Suddenly summer

The clouds have parted. The rain has stopped (for the moment). And someone has turned up the intergalactic thermostat. It's summer! We have a couple of postcards to show....both on a summer theme....a summer road trip!

Lost! Copyright © Cheryl Coville 2011

 'Nuff said on this one, we think.




Copyright © Cheryl Coville 2011

Now, THIS one is born of bitter memories. You can see this comes from a long ago time before seatbelts and fancy-schmancy car seats. It was a time of ....how should we say it?....every man (and kid!) for himself? Although there were never this many kids in the backseat of our family car, we probably seemed like a whole tribe to our demoralized parents up front. "Are we there yet? Are we there yet?" (At full volume. The concept of the inside voice having yet to be invented.) We wish there was a way of showing in postcard form the rhythmic kicking of the back of the parent's seat and the scooping action of the parental arm into the back seat in response. Ah, yes. Good times!

And then, years later. Nature's payback. US in the front seat. Mouthy little guys, pummelling one another in the back, as we drove mile after curs-ed mile. Nowadays, those same little guys are all grown up and have vans with DVD players so the kids in the back seat think they're at some kind of mobile movie theatre.

Is it any wonder the only summer road trip we crave nowadays is a vicarious one lived through postcards?

Illustration Friday: Asleep

Copyright © Cheryl Coville 2011

We thought we'd shake things up a bit this week. We feel really comfortable working in pencil. Black and white is really how we see the world anyway. Things are either right or wrong, good or bad. Of course, that kind of thinking can get a girl into a lot of trouble. So, this week, we offer this little sketch done in coloured pencil with which we have struggled mightily. We offer it here in the spirit of experimentation. Maybe next week we'll move up to our new watercolour pencils.

Don't tell Mr. Coco

Grandma Coco has a crush on the Purolator man. She thinks we don't see him often enough. And really, who wouldn't love a guy who brings you stuff ... on time and without expecting anything in return. :) Yesterday, he brought us not one, but TWO boxes.




The Kingdom of Coco is a fabulous place to live but we are a tad lacking in good art supply stores. We have to drive an hour to get to the closest one and we were bitterly disappointed the last time we went there. So, you can appreciate how happy we were to discover an excellent online retailer. Curry's Art Supplies has been in business in Toronto since 1911. We've ordered twice from them and have been extremely happy with their service. And you all know how fussy Grandma Coco can be.

Here's what we got.....

It's like Christmas! There is something so wonderful about new art supplies. Stark white pages and sharp, sharp pencils. Curry's had a couple of specials to celebrate their centennial. One of them was sketchbooks with decent weight paper (9" x 12", 100 pages) for $4.95!!!! We just had to get 2 of them.

And a metal box of 2 dozen watercolour pencils and a block of watercolour paper. These pencils are so pretty. We've never used watercolour pencils before. It's kind of daunting.

As well, we've been trying to find some paper that we really liked from several years ago. We know it's an Arches paper because we have a tiny piece of it left with the watermark on it. It's a beautiful paper for drawing on with plain old pencil (which is our preferred medium)....with a smooth, velvety surface that takes the pencil well but still lets us erase. We took a chance and ordered some 140 lb hot press paper and Curry's gave us a sample pack of all the Arches watercolour papers so we can try them out.
Thanks, Mr. Curry's! GC's got a crush on you, too!



We got free shipping AND a 15% discount!

However, the absolute best thing about our order? The paper comes in sheets that are 22" x 33" and we figured they'd come rolled up in a tube. But no! They shipped them flat in a shallow box. Every single item was wrapped in plastic and nestled into its box with bubble wrap. All in all, we give Curry's TWO thumbs up. If you're looking for a good mail order source for art supplies, Curry's might be it!!

... and found?

So we took a shovel to the old sewing room/studio in what turned out to be a veritable archeological dig. The whole process actually ended up taking way less time than we had feared (it always does!) and it was oddly satisfying. Sort of like taking a calming breath.

BONUS!!! Look what we found!

This is a tiny practice piece that we did several years ago. It's only about 6 inches x 9 inches. We also found some strip-pieced remnants from an old slipper design that was part of our pattern offerings back in the '90's...a contemporary of the Cosy Quilted Cap and Mittens patterns.

The colours go well together we think and the idea of finding hope at the bottom of a quilted nightmare is just too good to pass up. This will become part of the Frankenquilt....the knitting-themed quilt.....Knitter-Knatter.

Here's how we're going about it:

In the photo above, you can see we laid the Hope motif so it overlaps the strip-pieced fabric slightly. We then cut through both layers. This makes the 2 motifs nestle into each other.

To join the 2 motifs, we cut ON THE BIAS a 1 inch strip of this bright pink fabric (which we bought when we were in Maui 4 years ago) and a 1-3/4 inch wide strip of fabric (for the back).  Fold the wider strip in half and pin the cut edges to the raw edge of the back of the Hope motif. Line up one edge of the 1 inch strip with the raw edge of the right side of Hope (right sides together) and stitch through all the layers. Next, stitch the remaining edge of the pink 1 inch wide strip to the corresponding raw edge of the slipper strip-pieced fabric (right sides together).

Then, we opened everything up. You can see the narrow pink bias strip stitched to both pre-quilted pieces.

And, on the back side, we just handstitched the folded edge to cover the machine stitching. Neato!

Definitely a Frankenquilt!

Lost

The workmen have come and gone. The house is a dusty, chaotic mess.....lovely floors, mind you, but still....a mess. (No pictures today for reasons of deniability.) Slowly we are putting things to rights but somehow we have lost our way. Our mojo is missing. We know we were wildly excited about several creative endeavours but what were they? It's almost as though we've forgotten. Did you ever go away for a few days and wonder when you got home, what exactly it was that you did in your normal life? What it was that ordinarily gave you so much pleasure? It seems strange that that could be so easily forgotten.

Our sewing room is in need of a good tidy-up. As the makeshift catch-all for all the bits and bobs that had to move for the house renovation, everything is in upheaval ... and not in a good, creative swirl either. This is more of a "can't find a thing" kind of disorder. So, it would seem the first order of business would be to just bite the bullet and clean that room up, find all the pieces for our knitting themed quilt, our fuschia/purple scarf, our "Say Cheese!" scrap quilt (Ha! that's new! You haven't seen that one yet, have you?), our beaded February Lady sweater variation (also new!) and hope for the best.

We have a list of "should do's" and a list of "wanna do's". Which do you think we'll tackle first?

Time for a safari!

Copyright © Cheryl Coville 2011




 Don't you just love it when 2 things collide? And we mean when they collide in a good way. This week's Illustration Friday theme is Safari. And since we've already mentioned we have a practical streak and a newly discovered fascination with fabric postcards, we've decided to combine the two. We have a lot to learn about fabric postcards....mostly in working in such a small space. This little card is only 4 inches x 6 inches. We've discovered it's all about simplifying. And in case you haven't noticed that's a discipline that doesn't come naturally to us..... being inveterate complicators ... but we're trying.

For any illustrator/artist types who've arrived here through the Illustration Friday link (and not familiar with quilter/seamstress proclivities) this is a fabric collage, held in place by stitching.

We've just joined a fabric postcard trading group called Postcard Cottage. There are some fabulous postcards floating around there. We wonder how long we'll have to wait until the Safari topic comes up. :)

What a difference a day (or 2) makes

Grandma Coco wants to apologize for allowing Cheryl to whine and carry on in our last post. Things are brighter today both inside and out. The world is sunny and spring-like and green! once again. We have robins building nests over the lights at both our doors...front and back.

AND the mailman brought us a lovely package today from Monika of My Sweet Prairie. Isn't her business card pretty? Look what we won..... a set of chalk markers and some really special tape from Marathon. Monika was celebrating her blogiversary a week or so ago and gave away some really cool prizes. Thank you, Monika!

As well, the workmen are coming right along with our new floor! It's going to be so pretty but we find we're afraid to step on it. What if we make a mark? That's the one great thing about having extra old carpet....we didn't worry about it at all. :)

Once the floor guys are finished, we have another man who's coming to replace those awful wrought iron railings with wooden spindles. Until then, we have to be careful not to fall over the edge of the landing. Thank goodness none of us sleep walks!