilt blocks. I suppose this could be done by machine and I have plenty of other ideas I would incorporate. However, I just felt that for this project I should follow Janes suggestions/directions to get a full feel of what she was teaching.



So, I brought my pieces, some pins, some hand needles and a spool of variegated cotton quilting thread with me to work on in the evenings after dinner. It turns out that this is a perfect little hand project to bring along with me, I worked each evening on sewing the pieces together and by last night I had the entire top pieced together. YAY! It was so nice to have a great little project to take my mind off the stress of work and being away from home.



The trip was not a bad one by any means! We were a small group of 5 and we are all friends so it made things easy. We even celebrated one friends birthday! We stayed at the Marriott Waterside in Downtown Tampa, it was in a great location for getting out and getting some outdoor exercise and seeing some of the sites. There is a great RiverWalk and a very nice Bayshore Trail that is very conducive to outdoor exercise. Many people were out running, walking, biking, rollerblading and enjoying the sun. I went out a couple of times for nice long afternoon walks. One afternoon I walked a good 5 miles and enjoyed watching the row team practice and the pelicans diving for fish. There were also tons of great restaurants in the area, yummmm.
















Do other people bring sewing projects along on work trips? I know I have brought patterns to be cut out or traced, hand sewing and now even some quilting.

- Posted by Steph from Siouxzeegirl Designs

Location:30000 feet over the Eastern Seaboard, USA

CREATE Chicago Day 3

On Friday I attended another all day workshop at Create Chicago. Still going to say it.... SO MUCH FUN!!!

I wish I would have been able to attend workshops all weekend but alas I was unable. Probably a good thing because I was starting to feel mental overload and was quite tired Friday night.



This workshop was a non-sewing workshop called House Full of Grace taught by Kristen Robinson and was full of techniques that were used to alter 3 little wooden houses. Some techniques that were new to me was using silicone putty to create molds that we then used to cast clay and resin with. We also poured some resin bezels and played with hot beeswax, this was on top of the normal paper, painting, collating stuff. This class format was also one of independent work interspersed with demonstrations of techniques. I really enjoy that more informal format.



photos of Kristen's demonstrations.





It was interesting to see how everyone's in the class was so completely different. I did a trio of houses that were liked themed but some did very different houses and very different palettes of colors than I would ever use! That's the fun thing about making art you can do what you want :)





above are some of my FAVORITE vintage buttons being molded and below you can see my very full cookie sheet of molds and plaster casts. I used several of my vintage oil cans, buttons and a key.


Somewhere around the middle of the day the fire alarms went off and we had fire men in our classroom. That was an interesting distraction. Our instructor felt so bad about the interruption that she gave us all some free resin to take home and play with. Yay, free product is always fun!


This was a fun class to take to learn a bunch of techniques that I have never done before.



we started with plain poplar wooden houses, a plaster heart on fire and an empty bezel. Below is about what I left the class with. The house on the right is completed, the other 2 are in various stages.


- Posted by Steph from my iPad

Location:Lisle, IL

CREATE Chicago Day 2

The fun continued today! This mixed media retreat has been very liberating for me. It has been more than I have expected!

Today's class was another 6-7 hour class called Free Motion: Free Spirit by Jane LaFazio. It was slightly similar to my class yesterday in that we used the sewing machines for free motion sewing. Other than that it was COMPLETELY different. For one thing, no paint today.












Examples of one of Jane's mini quilts


The class format was for Jane to show a technique and then give us time to play with it on mini- quilt sandwiches of various sizes and at the end the idea is to put it all together and add additional embellishment such as colored pencil, paints, hand stitching, etc...


my workspace and my work in progress half way through the class


Several things we played with was stitching on paper, stitching from a picture on the reverse side of the fabric (like tracing with thread), using organza, tulle, cheesecloth, lace, vintage doilies, etc...

Examples of my work and me playing with composition, these were taken with the iPad and the colors really look kind of funky!!








To finish the project I need to square up my pieces and then play a little game of eye pleasing Tetris and make it all work. Then add hand work and then put it all together!

It was nice to work in a medium that I am comfortable in and really push the boundaries outside of my box. I loved the effect!

This last picture I just HAD to share!!! We just got this back from the photographer.... LOOK there are dinosaurs still inhabiting Idaho!! (And yes, that is me in the blue dress running with my champagne!)


- Posted by Steph from Siouxzeegirl Designs

Location:Lisle, IL