Cynthia Shaffer

Duet : : Love Love Love

I love, love, love participating in duets...especially with great art. 

From time to time, Jenny will give me a handmade card with hand written phrases like, "Thanks for the friendship and thanks for having a great palate," or "Thanks for taking care of us at the beach." Here is one of her cards:

 

What a great piece of art ... just the perfect piece to take and do a duet with.

Here's what I did. For the quilt, I cut out a square in roughly the proportions of the card, then cut out all the parts and pieces. I layered most of the pieces with batting and for the words, I used rubber stamps and StazOn ink, then smudged it with my finger.

I also did some hand stitching by using a large running stitch, and added a few buttons, followed by a bit of free motion stipling. 

 

And here's how I made the musical clef. 

1. Cut out the heart shape from tan linen.

2. Draw the treble cleft lines and notes with a wash-away fabric marker.

3. Stitch on the lines with a sewing machine.

4. Hand embroider the ends of the notes.

NOTE: I also used this technique to create the larger band at the left side of the quilt, to create a longer length of the musical clef.

I loved that this particular duet challenged me to find solutions for recreating the musical clef using both machine and hand stitching. I think that's when new discoveries are made...when we use what we know to find new paths as we hit notes that we've never hit before in the process of creating.

Duet With Dylan

I love the idea of doing a duet with art.

Here is a painting that was done by my son's GF, Dylan. For this duet I took a photo of the entire canvas, then took several close-up shots. I Played with the photos in photoshop, dropped in some words...

printed them out on cardstock, did a little free motion stitching around the words and images and finally adhered them to blank white cards.

 

Oh...I did add a little strip of gessoed sheet music to one of the cards and even printed one on vellum, than attached it with a little wonky stitching.

The best part about this project...these cards where a birthday gift for Dylan's mother and grandmother and they loved them. 

The worst part about this project...they both loved them so much that they don't want to use them!

Oh So Tweet

Clear glass ornaments are the perfect blank canvas, just waiting to be embellished. For years now I have been quilting, painting and stitching on transparency film, rolling it up and popping it into ornaments.

The possilities are endless, but for these I used Pam Garrison's adorable clear stamps, Sweet Tweets.

Just cut out a small circle from felt, stamp your image using StazOn ink and then paint with acrylics.

You can go here to get a bit more info on how to cut the pattern for the transparency and see yet another variation of my clear glass ornaments using transparencies.

To attach the felt to the transparency,center the painted circle then just do a little free motion quilting around the outer edge.

Not sure if these ornaments will actually make it on a tree, they might just stay in my studio and hang from a favorite twig, or be givien away as gifts. 

Happy Stamping! 

 

Bring the Outside In

In the 20 plus years of hosting Thanksgiving, I have yet to purchase decortations for the dinner table. Thanks to the beautiful sweetgum trees that line the boulevard of my neighborhood, tablescapes, napkin decorations and table runners are just a few steps from my front porch.

And this year...name cards.

Thanks to my mom who taught me years ago to always bring a bit of the outside in.

Give thanks!

Art Quilting With Danita

One of the funnest things that I've done recently is take Danita's online class called Free Motion Personas. The class was amazing. Super full of valuable info, demos and technique. Danita shared so much of herself, time and talent. And even Mr. Danita joined in to add a few great tutorials on scanning and printing art. Really just so much to take in. It's a good thing that the videos will be up for our class group to view them again and again for the next few month. 

The first couple of weeks were all about making the paper fabric. Danita showed us a variety of options and encouraged everyone to just starting making lots of paper fabric squares. Without really knowing where my quilt was headed, I just started with some old book text, sheet music, magazine photos and cheese cloth. Then I learned to add washes and stains to give the piece an antiqued look.

Next, I added some crocheted flowers ...

... a burlap bird and some wonky burlap houses ...

... and then did a little free motion quilting on my angel and other spots on the quilt.

One of my favorite patterns to use in free motion quilting are these little circles, that I stitched in a couple of colors.

I'm really happy with how my final piece turned out. It was so much more than leaning how to free motion quilt. Thank you, Danita for working so hard to give me and the other students a great experience. It was so much fun.

Constant Learner

A little known fact about me is that I am a constant learner. I love to take classes and ask a lot of questions. I want to know everything that the instructor knows. I want the history, the back story and all the details. I want to use the same tools that the instructor recommends and I want to make exactly what the teacher is teaching. After I have all this knowledge and have somewhat mastered what is being taught, I break the rules.

Today I took a class to learn how to make a Hawaiian applique pillow. Hawaiian applique is so rich in tradition and history and what a pleasure to take a class from such a wonderful teacher, Janet Salcido, teaching at the Orange Quilt Bee. Janet is actually my very first quilting teacher. 

Here is just the very beginning of my applique. This design is called the Breadfruit tree and is the quilt that everyone should start with, according to Hawaiian tradition.

Another little known fact about me is that I love to hand sew. Here is just the beginning of the needle turn applique technique that I learned today. And oh what a great trick I learned. See the yellow ribbon that is safety pinned to the quilt? Well, if you have to put your quilt down, to be worked on at a later date, pin a ribbon near your stopping point and then when you pick up your quilt again, you will know exactly where you left off. Brilliant, don't you think? 

Here is a quilt that Janet is working on, a wedding gift for her son and daughter-in-law, in very traditional Hawaiian fabrics.

Stay tuned as I needle turn my quilt and then make it into a pillow or wall hanging. I may even break the rules on my next Hawaiian applique project.

 

Mastering the Milieu

I love to quilt. I've been quilting for many years. And though I've made very large quilts for beds and walls, I have loved exploring smaller quilts like this one I made last year. I call it a Milieu quilt. "Milieu" is a French term that means "environment." And as you can see, this milieu quilt is the perfect thing to house other items ... like a sprig of lavender. 

It can also house family photos. So cute, right?

And it can also house ATCs or other memorabilia. In fact, my milieu quilt that houses the ATC variation was on the cover of Art Quilting Studio last year (The ATC was made by Ruth Rae a few years ago). You see how fun milieu quilts can be? You just make the quilt and then pin on or tie on whatever you want the quilt to house, depending on the time of year, the mood, etc.

In this issue, I authored a complete article titled Mastering the Milieu ...

This second one was made in a much more romantic palette than the first one.

And here's a cool variation.

I love to create and I'm excited to have this new blog as an avenue to share.
 

Learning to blog!

Thanks friend....my head is spinning!