New Fish

Spending most of my time working on my hand-made pages for our gallery's new cookbook, so my beading is slower right now.

But I have managed to finish two more fish while watching "The Pillars of the Earth" with Dale. Introducing Toni the Tiger Fish....

And her cousin, Rooster. Not sure what kind of fish Rooster is, but he sports a fancy raku tail I found at Shepherdess Beads in San Diego on our vacation in July.

BTW, our gallery (Eclectics Gallery in Kansas City) occasionally publishes a hand-made, limited edition cookbook that is a piece of art. The unveiling will be sometime this month....we only make 40 copies and all recipes pages are hand-made by gallery member artists. They are unique and amazing and also have good recipes! Curious??? You should be. The cost is $65 - a real bargain considering the hundreds of hours we are spending. My studio is a blizzard of papers, inks, glue, ribbons, and other mysterious elements that you'll see on my pages. Stay tuned....

Felt Food You Can Wear!

My friend Jenny at Eclectics - an artists' cooperative in Kansas City (where I sell my stuff) saw my felt food and said, "I think some people would love to wear these. Why don't you make some smaller bananas for pins??" Of course, she makes a lot of cool woolen things to wear, like flower brooches made from old, felted wool sweaters or other fibers, like this heart.

 

However, I dutifully tried it while staying out of my studio to protect my poor fractured arm - hand sewing shouldn't be considered a high-impact activity, right? Today I placed some of my results into my gallery inventory for all to see.

Actually the banana was easy - it was the strawberries that were tricky. A single felt strawberry is easily made from a semi-circle of red felt.

• Fold in half and seam up the radius edges. Knot.
• Add running stitch around the top (the round edge), draw tight and knot.
• Stuff with fiber and stitch closed.
• Cut a 3 or 4 lobed green leaf piece.
• Stitch leaves over the hole and whip stitch around all leaves.
• Add tiny yellow embroidery stitches to simulate seeds.

Voila!  A strawberry! Sounds simple, right? Well, it is - IF you are making a whole strawberry.

If you want to make a half a strawberry, which is flat on one side (for the pin-back to be attached, which is what I did) it's a bit more complicated. The above photo is a whole strawberry. This is two half strawberries....look the same right?

Nope - the back is flat. And it doesn't even show! Wonder if anyone really will want to wear one of these???

"So Impressive!"

My 5-year-old granddaughter Chloe and her 2 1/2 year old sister Anastasia called me yesterday, upon receipt of their shopping bag full of Felt Food!.

Chloe called me right away and said, "Grandma, it is so impressive!" (yes, that's really how she speaks!) It's great to be appreciated. My son and his wife are careful about toys coming to stay in their home - no Chinese plastic permitted, not too many pieces ( Legos are an exception...) and no junk. But he knows I've figured out how to get around the limits - this gift is NOT plastic, reinforces healthy eating and it's handmade. They have to keep it!

They loved the sushi and the cookies and the veggies.

And the pretzels.

I used an expandable onion bag, added a fun-felt collar and drawstring so they have a usable holder for the small items.

I also made a shopping bag from old plastic grocery sacks, fused together with an iron. (Be sure to sandwich the plastic sheets between paper before ironing!!)

All in all, a great result from my Felt Food experiments. I'll be teaching how to do this type of Felt Food at classes offered at Eclectics Gallery - an artists' cooperative in Kansas City. Students will get hands-on experience, will make some food in class and receive a set of patterns for a wide variety of fruits, veggies and other yumies.

Eclectics Gallery in Kansas City

I've just joined a new gallery in Kansas City called Eclectics, which is so exciting. Eclectics is NOT a new gallery, but has been around for 19 years. But they graciously accepted me in via their jury process and we're getting ready for the new year re-opening on Monday, January 18 -- a great fresh new start for the new decade.

In 2009 I became a member of another KC gallery - Images Art Gallery - where I learned about the local art scene, met loads of talented people and made a bunch of friends. Painters are a breed apart ! They need vans just to carry their art around, while I can put my complete gallery jewelry display into a couple large shopping bags. Somehow I'm not at all drawn to painting myself for some reason - perhaps because my muse needs a more tactile medium....topic for another post sometime.

Anyway, I am very grateful to Images Gallery for accepting me into their midst and also for graciously saying goodbye.

More about Eclectics soon - I don't know much yet and am still retagging my stuff for Monday's opening.