On October 1 I attended a Zentangle class at my church.  I have seen many zentangles on Pinterest and was fascinated.  My father was a pen and ink artist (among other types of art) and I thought why not, maybe I could do it too.  I always told people I couldn't draw but truthfully I was too intimidated to try for fear of failure in my father's eyes.  Well I went to the class and was immediately hooked,  The instructor was a certified instructor and did a great job of selling me on this new addiction.  We started out with 2 small tiles.  She demonstrated each step and the history behind the art.  That part went right over my head as I was too anxious to dig into creating.  Here are my two tiles from that class.

We did learn the names of each different design but of course that went in one ear and out the other.  My brain does not work with details like that.  The next day I made a trip to Michaels for more supplies.  It didn't take much.  I bought one notebook, a set of 3 Micron pens, a drawing pencil and some things for smudging the pencil shadings (no idea what the technical name is).  Here are my creations so far.  I get my ideas from Pinterest then make them my own.

I am now studying zentangle quilting as many of these patterns are the same or similar to some used in free motion quilting.  That is something else that scares me but something I will be trying in the near future. Of course since my first love is sewing I decided my new collection of art supplies needed to be stored in a way that I could take them on vacation if I chose.  So I made a quilted case to hold everything.  I didn't have a pattern and made it up as I went along.  It has a slot for the notebook on one side and slots for my pens and markers on the other side as well as a clear snapped pouch for small items.  I like something I can pick up and take with me since I can't do that with my sewing machine.

 I only have a few more pages in my first notebook and have already purchased a second.  Plus some colored pencils (not my favorite), some colored fine tip markers and one brush marker (I see a lot more of those in my future.

I sure wish my dad was still alive so I could have him help me with this.  Hopefully he would be proud that I am at least trying to follow in his footsteps.  Here are two of his colored pen and ink drawings.  Some of my favorites are his black and white ones but I will save them for another blog.

Sewing Projects

OK, so it's been almost as year since I wrote a blog.  About a year ago I purchased my embroidery machine and have been cooped up in my sewing room ever since.  I have made a lot of fun things while exploring and learning this fabulous macine.  I have many items on Etsy for sale but I'll write about them another day (promise!).  Today I will share some of my personal projects.

A new friend from my church was looking for someone to trade craft supplies for some ribbon samples she got from market.  Of course I was game for that!  She came loaded with shopping bags and large bins full of samples.  We sorted through some and I came out with a pile of samples.

They were about 6 inches long and glued and stapled to cardboard headers.  There some beautiful satin wired pieces.  It took an afternoon to remove them from the headers and remove all the wire from the edges.  I have been looking into crazy quilting and had great plans!  I bought some fake suede fabric at Hobby Lobby.  Using some of my embroidery software I embroidered 8 blocks and made a shoulder bag.  I created the flap and pocket using some of my new treasures.  I sewed them on using clear thread and a zig zag stitch.  The ribbon was already embellished so I didn't have to get fancy,  I added an adjustable strap and a metal "frog" latch.  Here is the finished bag.  And  I still have hundreds of samples!

Most fabric and quilt shops in the nation have a yearly contest called Row by Row.  This year's theme was Water.  Each shop designs their own row and gives out the pattern or sells a kit to complete their row.  The contest requires you use 8 different patterns and you must visit the store in person to get the patterns or kits (no mail order)).  They give you about 2 months to complete the quilt and the first person who returns it to their store wins a prize.  I had great plans to do this and collected one pattern and one kit to start with.  I was a little intimated by the kit since I had to hand cut and stitch all the pieces so it took a month to get the nerve to try it.  By then people were already turning in their completed quilts.  Oh well.  It will make a nice table runner or maybe I'll decide to sell it on Etsy.  But it was fun since I did the driving on this one.

I love Fall especially after a long hot Texas Summer.  Here are two project I can't wait to use.  One is a banner that I again had to hand cut the pieces and machine applique them.  The quilting was done in the hoop on my fancy machine using a leaf outline pattern.  The towel was done in the hoop and all I had to do was place and trim the orange fabric and change thread color when the machine told me to.

I also love Christmas and decided to make this banner.  Again the pieces were hand cut and machine appliqued manually.

There are so many unwritten blogs running through my head.  I promise I will write more than once a year.  If you enjoy reading my blogs please follow me on here to get automatic emails when I do write again.