This is a picture of the quilt pattern being copied from enlarged printouts of the color reference page to freezer paper.

And below is the beginning of the applique work. What you see here is the stem of one of the flowers growing from the ground to the right of the tree. The pattern is sitting sideways. My choice of stitching is the invisible stitch. I have not decided yet rather or not I will go back over the edges of the pieces with decorative embroidery to help hide any stitches that fail to be as invisible as they are intended to be.

I will be keeping things updated here on the progress of this quilt as I work on it.

Stay tuned for MASSIVE rebuild.

I want an embroidery machine so bad, one of them ones that I can design my own patterns and such for, so I was, of course, sucked right into the site.

Looking things over I discovered a $1 for an hour deal (look in top right corner for what page is $1 this hour). It took me to a page with adorable wintertime Sunbonnet Sue and little Bonnet Boys in wintertime. (page 13) I love Sunbonnet Sue but have never tried to make a quilt for that design before. Well, I was, of course, sucked straight in and without even thinking about the fact that I don’t own an embroidery machine yet I bought the Sunbonnet Sue and the Bonnet boys and even a pattern for Redwork ballet dancers. I assumed, silly me, they would have the hand pattern as well. (Okay, so I was so excited I was dense, you can’t sue me for that.)

Well, I bought the patterns and have them tucked away for the “someday” scheme and until then I plan to use the images I got from the site as a guide for hand work to create a winter play Bonnet children quilt between now and next winter.

I figure if nothing else I should have bought the right to use those in handwork (didn’t I?), so I’ll be working on that quilt, and even went back and bought more designs that I found and simply adore. Very dangerous and addicting site. Highly reccomended for anyone that owns an emberidery machine.

File formats, for those that do own a machine, are:

art, exp, jef, pes, vip, dst, hus, pcs, sew, xxx

I’m planning a different kind of quilt for this one, rather than the pieced squares I normally love to make I am going to make a large checkerboard patterned quilt.

That is also what I thought when I saw the art quilts that Willow Bend Creations has. It was pure chance I discovered the below video while browsing YouTube, but I’m glad I did. While not actually one of a kind creations because of the ability to order the same pattern ad-infinitum, these are one of a kind creations in that each artist brings their own uniqueness to the selection of materials and any embellishments they might add, so I want to share with you these lovely patterns by Willow Bend Creations in Soldotna, Alaska.

I had no ides what he was, but he seemed to be a rather interesting little figure, so I took him to a sketch pad and started sketching.  First I recreated the basic shapes, thinking how his nose was kind of fox shaped.  I knew already the long forelegs were some kind of wings, a little more work on detailing him and I decided he just “felt” like a fox, so I made the ears a little more like a fox’s and the head a bit more fox looking and less sharply angled.

I then added in the top of the A but decided it wasn’t quite right, he needed a size comparison… well, the top of the A was looking sort of like a finger.  I narrowed and  rounded it some, added a little bit of detail – such as a fingernail.

What had started as claw feet shifted to paws as I worked on the finger, and he got a tail… change tail to be bushy like a fox tail.  There the fellow is.  He needs a fluffy fox type chest too.

I still needed to figure out his wings, so I started sketching another to show the wings, they ended up looking like a flying squirrels wings.  He makes a cute critter, but I think I can see a few other types of little critters in that first sketch, so maybe I’ll end up with a mascot that looks more like the first one I drew and is sort of wyvern-like in appearance.

Well, see.  I have a lot to do before I start on another figure.

There are a lot of pictures in it, particularly of completed dolls, but there is also a lot of really good advice for the doll artist.  There is even an armature that I had not encountered before that shows how to make an armature that is supposed to have lifelike movements from a special looping process at the joints.  She does not go into great detail on it, but there is a picture that shows it sufficiently I think I can replicate it and she describes the basics of the armature.

This is a book that I am very glad to have added to my collection and I can not wait to read through it over and over to hone my skills as a doll artist.