Auntie's Workshop

  We left our last episode with my successfully completing my first baby quilt.     I finished this quilt a month before I left for Colorado (so the kid I made it for is almost six years old now--wow).  Fast forward to fall 2022.  I finished a quilt from start to finish.  It's an Eleanor Burns pattern called "Hole in the Wall."  Of course, her video tutorial on YouTube made it look easy.   Of course, it wasn't. Although I was pleased with finishing it, I was immensely frustrated with how many mistakes I made in creating it.  No, I'm not going to tell you what they were, but let's just say I wasn't anxious to try making another quilt any time soon. Fast forward again to a few months ago.  I was at an event on campus and Christa from our academy invited me to her church's quilting group, Loving Stitches.  The group creates quilts to give to those who have a new baby, been in the hospital, are grieving a death, etc.  T...

Along with adding some more stitches to the baby blanket, this week I finished up the tissue box holder that taught me French knots : I know I've made one of these before , but another occasion made this flower pot/pencil holder appropriate: I also began an experiment this week--learning to utilize unused, or rarely used art supplies.  I traced out a poppy on three different pages of my mixed media sketchbook.  The first flower was made using colored pencils. I was doubtful of the outcome when I started.  After all, I was coloring with cheap Crayola and Rose Art pencils that I'd previously used horribly in "adult" coloring books.  BTW--for those who know me well, Rose Art makes horrible crayons, but decent colored pencils. Even though the inexpensive pencils do not blend nearly as well as higher end artist pencils, I was very pleased with the results.   What do y'all think? I'm sure that in the future when I upgrade to either Prismacolor or Faber-Castell pe...

For the past couple of years, I've gotten back into cross stitch and plastic canvas.  Though the concept of the crafts is simple, some of the stitches are not.   So far, the most difficult stitch I've encountered is the French knot.  I started stitching in my late teens/early twenties and only had written instructions (this was pre-internet).  This is typically what the books' instructions looked like: If you can follow that, you're a good one.  I was never able to make heads or tails of it.  Enter YouTube:   With those very easy instructions, I was able to successfully execute the stitch multiple times.          Well, I just gave you a hint about what else I'm working on.   ────────────────────────────────    This isn't exactly a UFO, but it is an unused tool.  Last year, I bought a pom-pom maker, but just got around to using it. Using the tool was easy.  However, like every other time I've made pom-po...

I'm taking part of my time off to dive in to my UFO (Unfinished Object) pile. Like my "Finishing and Fixing Series (see here , here , and here ), one of the projects sat unfinished because, quite frankly, my first attempt was so butt ugly I wouldn't display it at a worm wrestle.  It was a set of those little square drawers from the Dollar Tree.     I glued nine of them together in three rows of three.   Because I wanted to use them as functioning drawers, I covered the inside of cut out end with some leftover craft foam (seems like that stuff just won't go away), turned the drawer around, and glued knobs to the side facing outward.  My idea was to paint the whole thing black and decorate it with painted flowers.  Well, once I painted it with black chalk paint, it looked like I'd set it on fire.  It sat unfinished, laughing at me, for at least two years.  When I pulled it out of the closet, I ditched my original idea and opted for something si...

After teaching seven classes straight at the university, I came up for air and am taking a much needed break until February.  The holidays were full of fun creativity: This year's outside decorating theme was Grinch.  This most likely will be my decor for the next few Christmases with pieces added as time allows.   My sister, Clara, told me about a YouTube channel called The Posh Paper Lady .  This channel features gorgeous paper crafts.  Miss Sherry, the owner of the channel, creates detailed, easy to follow tutorials.  Once I saw the video for the planner covers and gift bags, I didn't rest until I learned to make both.  I had so much fun creating these as Christmas gifts. This is a sampling of some of the fun gifts I had the opportunity to create this holiday season.  I really got back into plastic canvas and found unique ways to turn pizza pans and upcycled candle jars into festive art. I even had time to have a painting party with a friend.....