Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Iron Craft 2015 Challenge #12--Quilt Squares


This week we were tasking with creating something of which we were a fan. Many of you know of my fascination with QUILTS. Whenever I see a quilt, I become reduced to a blithering idiot in awe. My grandmother was a quilter and she would make a quilt, by hand, for every child and then grandchild. The quilts were all greatly revered by the family and many times she would enter them in local craft fair competitions.

My grandmother never made me a quilt because there was some angst within the family that by making a quilt for an adopted child that the "natural" children would get upset. Of course, this was adult stupidity but it made its mark and I never received a quilt. When she died, much to the regret of the "natural" children's parents, my grandmother bequeathed her fabric to me.

For this challenge, I wanted to honor my grandmother with making some quilt square with some of the fabric that she left me. I have been waiting for the right project and decided that this was it. 

I started simply by just doing a four block square.


I then make smaller squares but kept it simple.


I then used the smaller squares to make a pattern.


Then I experimented with points and triangles and geometry, oh. my.


Then I tried different shapes (oops, everything just didn't quite measure up.


Finally, I decided to go back to simply shapes that I could control. I had used this pattern in paper quilting and decided to try my hand in real fabric.


I have a new found admiration for people who do quilts. Moreover, I have a greater appreciation of my grandmother and her ability to make this quilts without calculators, computers and the modern convenience of sewing machines and stitchers.

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Iron Craft 2015 Challenge #11--Paper Playbill Bouquet






For Challenge #11 we were asked to create something out of paper or in the words of our leader--find your inner Dr Russ. Oh. My. Gosh. The pressure to produce something special really hit me hard (just kidding). The only other difficulty is that we were in the middle of the theater awards season here in NYC and the show that is currently at my theater has been nominated numerous times. Three of our actors were nominated for a Tony Award (the highest honor in the on-stage professional theater profession). I wanted to do something special for them so I created these paper bouquets out of the show's Playbills (the free programs that are given to the patrons at each performance).

I folded, curled and molded several different types of flowers out of the most colorful pages and gave a bouquet to each of the nominated performers.

Paper Rosettes
Kusudama Flowers 
Curled leaves (and the underside)
 I am very happy with the way these turned out. The actors were very appreciative. I just hope that my Iron Craft crafters like them.