Hello from Stag Studio!

I spent the weekend sewing through the winter storm and I’m sharing a quilt FAIL that taught me a whole bunch and gave me new inspiration.

First, the quilt fail - it was my first time using gauze. Soft, delicate - I had to try it. I buy my fabrics locally and not one of my go-to stores had gauze. When I finally got my hands on it and finished the project, I learned it requires a top stitch, not a traditional edging. Below, you can see how after the wash the gauze shrunk and pulled away. I had anticipated this so I used a zigzag stitch but even so, it was fray city! I should have listened to Melanie Ham!

It can be a bummer when a thing doesn’t turn out but I’ve ruined so many paintings and drawings, I know that it’s a part of being creative. An instructor at art college told me, “you will learn more by finishing something than starting over.” I don’t abandon projects, I always use the rest of the project to practice and learn. I’m a finisher. The good news is, that when I make big mistakes like this, what I learned sticks with me.

The blanket plopped into the scrap pile but I still wanted to complete a project with the colors I was working with. I was planning to make a quilt for a friend’s new babe and decided to use the same colors. I bought my fabric in solids and quickly decided on triangles. Jotting down a pattern for myself - the cutting and sewing became straightforward.

The triangles look modern, especially in bold colors against the cream. Still, the piece has that “quilted” feel. The color blocking also enhances the mod look and I think looks perfectly playful for baby.

I quilted using a golden thread, bravely sewing on the diagonal. Admittedly, this was a last-minute choice - no regrets!

A part of this quilt that may be overlooked is how I used rounded corners on two sides of the quilt. It created a swath shape and enhanced the "mod” feel of the quilt.

Stay warm out there snow bunnies!

Sending smiles,

Kirbi

Dear Readers,

The world is covered in snow but in the studio I’m singin’ about colors…

Living Canvas is all about me embracing all sides of my creativity, letting one project inspire the next in whatever medium that calls to me. I let my new rainbow quilt, which you can see in more detail here, be my inspiration for an illustration. I started, like I usually do, by sketching on my iPad in procreate.

My rainbow quilt makes me so happy, it just tickles me when I seeing all the colors lay around the house. I wanted to create a piece that was about hope - something we all need right now, that I could share on the web to lift spirits. One of my first concept sketches is shown below. I thought drawing my quilt waving in the wind while a young character holds it running would tell my story…

But this type of carefree, bright day wasn’t connecting with me. Collectively we are “hanging in there,” many of us in the midst of the darkest part of their lives. I sketched more until I realized this required a portrait, a face that says, it’s going to be alright. And she splashed out of my pen…

Everything felt right, I went to final, enlarging the drawing onto to some vellum. Colored pencils take a lot of a layers, so I like to lay down a layer of air brush with a copic marker airbrush attachment (Kindly gifted to me from Copic.) In bolder areas, I put marker directly onto the vellum.

Then I build up the colored pencils, moving a small circular motion. Each area has about 9-12 layers of color. It has been some time since I’ve done a full colored pencil piece. I found these pencils in the bottom of the barrel chewed my family dog, I couldn’t part with them… I’m guessing they are from around 2009. Anyone else’s dog just LOVE prisma colored pencils?

I fell into a rhythm of blending colors and sharpening pencils.

When I finished, I scanned the drawing into my computer and added text. Hold on everyone, we will get through this. I really believe that.