Joseph Low, meet Jessica Hogarth

I picked up some fabrics by Jessica Hogarth on a recent shopping trip just because it reminded me of animation and illustration from my childhood years, in particular this one:

I bought a few matching fabrics and this one from the same line with these cute birds:

I played with my fabrics and came up with a sort of slash and sew design:

but I was stuck at the green border where to go from here? but in my internet search for cool album covers I came across this one by Joseph Low:

Omg! everything old is new again! the style of drawing is so similar to Jessica Hogarth, don't you think....and do you recognize the art style? Apparently Joseph Low is a Caldecott winner for a children's book called Mice Twice and was a frequent cover artist for The New Yorker magazine between 1940-1980.
....but I digresss! this album cover inspired me to play with a black and white background, from this:

to this! The converging lines remind me of the opening credits to North by Northwest (Saul Bass) and the added touch of The Birds fabric make this the perfect Alfred Hitchcock tribute don't you think?

 

Now I have to figure out how to quilt it!

The Birds

With all this lousy, rainy, cloudy weather we have been having, I've actually spent a bit of time trying to clean my sewing room! Ha! As I was sorting all the lovely scraps given to me by my sister-in-law, I was inspired! among those scraps were some charm squares. Lo! These would go great with my Hitchcock I was working on!


et voila!

It measures approximately 13x13 inches, I might use it for my calendar of challenges, since it was an Art Quilt Workbook exercise.

Odds and ends or May confessions

What is it about May, so many of the blogs I follow have hit a stop in posting around the middle of May, even mine...my excuse is that I am so busy! I can hardly catch my breath. One project or event ends another begins! and of course Spring finally arrived and so much work to do in the garden...last year I let it slide and now my garden is in much need of TLC, also this year we've got to put in a new fence and gate, so quilting may get pushed to the back of the priority list! Also, I have been a bad blogger, I have been reading a few blogs regularly but rarely commenting...and what is the etiquette for responding to comments? I appreciate all the comments I get, but unless you ask a specific question I don't usually respond back. So to all those who enjoyed my Canada wallhanging, I say Thanks!


I was checking out Camp Follower Bag's blog and noticed that my 2 blocks I sent in for the Bushfire quilt relief project have been made into a quilt. Wow! What a job she has done organizing such a huge project and sewing all these lovely quilts! I am so proud to have had even a small part of it. My blocks are the middle ones in the top and bottom rows. What a lovely quilt! What a great job she and her volunteers have done! Kudos!

I have been handquilting my 9 Lives quilt a lot lately, so I expect I will get the whole thing done by the fall; I am trying not to rush, but enjoy the process. I am using bamboo batting, left over from Andrew's Scrappy Bargello quilt, and I must say I am not too happy how linty it is and how the white batting is popping up through the dark fabric...it is too late to take out all I've done so far, so I am hoping a lint brush will help to get those stray pufts...

I have the book Art Quilt Workbook, and every once in a while I dabble in some of the projects they suggest. I am not committed to doing them on a schedule, but whenever I feel I need some new stimulation. I am currently dabbling in 2 of them. One is taking a photo, drawing it and then recreating it with fabric. In the book they used a pear...me I used Alfred Hitchcock.

The colours are a little odd, and I have no idea where I am going to go with this...but hey...it's just fabric doodling.

The other project I am working on is the one where you put somewords in a box and randomly pick one and randomly pick a colour palette and create something out of it...well, I didn't really like the words they suggested and I thought, it's not too challenging to work with my words, so I asked my husband to write on slips of paper:

5x song titles, 5x verbs, 5x animals, 5x emotions, 5x comic related, 5x adjectives, 5x music related words.

Then I created a list of colours and themes, such as plaids, or primatives, or pastels, happy, sad, etc. I chose 2 slips from his box and one from my box. So right now I am doodling "I am a tree", rhythm, and wacky. I am giving myself a couple of weeks of doodling and then a couple of weeks of creating and they will be no bigger than 8.5x11. I'd like to do one per month, but....I don't know...

I have been watching a new TV show that is probably not that well known. It is Canadian, it is called Rabbit Fall. It is about a lady cop who moves to Rabbit Fall, Saskatchewan from Toronto and the strange characters and aboriginal mysticism she experiences. It is a little Twin Peak-ish. I really like it, it is only a half hour show, and each episode has a crime to solve, but everything is not wrapped up in a tidy "murder she wrote" little bow at the end. The acting is realistic without being "too Canadian" and the directing is awesome! I like it because it is not predictable and cliche....and you know what this cop dresses like and looks like a lady cop, not some hollywood starlet pretending to be a cop. (on the other hand, my other favourite show right now is Burn Notice, which is just the complete opposite of Rabbit Fall!)