A Crafty Summer Week: Batman Pillowcase, bracelet, and Reveal Day

    The kids have moved back, 20 minutes away, and are now settled in, very happy. When the girls created sundresses, David preferred a Batman shirt. So far, he is getting a Batman pillowcase. It is a one or two hour job if you follow the fabulous instructions on YouTube.

     I Googled How to Make a Sausage Pillowcase. This is the best explanation I have found for this amusing task. I look forward to making some more for the girls and friends for trips. The size fabrics I bought were: body, 23" x 45"; header, 13" x 45" and accent 2" x 45". When I got home I realized my fabrics were only 42" but everything worked out fine! Click to enlarge the photos.

      That same week, The Beadsprouts learned a new bracelet pattern. It is a lot of fun and easy once you get started. I haven't found any instructions on line. Hannah found it a breeze, but I make a silly mistake every time I pick it up again. I'll make some more and try to come up with instructions. The blue and white bracelets are Nita and Luly's inspiration!

       Also, Material Mavens had their Reveal Day. The theme was CELL. I have already posted on how I used Klimt's CELLS, but you might be interested in further information I added on the connection of science and art back at the end of the 19th C Vienna as well as view about 12 quilts with the challenge topic CELL.

Communication: a group posting

      Our 12" x 12" quilt group Material Mavens had Reveal Day today. Our topic the past month was Communication. Below find my posting, but you can go to the MM site to see all contributions of the 15 members of the group.  All quilts should be up by midnight. It is fun to see how many versions of Communication are created. The new topic is also listed. Canyon will be challenging, but I have some ideas. At the MM site, I wrote the following:

      The same day “communication" was announced as our theme, I strangely happened to applique birch trees in doubles. The branches started reaching out to touch to communicate. My brain said they stood for both our virtual and our face-to-face lives. We live two lives in one. However trite the image, my brain refused to entertain any other expression of the topic.

      Today we have circles of friendship and families we see regularly, but just as important and real are the virtual friendships, families and lives we enjoy only via the Internet. It has been said that 4 out of 5 Internet users have developed new lives online in virtual worlds. It is interesting to think how communication differentiates these worlds. Presence, with its diverse elements, communicates as much as words in the physical world, while in the virtual world, communication is both focused and limited by the shared interests.  Communication is never easy, face-to-face, but may be more difficult online; thus, the emergence of emoji, the Japanese term for the picture characters or emoticons that we use to clarify or stand for our facial expressions in real life. ☺ But that is another quilt!

A teaser: Are the communicating birches virtual or real? That is the paradox in all representational art.      Note: This quilt is mounted to stretched canvas in a manner demonstrated in my February 13, 2013 blog posting on Linda Drawing Time.