Holiday Ornaments

It seems like I move from one deadline to another all year long. It would be nice to have a month where I'm not working on something for some future deadline! It seems like I don't have time to just play around with stuff in my studio as I am too busy creating things to sell and enter in various shows. This year I am going to try to trim down my commitments to those that are potentially most valuable to me and see if I can find the time to experiment with some things that interest me like using photos in my work, doing more with cutouts and unusually shaped pieces, and possible more painting on fabric. If I would just stop committing to shows and galleries maybe I would have time---probably not going to happen!

The past month I have been making ornaments that are quilted and beaded. I layered fabric with heavyweight Pellon stabilizer (or Timtex). The fabrics I'm using are some of those great pictorial pieces I buy and never use in my art quilts, but they have some wonderful images on them like owls, animals, trees, etc. It has been really fun to match fabrics and beads together to make tiny little works of art. I have sold quite a few at a couple of galleries and on my own and there are more at Art City in Hamilton and River's Mist Gallery in Stevensville (317 Main St.).

Some of the cutest ones I made used fabric from Selvedge Studio in Missoula (509 S. Higgins). They have some wonderfully whimsical fabrics that worked great for the ornaments. The owls on the grey background and the birds are from Selvedge Studio. The sun and moon ornaments are double-sided and were a little more time-consuming to bead and stitch. That is an older fabric that I had in my stash. Not sure where I got the other owl fabric with the darker background. It was fun to go through my stash and find little images to use and then match beads to them. I did get a little carried away with some of the beading!

The fabrics are attached using glue stick and I used satin stitching and various quilt designs to secure them. I satin stitched the edges all the way around and then did the beading. I tried to do extra securing stitches for all the dangles and hanging loops. I've sold these from anywhere between $12 and $20 and have really enjoyed making them. Now I need to get myself to STOP (I'm obsessed!) so I can move on to this month's Tarts project and possibly creating a piece for a show opening in January utilizing photo(s).

Here are some images of the ornaments. The pictures are not of the best quality, but you can get an idea of how fun they are!